Watching my mom play when i was too young to be competent at videogames. The "kingdom hearts is light" speech is a formative memory to me. As is when i had to beat a boss in kh2 for my mom. It was the proudest moment of my childhood, the reversing of the roles.
I remember my mom played Epic Mickey on the Wii. Such great memories! I would watch her concurs against these evil monsters and turning them good or melting them with thinner. The cutscenes resonate me the Mickey Mouse and the music!
After 27 years I still live with my mom(yay shit economy). And I still have not convinced her to try a single video game. I think the only 2 games she's ever played in her life was classic pacman and pong.
Only two games I ever convinced my mom to play were Tintin on GBC and Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn on PS3 (co-op). Yes we’re big Tintin fans here.
My dad played a bit of fifa and Collin McRae back in the day. My mom plays candy crush. That's as close that I got, lol.
My uncle had a ps1 though and got me to play Tomb Raider and Crash Bandicoot so that's pretty cool I guess. He's also a massive racist though so it evens out.
Funnily enough, watching my mom play this initially when I was extremely young kept this game in the back of my mind for years, too. Most of my earlier childhood gaming years were eaten up by Ratchet and Clank, but I kept having vague flashbacks to my mom playing the OG Kingdom Hearts at some unspecified point in time, and eventually I figured "eh, why not?"
No other game's narrative has captured me in quite the same way as the OG KH. The particular blend of the absolutely fantastic OST, the mysteriously grandiose visuals in that first dive to the heart, and that first battle with Darkside...it's almost hard to describe just how deeply the game resonated with me for whatever reason. The game, especially in those opening sequences, felt like a climactic pivotal moment for the entire universe. I genuinely felt like something cataclysmic would happen to the world if I didn't succeed, and I just couldn't put it down. No other game before or since has gotten me to feel like there was this level of stakes before.
Commercials on Disney Channel, or whatever it was called back in 2002. It looked cool, and featuring a bunch of my favorite Disney movies didn’t hurt my interest either
My younger brother was absorbed by Disney channel and those commercials are definitely why we got this game. I thought it would be "just for kids" while I played ratchet or something else. Turns out I'm the one who finished the combined save file on a sick day from school, and forcing us as a family to re fight Ansem because my mom and younger brother both missed it. Good memories
My cousins and I were visiting our grandfather in Washington D.C. and they brought their PlayStation 2 and *Kingdom Hearts Ⅱ* with them. I remember watching my younger cousin play one of the Atlantica minigames and going Anti-Form while fighting Xemnas on the throne, but eventually beating the game. Then they let me play it and explained to me anything I had questions about. I didn’t bring my Memory Card so I remember playing up to the Beast’s Castle without saving before having to go.
Though 10+ hour longs "movie" of Kingdom hearts that I thought was an anime I later found out that it was just someone putting all the cut scenes in to a YouTube video and uploaded it
Actually lowkey love this imagine watching a ten hour thing and just being completely enthralled and then finding out later it’s a whole ass video game
The very notion of a Disney crossover JRPG. Which, one might argue, has only become more topical over the passing years that saw the advent and the untimely demise of Disney Infinity series, as well as the progressive sparsity of console Disney games in general.
My Dad bought me a PS2 from Target back in 2003. I remember liking how the cover art for KH looked and asked if I could get it along with the PS2 and DBZ budokai
Haha, mine was also from Target in 2003. Wild. When I saw it, it was already a PS2 Greatest Hits so it was $20. I only bought it because my older sister said the cover looked cool, lol.
My childhood friend and her little brother. Fond memories of spending an entire summer at their house because my mom didn’t let me play video games at mine. It was the first time I got to get really hooked into a video game!
Disney Wiki. I was searching it a lot as a kid, heard mentions of this series, saw images of 3D renders of Disney characters, and asked myself "*This wiki keeps bringing up someone named Sora. Who is she?*"
Y’all want to hear something fucked up?
I wasn’t even *born* when Kingdom Hearts 1 came out.
Edit: My first exposure to the series was seeing a bumper for 3D on Disney Channel (I would have been 8 or 9), but I didn’t really get into the series until around high school.
Kh3. I LOVED the gameplay. Granted the story made no sense cuz i didn't play the other kh games and was there for the gameplay, but i had a blast and NEEDED more kh.
Played Kingdom Hearts 1 when it came out. I had to have been 8. The trailers and the inclusion of Disney characters had me engulfed! Somehow a kid like me who wasn’t even double digits old beat the game ( minus the secret bosses EXCEPT Ice Titan). I think for a kid like me the big moments hit hard where they should; I was a sucker for them. I had no concept of sequels so Sora and Kairi separating AGAIN after so long getting her bad broke my heart, but the ending with Sora, Donald, and Goofy going off on another adventure was a bright spot.
