Kingdom Hearts (game): Difference between revisions
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==Development== | ==Development== | ||
During the late 1990's and into the early 2000's, video game developer and producer Squaresoft was in a financially rocky position. Their first quarterly loss since going public on the stock market was published on February 8, 2001 and their value continued to decrease for several quarters after. This is largely due to increasingly expensive and risky ventures that did gain back its investment, including underperforming titles and the ballooning costs of their floundering ''Square Pictures'' feature film subsidiary. Square was also in negotiations with with fellow game publisher Enix since 2000, but negotiations stalled after the failure of ''Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within'' made Enix wary of merging. Sony ended up buying a 20% stake in the company to bail them out on the grounds that their games would be exclusive to PlayStation consoles for several years. Square had the occasional success story like ''Final Fantasy X'', but it just wasn't enough to stay afloat. | |||
During these trying times, Squaresoft executive Shinji Hashimoto and ''Final Fantasy'' series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi had conversations about needing a game like ''Super Mario 64'', as in an open-world game that would wow the masses and sell a massive amount of copies, but bemoaned that only a company like Disney has characters that could rival the popularity of Mario. Final Fantasy character designer [[Tetsuya Nomura]] overheard these conversations and volunteered to create this project. By a stroke of luck, Square and Disney of Japan shared an office building at the time. Hashimoto would have a chance encounter with a Disney executive in an elevator which allowed him to pitch the concept of using Disney properties in this game, which was eventually approved in 2000. | |||
While Square was given a surprising amount of freedom on what Disney properties are used and how, they still tried their hardest to make sure nothing felt jarring or out of character. A conflict did arise when deciding on a protagonist. The Square developers wanted [[Donald Duck]] while Disney wanted [[Mickey Mouse]]. Nomura decided to create a compromise by having the protagonist be an original character, which eventually became [[Sora]]. All parties agreed to these terms, with Disney's only stipulation that they own the copyright to all characters, settings, and assets original to the series. | |||
The storyline and narrative would be helmed by Nomura as his first director and lead writer credit, and Disney gave him a surprising amount of freedom in the storyline as well. The story was originally planned to be a simple narrative of a hero saving the damsel in distress from a big villain, a common format meant to appeal to Disney's core audience. However, Sakaguchi intervened and thought the story would be too simple for the average ''Final Fantasy'' fan, who would make up a significant amount of the player base by virtue of its crossover premise. Nomura took this advice and decided elevated the storyline to better appeal to these fans. | |||
The game eventually released in Japan for the PlayStation 2 on March 28, 2002. The game then released in North America on September 17 of that year, and is notable for containing extra content cut from the initial release due to time constraints. This content includes new optional bosses, one of which, [[Kurt Zisa]], was named after the winner of the official website's "[[Name-In-Game]]" sweepstakes, an extra difficulty level, and a teaser of ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]'' accessible by meeting certain criteria. This version of the game was re-released in Japan with even more content added in as ''[[Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix]]'', and this has been the defacto version in re-releases ever since. | |||
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[[File:Pre-game Logo.png|thumb|Logo depicted in the ''Kingdom Hearts'' beta trailer.]] | [[File:Pre-game Logo.png|thumb|Logo depicted in the ''Kingdom Hearts'' beta trailer.]] | ||
*''Kingdom Hearts'' is the only game in the series to be licensed by "Squaresoft" before it became "Square Enix", and is the only game to receive a rating lower than 12+ from PEGI. | *''Kingdom Hearts'' is the only game in the series to be licensed by "Squaresoft" before it became "Square Enix", and is the only game to receive a rating lower than 12+ from PEGI. | ||
*''Kingdom Hearts'' had a different logo in the beta trailer showing the word "Kingdom" in gold, bold letters on top of "Hearts" in the same style as the current logo. | *''Kingdom Hearts'' had a different logo in the beta trailer showing the word "Kingdom" in gold, bold letters on top of "Hearts" in the same style as the current logo. | ||
*Since the protagonist of ''Kingdom Hearts'' was originally planned to be Mickey, Sora's clothes are based on Mickey's clothes, to mesh well with Donald and Goofy.{{fact}}--> | *Since the protagonist of ''Kingdom Hearts'' was originally planned to be Mickey at one point, Sora's clothes are based on Mickey's clothes, to mesh well with Donald and Goofy.{{fact}}--> | ||
==Story== | ==Story== | ||
[[File:The Outside World 01 KH.png|thumb|left|Sora, Riku, and Kairi ponder if other worlds exist.]] | [[File:The Outside World 01 KH.png|thumb|left|Sora, Riku, and Kairi ponder if other worlds exist.]] | ||
