Kingdom Hearts - On This Day

Disney characters like Mickey Mouse, Paja Duck, and Spike during the 80s and 90s had their separate games. However, in the 21st century, the gaming market has preferred some new characters. Disney has therefore agreed to collaborate with the Japanese company Square, making it one of the biggest crossover titles in the video game industry.

The original Kingdom Hearts in Japan came out on this day 20 years ago and was a notable departure from Square’s previous RPG games. Kingdom Hearts boasted more lively action in the form of hack and slash mechanics but also an original mix of Disney and Square worlds.

The permanent members of the line-up were Donald Duck and Goofy, but during various adventures, we could meet a ghost from Aladdin, Tinker Bell from Peter Pan, Simba from the Lion King, and many other characters. As for Square's side, Kingdom Hearts has hosted various characters from the Final Fantasy Games.

The fascinating fact in all of this is that the collaboration between Disney and Square came about quite by accident, with Square’s Shinji Hashimoto meeting a Disney employee in an elevator. Square and Disney at the time in Japan shared the same building where their office space was located.

Kingdom Hearts was remembered as one of the best games of 2002 and one of the best-selling PlayStation 2 games of the holiday season that year. The game has since been turned into a manga, and in 2013 it received a kind of remake called 1.5 Remix.

Meanwhile, Kingdom Hearts became a series that received over ten different sequels, remixes, and spin-off titles, and we got the third part in 2019. Most of the games in the series were exclusive to PlayStations, some appeared on Nintendo consoles and then have recently ended up on both PC and Xbox platforms.