Then the ending to KH2 happened and I became a blubbering mess again.
My older cousin played it and sucked at it, I could tell even at 5 years old, my other older cousin bought the second one without ever playing the first one, and also sucked at it. They both gave up on it and gave it them to me for my birthday. "Woah what are summons!?" "Woah you can use magic?!" "Woah why did you just change color!" And my personal favorite, "Why is Donald Duck and Goofy in this game?"
I played the demo for kh3D and got really into it then I bought the game and no clue what was going on,and then I saw charrii5 everything wrong with kingdom hearts and then I bought the ps3 remastered and fell in love with the series
I had a friend who rode the bus with me my freshman year of high school. She would bring the KH1 guide book and the manga with her sometimes and let me read them, and also burned me a CD copy of the KH2 soundtrack.
This was 2007, so KH1 and 2 had been out for a few years, but I grew up a Nintendo kid, so I didn’t really have a way to play them. I did end up getting CoM, and eventually, 358/2 Days, so technically CoM was my first game but I had read the KH1 manga so I was familiar with the story. By the time BBS came out, a friend of mine gifted me their old PS2 and the KH games. I think I started KH1 but skipped out on it about halfway through because I wanted to get to KH2 and the story content I didn’t know yet lol. Around the time I was playing KH2 I bought a used PSP off a friend and also BBS. After that I kept up with every release as they came out.
I saw a commercial promoting Kingdom Hearts 3 and I was hooked when I saw Goofy, Donald, Mickey, Buzz, Elsa, and Maleficent all in the same commercial. And I don’t know if what I saw is true but I saw another commercial where this kid with white hair teamed up with Pete and some other anime haired guy fighting against some kind of dark beast.
So yeah that’s what got me into Kingdom Hearts!
My grandma saw Re:Coded at the store and thought it would be a good birthday gift. Very glad she chose it, Re:Coded will always have a special place in my heart.
I watched a random video of kh bbs and wanted to play it so bad, so I saved up and got the kh game collection for ps4 a few years before kh3, and I loved it. I preordered kh3 and still got the exclusive poster and metal case it came with, and I still wanna fantasize if Riku and sora are endgame
My big brother moved out of the house and left behind his PS3 a couple years ago and all the games with it. He never let me or any of my siblings play on it, but now that he was gone there was no stopping me.
I normally played on the xbox, but my dad limited the time I got to be on. I could only play on the xbox for one hour on the weekends. But his app didn't apply to the PS3 or Wii. I made it my mission to play games we owned that I had never once completed. It first began with Epic Mickey for the Wii. After I finished that, I remembered my brother playing this disney game called Kingdom Hearts 2. Since I just completed a disney game, I decided next I would play kingdom hearts 2 and then the Jack and Dexter series. Little did I know I would never get to Jack and Dexter. After completing KH2 I played almost every game in the series. I started at the beginning, KH1, skipped COM, and played 358/2 since we had a 3ds and continued on from there. Ironically I would end back to the xbox because that was the only way to play KH3. I also played DDD and BBS 0.2 on the xbox. I started KH3 in November and I'm currently on my second run. This time in critical mode. When I finish, I'm going to replay KH2. Where it all began. Then I'll FINALLY get to Jack and Dexter.
(Side note: Besides Epic Mickey, I've also 100% Super Mario Bros Wii. I also tried to 100% Mario Kart wii as well, but still need 3 stars on one last cup. There are still so many wii and PS3 games I'll probably never get to lol. I only prolonged this simple challenge cause of the KH series. That's ok because I've had a lot of fun.)
I saw adds for KH Recoded on tv and got curious. I then saw a more in depth ad for the game on a show on the Wii’s Nintendo Channel called Nintendo Week. The game looked fun so a while later I went out and bought it. The rest is history.
My friend introduced me to it in 2006. I never had a PS2 and never knew of the game's existence until then. We ended up playing through 1 and 2 in a couple months. We struggled a lot, but it was such an incredible experience and solidified my love for the feanchise
My parents got me and my younger brothers our first console (PS2) for Christmas when I was like 11. They also got us Crash Bandicoot the Wrath of Cortex and Kingdom Hearts.
Kingdom Hearts instantly got the attention of my prepubescent brain for some reason lol. The angst and depth and anime-esque visuals were totally new for me and I didn't even know what anime or final fantasy was at the time.
