Kingdom Hearts

Kingdom Hearts (Japanese: キングダム ハーツ, Hepburn: Kingudamu Hātsu) is a series of crossover action role-playing games developed and published by Square Enix (originally by Square). It is a collaboration between Square Enix and Disney Interactive Studios, and is under the direction of Tetsuya Nomura, a longtime Square Enix character designer. Kingdom Hearts is a crossover of various Disney settings based in a universe made specifically for the series. The series centers on the main character Sora and his search for his friends and encounters with Disney, Final Fantasy, and The World Ends with You characters on their worlds.

The series consists of seven games across multiple video game consoles, and future titles are planned. Most of the games in the series have been both critically acclaimed and commercially successful, As of October 2013, the Kingdom Hearts series has sold over 25 million copies worldwide. A wide variety of related merchandise has been released along with the games, including soundtracks, figurines, companion books, novels and manga series.

Universe of Kingdom Hearts

The Kingdom Hearts video game series, developed by Square Enix in collaboration with Disney, takes place in the Disney universe with numerous self-contained worlds based on intellectual properties from both companies. Many of these worlds are based on animated Disney movies, though Kingdom Hearts II introduced worlds based on live-action Disney films as well. In addition to the Disney worlds, a number of original worlds appear over the course of the series. The series centers on the main character Sora's search for his friends and his encounters with Disney and Final Fantasy characters on their worlds. The first game, Kingdom Hearts, takes him through each world to lock their keyholes and prevent the Heartless from destroying them. The sequel Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories takes place in Castle Oblivion, where he visits memory-based simulations of many of these worlds that are generated on-the-fly as he travels through them. In Kingdom Hearts II, Sora helps the residents of these worlds again in search of his friend Riku. The Kingdom Hearts games have been both critically acclaimed and commercially successful and the design of the worlds has been praised for its faithfulness to the source material.

Kingdom Hearts (video game)

Kingdom Hearts (Japanese: キングダムハーツ, Hepburn: Kingudamu Hātsu) is an action role-playing game developed and published by Square (now Square Enix) in 2002 for the PlayStation 2 video game console. It's the first game in the Kingdom Hearts series, and is the result of a collaboration between Squaresoft and The Walt Disney Company. The game combines characters and settings from Disney animated features with those from Square's Final Fantasy series. The story follows a young boy, Sora, as he is thrown into an epic battle against the forces of darkness. He is joined by Donald Duck, Goofy, and other classic Disney characters who help him on his quest.

The game was a departure from Square's standard role-playing games, introducing a substantial action-adventure element to the gameplay. Kingdom Hearts has an all-star voice cast and includes many of the Disney characters' official voice actors. It was longtime Square character designer Tetsuya Nomura's first time in a directorial position.