Kingdom Hearts coming to handheld

I Heart Kingdoms

Kingdom Hearts coming to handheld

THE KINGDOM Hearts series is coming to DS and PSP with two separate stories. The DS version, Kingdom Hearts Re:coded, continues the story from Kingdom Hearts 2 while the PSP release Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep will be a prequel following three youths Terra, Ventus and Aqua. Youths. Bloody youths. Probably with awful haircuts.

Disney characters and locations will return in the prequel. This time they seem to be focusing on the more girly Disney locales – Sleeping Beauty’s Enchanted Dominion and Cinderella’s Castle of Dreams.

It also sports four-person multiplayer with Versus Mode, Arena Mode, Command Board and Rumble Racing and features the voice talent of James Woods, Leonard Nimoy and Mark Hamill. Our sources say that Nimoy and Hamill got into a fight during recording over which was a better sci-fi franchise, Wars or Trek.

That’s a lie. Our sources didn’t say that at all. They got along fine.

The DS game on the other hand will follow King Mickey and friends as they delve into the digitized version of Jiminy Cricket’s journal to meet a second Sora and “embark on a grand adventure.”

Kingdom Hearts Coded was released in Japan in 2009 for mobile phones and apparently was a pretty big thing. So clearly Square Enix is trying to reach a bigger market with the DS revamp. Fair play.

Birth by Sleep is scheduled for September 7. Re: coded is TBA.

Brendan Caldwell