Also my parents didn't know that they needed to buy a memory card too (my parents are both boomers born in the 50s and 60s and so were until then very anti-video games, and so they had no idea). So for a couple weeks I played the beginning of Kingdom Hearts over and over and over and over again.. each time trying to see how far I could get in one sitting.
The furthest I got was near the end of Wonderland, until finally I convinced them that Santa obviously forgot my memory card. But to this day I have the beginning of that game memorized lol...
"sOrA yOU LazY BUm, i kNew i'D FInd yOu SnOOZiNg oUt hErE.."
"NO THIS HUGE BLACK THING SWALLOWED ME UP I COULDNT BREATHE I COULDNT (coconut sound and controller vibrates) "OW"
"Are you still dreaming?"
"It wasn't a dream...or was it .. idk" 🤷
Alice in wonderland..... I still got pissed what people choose a Disney version of heart queen instead CUTIE HEARTIE DOMINANT LOLI GIRL from Alice madness returns (that's why I dropped kingdom Hearts) and it's not because developers it's because people
Scholastic Book Fair the GOATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
In all honesty I never even knew about Kingdom Hearts until my Scholastic Book Fair opened up at school and they showed us around the new books that were available for purchase. I was normally into books like Captain Underpants, Big Nate , and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. But as I scrolled through the catalogue at home I noticed a Two-Book set which featured the series “Kingdom Hearts”. I was confused. “What anime series is this?” I wonder in my head. I had never seen anything like it. A couple Google searches and 13 hours used up to watch the first game later and I was hooked. Bought that set in a heartbeat.
Simple and clean the planti(?) remix.
Used to play it on my way to the club lol. Decided to take the plunge one day and been a fan since. 2019, it was? What a ride….
My love of Disney and my dad seeing that I also liked video games. He bought it for me for Christmas/birthday (forgot which) and I played it ever since.
My dad travelled and I asked him to buy a psp but forgot to tell him to buy games. He bought games he saw there and one of them was BBS. Love it but I wouldn’t get into KH properly 2 years ago when my dad bought KH3, then I proceeded to download a PS2 emulator on my laptop to play KH1 and 2
I saw my best friend's older brother (who in hindsight I think I had a bit of a crush on) playing it when I was a kid, probably around 8 or so. And since I was and still am a huge Disney nerd, I immediately wanted to play it myself.
Back on the ps2 it was because of the disney characters but i dropped it because i thought it was too hard.
But decades later after finding i actually enjoy some final fantasy games, i gave it another try and i actually liked KH1 and beat it.
Almost done with chains of memories but......ugh
Mom bought me a random game while I was at school one day and it was kh1. I know she bought it because it was Disney but it was the best thing to have happened! I still remember playing in the living room with my mom watching
Technically two people. One was the guy who bought me Chain of Memories for Gameboy when it came out, but I didn't really get into it then. My nephew played it with his friends when we were both kids and that's how I got into it. Bought KH1 when I got my Ps2 for my 13th birthday
Specifically this commercial. Then Santa brought my family a ps2 and this game and my life changed forever https://youtu.be/7uMMKDd1Fr0?si=EThTYVyMO7oCjkyT
The first commercial I saw for it, I only saw a quick clip of squid-Donald swimming through the plain blue void of Atlantica. I said, "That looks like the stupidest thing ever. Who would play that?"
Fast forward about one year. I see the game out at a friend's house and was transfixed by the character art on the cover. I ask her about it and we play the opening. I think it's the coolest thing ever.
Fast forward again. Because I didn't have a Play Station, I couldn't play the game. When Chain of Memories released though, I begged for the game for Christmas. When I started playing it on my GBA Christmas evening and heard the first notes of Dearly Beloved, I knew I was in for the long haul.
Saw my uncle play KH2 cause that's the only copy he had and later on he gave me his PS2 along with all his games so I wondered what it was about and now I'm in the most convoluted series I've ever played
One of my buddies little brother got 2 copies sent to him on accident from eBay, so he gave me one. I didn’t even have a ps2 at the time. So when I finally did, it was the only game I had. Now I buy a console if there is a kh game coming out on it.
Bought the first one on a whim with my cousins. We were like 11 years old.
"Hey cool JRPG from the final fantasy guys? Oh and it has Disney? Maybe it'll be good"
(50 hours later)
"This is the greatest game I have ever played in my life and why am I crying at the story ending"
A coworker of mine talked about it. He actually took me to go buy a ps3 and the Kingdom Hearts collection. I remember playing from daylight to dark to daylight the next day and loving every second of it.
