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It likely was very heavily constrained, party members join from each world but they never get to leave. RagnarokAngel: We’ll probably never know the exact details of the editorializing, I had heard something about being really down on “Crossing over” worlds, even though that does happen a few times. Working against the players is a coalition of Disney villains from those same films, led by Maleficient from Sleeping Beauty. This is easily the coolest part of the game. The net result of this work – which was reportedly heavily editorially constrained by Disney – is an action RPG that has the player travel to nine different worlds inspired heavily by Disney movies (plus another 3-4 originals), where the players meet various Disney characters and loosely help them through the plot of their films, albeit modified by the intervention of the game’s Heartless enemies. The game itself was a collaboration between RPG developer Squaresoft (now Square Enix) and Disney, creating a shared world that used both characters from the most popular Disney animated movies and Squaresoft’s hit Final Fantasy series. If you’re not familiar with the concept of Kingdom Hearts, that last paragraph will sound like the ravings of a crazy person. Then an army of shadows called the Heartless attack the island and Sora escapes to an interdimensional town of misfits with the help of Donald Duck, Goofy, and a magic weapon called the keyblade.

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The game is an 3d action platforming RPG where players take the role of Sora, a pre-teen protagonist who spends his days on an island near his hometown (this is really poorly explained in the game) with his friends, Riku and Kairi, plus child versions of the cast of Final Fantasy X. The Chirurgeon: Kingdom Hearts released on the PlayStation 2 in March of 2002. (That one’s still a banger 20 years later, though I also think “Sanctuary,” the opening song to KH2 is pretty great as well).

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The Chirurgeon: So oddly two things hooked me about Kingdom Hearts when I first saw the game’s TV commercial: The Squaresoft name and Utada Hikaru’s “Simple and Clean,” the game’s main theme.

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I was, of course far too old for kids stuff like Disney but like most teenagers at the time who played I was willing to stomach the Disney parts to see Cloud and Squall in full 3D, voice acted glory. RagnarokAngel: I’m a few years younger than Rob (Rob: How dare you) so the original Kingdom Hearts hit when I was 14 which was about the right age to be obsessed with Final Fantasy for a then-dorky, weeaboo Alice. And at that point I was more of a Final Fantasy fan, having played every one of the English-translated games to release up to that point and loving all of them. So I was well-versed in Disney stuff by the time Kingdom Hearts came out when I was in college. Also, I was a child in America in the 80s and 90s so I lived through the Disney Renaissance in theaters. I am however a big animation guy – the history and mechanics have always been fascinating to me artistically – and Disney has always been a part of that. Sure, have fun however you want, but going to the same amusement park every year seems pretty lame to me. I find adult Disney fans – the type of people who visit Disney World every year without kids – to be mildly embarrassing. The Chirurgeon: Let me start off by saying I’m not a big Disney guy.

Today we’re looking back at Kingdom Hearts, one of the more interesting franchise-spawning titles that year. Welcome back to GOONHAMMER ’02, our week-long look back at 2002 and the games and media that defined the year.