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How I Came to Love Kingdom Hearts

July 17, 2019

I’ve been a gamer my entire life. When I was young, my mother introduced me to Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System. She had the pleasure of being around for the earliest days of the home video game market from the Atari 2600 to the NES itself. By the time I was born in 1992, she had amassed a decent collection of games and an undying love for a short Italian plumber on a quest to save the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom. She made sure to pass that love on to me.

As my gaming journey has stretched over the years, it’s slowly started to border on obsession. The games themselves are still my true love, but I was rapidly falling for everything game related. The art and music were now also subjects of my adoration. As this obsession developed over the years, I began to wonder where my gaming journey actually began. It didn’t begin the moment my mom handed me my first controller (which ended in a quick death by a Goomba) nor did it begin we made the jump to the Nintendo 64. My personal gaming journey began a few years after that with the release of Kingdom Hearts.

Kingdom Hearts was the first game I truly discovered for myself. In fact, I’ll never forget the first time I saw the game on the TechTV series Extended Play. They were reviewing the game, but I payed little mind to their words. I was already captivated by the what I saw. I was beyond ecstatic for everything on that television screen. I had never played a Final Fantasy game in my life, though I had seen TV spots for the film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I had no desire to see the movie, so Final Fantasy was like a foreign language to me. But I did know Disney.

I can’t think of a single person in my life who didn’t grow up watching Disney movies. While Disney has been putting out wonderful films since the 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, every generation believes their Disney films are the best. I had the pleasure of growing up during the time known as the Disney Renaissance: the period of time from 1989 to 199 when Disney put out some of their greatest films (or so I believe), including Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Aladdin, Hercules, and Tarzan. When I saw that Square Enix made a video game that would let me fight alongside Aladdin and Beast, I was overcome with joy. I had seen what 3D games could do during the 64-bit era, and now I was excited to see things go even further.

For Christmas of 2002, my mother got me Kingdom Hearts for the PlayStation 2. It was one of the greatest gifts I ever received in my entire life. Hell, I still have that exact copy after all these years. I’ll never forget the parade of emotions I experienced when I sat down in my bean bag chair that cold December morning and fired up the game that would ultimately take a special place in my heart alongside other classics, like Super Mario 64 and GoldenEye 007.

If you’ve never played Kingdom Hearts, the premise is simple: Sora is a young child who lives on Destiny Island with his friends Riku and Kairi. One night, the island is invaded by creatures known as the Heartless. After attempting to fend them off, Sora ultimately winds up in a place he is unfamiliar with: Traverse Town.

The town acts as a sort of refuge for people whose world has been destroyed. In this town, Sora meets a handful of Final Fantasy characters and three key Disney characters: Donald Duck, Goofy Goof, and Pluto. Donald and Goofy realize that Sora is the one whom King Mickey has sent them to find, and their journey winds up taking them to various Disney worlds as they attempt to defeat the Heartless and save the Princesses of Heart.

The story of the first game is pretty straight forward, though over the years the series as a whole has grown much more intricate. Still, it was interesting to watch the series and its characters progress on their journey and mature over time, as I myself was doing the same.

I’ve given a lot of thought to Kingdom Hearts over the years and it’s great to see everyone talking about it again as Square Enix prepares to release Kingdom Hearts 3 in 2018. In my time thinking, I’ve asked myself, “why do I love this series,” and I’ve come to realize that it’s a combination of factors that create the cocktail of my love.

The first is sheer dumb luck: I just happened to be born at the right moment in time to be part of the target market for the game when it was first taking off. That’s something that was completely out of my control, but I will forever view it as some of the best luck I’ve had in my life.

The second part is my love of film. As crazy as it sounds, if I wasn’t obsessed with movies, I may have enjoyed Kingdom Hearts less. One of the things that always makes me jump up and down with joy when playing a Kingdom Hearts title is seeing a character from my favorite childhood movies, voiced by the original actors, appear in my game. Not every character was granted this honor, but there have been more than enough over the years that it brings me endless joy just thinking about them. With the recent announcement that Toy Story will have a world in Kingdom Hearts 3, I already have my fingers crossed that Tim Allen and Tom Hanks will be providing the American voice work for Woody and Buzz. My childhood would be complete if they did.

The next piece of my cocktail of love is the game’s visual style. Over the course of the series, Sora and company have traveled to Agrabah, Pride Rock, Atlantica, and a host of other Disney worlds. The visual style chosen for the game compliments each of these worlds nicely and looks beautiful alongside the transformations that Sora, Donald, and Goofy go through as they hop from world to world. Disney games have a history of finding visual styles for their games that complement their movies to the highest degree, dating all the way back to Aladdin for the Sega Genesis, so it’s not surprising that each world is shown the appropriate love and respect when it comes to visuals.

The final thing that’s drawn me in over the years is the music. While I’ve always had my ears open to the music in games and movies, the soundtrack to Kingdom Hearts was the first I wanted to listen to outside of the game. Over the years, I’ve listened to the soundtracks to all of the series’ games time and time again. The original music that was composed for the game is fantastic in its own right, but the re-imagining of classic Disney tunes is what really stands out to me. If the game’s visuals are a love letter to the films of Disney past, then the music is also a love letter to the scores of Disney past.

There’s so much about the Kingdom Heart series to love that it’s hard to narrow it down to just one or two things. What I’ve said here are only key points that have stuck with me over the years. Kingdom Hearts has been a friend to me ever since my childhood. It’s been a game series that, in addition to telling a great story, takes the time to show the power of friendship, the importance of standing up for what you believe in, and, most importantly, that eventually the light can overcome the darkness.

If you’re a fan of the Kingdom Hearts series, let us know in the comments below how you discovered the series and why you love it!

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