KHWiki:April Fool's Day Joke 2010

The rough cover design for the game, before someone at Square-Enix regained their sanity.

Kingdom Hearts: Sora Florida Meets Hannah Montana is a limited-edition, free crossover game demo that was distributed to promote Disney Channel’s 2006 teen-friendly line-up, including the debut of their new series, Hannah Montana, as well as the release of Kingdom Hearts II.

History

Kingdom Hearts: Sora Florida Meets Hanna Montana seems to have been in development since early 2005, while Kingdom Hearts II was already underway. Originally planned as a plain Kingdom Hearts II demo, Disney had secured a deal for a new television series called Hannah Montana. Very late in the development of the demo, a suggestion was made to place elements of the yet-to-be released Hannah Montana series, along with bits from other already successful Disney Channel series, into the game by Disney. Disney hoped they could use this to attract an older audience, since the plot they had planned for Kingdom Hearts II was much more complex than Kingdom Hearts's plot.

Shortly before distribution, Square-Enix decided to withdraw their approval of the project, and the game was recalled. Tetsuya Nomura was later quoted as calling it "a disaster, a joke, and against everything we worked for. It didn't even reference Final Fantasy VII once, and you all know that I need to include those references in the Kingdom Hearts series." Several weeks later, he added, "We would afraid it would hurt sales with our more loyal and hardcore fans, despite their age demographic." A few of the discs had already been released to the media for previewing, as well as to testers for debugging. A couple had slipped out at least one known time during a major Square-Enix convention, making it a rare collectors' item. The game has had few appearances in public, but the first, and so far, only disc to appear on eBay went for $4,200. The status of the other discs is unknown, but it is rumored that Sqaure-Enix has plans to pass the discs on to Disney for safekeeping, so that nobody would know of the terrible game demo they had created.

A planned second promotional game for Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, Kingdom Hearts: Roxas Texas Meets Miley Cyrus, was also scrapped. The project was an underground work of Square-Enix's localization branch, resulting in the demotion of several employees for trying to develop it. The team nearly spread the game to the media before the Japanese release of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days before being caught by Square-Enix.

Plot

Sora is taking a nap on the beach of Destiny Islands when he hears a voice. He turns to see a pretty, brown-haired girl standing behind him. She asks him if he can help her, and introduces herself as Miley. Miley was about to perform at her opening tour concert when she fell through a dark portal and into Sora's world created by the darkness in her boyfriend's heart.

From there, Sora guides Miley through three small demo worlds, with enemies based on both Hannah Montana and Kingdom Hearts, as well as a few thrown in from other popular Disney Channel shows, such as The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and That's So Raven. The worlds themselves are based on Twilight Town, Beast's Castle,simply called "The Dark Castle", and the Coliseum portion of Olympus Coliseum, in which Sora and Miley can participate in the Best of Both Worlds Cup.

After arriving safely, Sora, in his new form (see Gameplay), rocks out with Hannah Montana at the opening concert, later deciding to tour with Miley across various other worlds such as The Tipton and Washington D.C., the latter of which is from Disney Channel's upcoming Cory in the House. Suddenly, the image fades; it was all a dream he experienced in Sora's sleep pod. He sees his friends Goofy and Donald in front of him, leading into Kingdom Hearts II....

Gameplay

Sora's task is to guide Miley through the three worlds back home in time for her concert. Miley does not attack, but offers healing and support spells. She also grants Sora the "Costume" ability, a foreshadowing to Drive Forms that allows him to change his "costume" into a powerful alter ego she dubs "Sora Florida". This changes his Keyblade into a powerful new form, roughly resembling something akin to Demyx's Arpeggio, as well as increases his magic abilities. Miley can also transform into Hannah Montana, which simply increases her magic ability with new spells based on her songs' titles. Because of the nature of the demo, there are only four spells available: Fire, Cure, Shield, and Rock Out!; the last of these spells raises Sora's attack stat while in his Sora Florida state.

Limit

Just as in Kingdom Hearts II, Sora can perform a Limit with his party members. When Sora Florida and Hannah Montana activate their Limit ability, "Butterflies Fly Away", their Limit "Party in the U.S.A." begins. During Party in the U.S.A., Sora Florida and Hannah Montana summon a limousine they use to ram into enemies, while also imploding their ear drums with an off-key rendition of Miley Cyrus's "Party in the U.S.A.". The Limit ends with Hannah Montana exposing her identity to the public, and Sora Florida then eliminating all who now know her secret with a powerful guitar solo.

Trivia

• Miley and Hannah seem to be based off the body build and features of the newer version Kairi featured in Kingdom Hearts II. The way that she wields her microphone is similar to the way Kairi wields Destiny Place.
• Many elements of Kingdom Hearts II are missing from this demo, including several Heartless types found in the areas in the complete game. Heartless such as the Search Ghost that appeared only in Kingdom Hearts also appear in Kingdom Hearts: Sora Florida Meets Hannah Montana, yet they do not appear in Kingdom Hearts II.
• No Beauty and the Beast characters makes an appearance in Beast's Castle, possibly to keep from spoiling the true nature of the world.
• Oddly, almost no established Kingdom Hearts characters appear other than Sora. No Final Fantasy characters appear, either, though fans never expressed concern for not seeing Cloud in another spin-off.
• This is the first time that Twilight Town was rendered in 3-D. It had appeared in 2-D in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories.
• A hack enables Miley to use a Keyblade; while she one-hit kills everything, the game will eventually crash from logic overflow. At this point, the game slowly fades to black to the tune of Miley Cyrus's "The Climb".
• Oh yeah... happy April Fool's Day everyone. Whew! Aren't you glad this one doesn't exist?