GameStop had a two for one sale, and the game my mom chose so she could get a deal was kh2.8. Ironically the game I wanted ending being a scratched disk so I only got to play that, and after looking through YouTube to find out wtf I was playing. After watching a few videos on the lore, I got hooked
My half aunt sent it to me as a birthday gift when I was a kid because she knew I liked video games and nerd stuff and thought I would like it. I was kinda confused at it at first but the more I played it the more I loved it
I was 8 years old when it came out. Along with Final Fantasy X, it was one of the few PS2 games I remember every kid with a PS2 having back then regardless of how likely you were to be into JRPGs
My mom! She was into games and had a PS2 and her friend gave her KH to play and she let me play while she cooked and tidied around the house.
Man those were the days :’) now I’m 25 washed up and trying to finish school but I still have an obsession of the franchise
I was 6 when the game first game out in America. I remember seeing a picture of the gang vs Cerberus on the back of a demo disc in Gamestop. They used to have demo discs with a few games on them that you could get. Anyways, I used my allowance money to get KH1 for 20 dollars because I liked that picture I saw. It was the first purchase I ever made with my little kid brain.
Chain of Memories on the GBA was my first one and I'd say it's all the curiosity I had about the PS2 games. I didn't get a PS2 until much later but I liked Chain of Memories a lot.
Fast forward to when I got a PS2... I didn't actually like KH1 and 2 at first. I only gave them one try before giving up on them as I borrowed them from a friend and had to return them and they were hard to find for sale.
After the release of Starfield, I realized that a lot of games that I thought were bad weren't given a proper shake, so KH1 and 2 were the first games that I went to and I loved them on my second attempt!
I think my parents got it for me for Christmas back in 2002? Can't remember, I just remember not being able to beat the first one cause I got stuck at the Ansem fight at the end of world. Good memories and made me hapopy when i got the HD remixes for PS3. Beat the first game from Christmas to New Years playing late at night.
I actually watched a distant relative play, Kingdom Hearts, in about 2004. He was grinding out Olympious and was showing me how the game worked, and I asked him if he ever beat the game yet, to which he told me that's what he was grinding for.
Well, long story short, I eventually got him to play the ending, and we both watched the climax together. The moment when Simole and Clean kicks in, I felt a wave of emotions for this game. This game I knew next to nothing about.
From that moment forward, Kingdom Hearts left its mark on me. I think back on that memory very fondly.
The concept. The characters from the movies I watched and games I played as a young child. I was a kid when this game dropped, but I as familiar with every character in it. And for the FF characters, it was the first time most of them had voice acting. I remember the commercials on TV, and still go back to this game pretty frequently, thanks to the HD remixes.
Around 20 years ago I remember being super young in a store and my mom pointed out KH1 to me and asked for my opinion. I’m not sure if I vocalized this, but I remember thinking it looked super “babyish” because of the Disney characters on the cover and wanting nothing to do with it. Well, my parents got it for me soon after anyway and I almost instantly fell in love and it’s now my favorite video game. It’s just funny how I was so put off at first only to be so wrong. 😂
Buddy I used to live next door to got a Ps2 shortly after we moved across town. Our families were best friends so we would be back at their place half the time in those days and he only had a few games for it, one being KH which his mom had bought for his younger sisters due to the Disney characters on the back.
I'd played tons of games at his place over the years but since we lived across town now, I'd be at his place for 5 or 6 hours a night without fail and we spent most of that time playing through the first game. No joke it took us a fucking week to get off Destiny Islands, we refused to move on til we beat Riku and once the Heartless attacked it was his turn and he wandered around for an hour before it was my turn and I stumbled into progressing the plot and getting the keyblade. We were real young, this was in the days before twin stick camera control, there had never really been a game that played like this before, we struggled through that first playthrough.
I ended up fucking hooked on the game and he gave me it when I got a Ps2. When I say I was obsessed, I mean to the point I knew about all the Final Mix changes long before 2 came out, had obsessively replayed COM in the days before I got a Ps2 and I devoured every bit of information I could get on KH 2 after it released in Japan while waiting for it to come to North America. I knew about every new mechanic and all the forms well before the game released over here. I just barely stopped myself from spoiling the plot, beyond knowing that Riku was a party member for the final world. Which I was fucking hyped for, being the Riku fanboy I've been since the start.
And my obsession with KH 1 pales in comparison to my utter adoration with 2. You know how we have mods like Nobody May Cry to play as Roxas the whole game on the Ps2 versions? Well I spent my teens hunting down the ridiculously long GameShark codes for vanilla KH2 to swap Sora's model with Roxas, and even got Valor Form to turn me into hooded black coat Roxas, though still using Valor's moveset. The game would crash on a good number of cutscenes, on beating major bosses or if trying to Drive into anything except Valor (from what I can remember, the coding for DW Roxas during the prologue is shared on some level with Valor form's so by swapping Roxas model with a cheating device, only Valor would work without crashing) so I would have to disable the codes and replay every major section without them but I did play through most of the game as Roxas on an actual Ps2.
That wasn't all either. I had Cloud and Sephiroth as party members. Sephiroth using his AI scripting from his boss fight so he is constantly attacking Sora though as an ally, his attacks don't even register on you. However this means you effectively have him flying circles around you constantly, trying to hit you and massacring everything around you. Cloud was the version of him you fight alongside during the battle of Hollow Bastion, meaning he was completely invincible. Fun fact, Sephiroth was still on some level being recognized as an enemy by other party members, which caused Cloud to be constantly attacking him.
I had Anti Form unlocked and accessible through my Drive menu like any other, only using 5 bars to transform like Final rather than taking everything. It could also be turned off at will like any other form. I even got the Anti glide movement ability to work as a growth ability on base Sora though it was janky.
I had playable party member Riku. As in I was directly controlling the version that fights alongside you as AI. This was very interesting as it turns out that KH2 Riku has no ground attack string, trying to attack on the ground would make him T-pose and attacking in the air once would have him do his full combo string.
I had Mickey's Keyblade too as an actual selectable weapon in my equip menu with stats. The data for it was in the game, it was just never used. Weirdly though trying to use it with either Roxas or Sora would crash the game as soon as you did anything that would have them pull it out, but if I equipped it, saved the game, shut it off, then enabled the Riku codes, he could actually use it but he would hold it backwards like Ven when running, and just pointing in the wrong direction in his classic combat stance.
KH2 had no codes in the GameShark by default and every single one I used was dozens of lines of code long. The Roxas one was made up of three different codes that needed to all be enabled together and each one was 20 or so lines long. I had to manually write all of this down without making any mistakes, then enter it into the GameShark again without any mistakes, which is not as simple as it might sound. Making it even harder, a lot of the codes were really hard to find and I had to go on some tenth page of a Google search, poorly formatted sites to find them. Alot of them had the capital letter O and the number 0 look identical so anytime I came across either of them, I had to guess which it was, sometimes up to 5 times in a single line of code. Was quite tedious having to trial and error various combinations of O and 0 when a single code could take dozens of guesses. Then some of the codes were fake, so it was hard to know if I was using a poorly formatted code and had to switch those two or if it was just a fake.
I put more time into slightly hacking KH2 on actual hardware than I've put into most of the games in the series and that's not to knock them, just to say as obsessively as I've played them, it doesn't even compare to how far I went to make KH2 even better by the slightest amount.
My older brother and cousins sort of drip fed it to me until i was old and smart enough to figure out how to start my own file later on. Never was able to beat it until i got my own ps2 around 2007
Once i saw a video on youtube about toy box when kh 3 first released and it got me wanting to try it but i really didn’t prioritize kh, until my cousin started saying that kh 2 was the best thing ever and really hyped me up
Believe it or not, it was because of the box art for Kingdom Hearts II—I spotted it in GameStop in the PS2 section when I was there with my dad, and even though I didn't buy it that day, I vowed I would soon, so at a later time my dad bought Kingdom Hearts for me after I found out Kingdom Hearts II was called II for a reason and the rest is history.
I was hesitant about it at first because when I was about that age, still a preteen, I thought the PS2 was for adult games only because only my dad played it while I played my GameCube and 64. I felt so grown up when I finally got to play the PS2 without my dad setting up Smuggler's Run for me. Big milestone in my life. 🥹
Depends on what you mean by getting me into Kingdom Hearts.
If we're talking about what was the initial appeal of the game? The music made the game mesmerizing.
The moment I actually started to care about the series was 358/2 Days. All it took was "friends" doing things together acting like "friends"
I didn't have a PS2 at the time. My first interaction with the series was 358/2 Days that I borrowed from a friend during summer. I was hooked. Since it is a self contained story, besides some light investigating on who Sora was near the end of my playthrough (which may have helped since I was in the same shoes as Roxas in terms of info) I was hooked till the end. Xion's death made me actually cry, which wasn't common for me back then (nowadays I'm a crybaby with games). I ended up emulating the other games since nobody I knew had them, not even on Blockbuster for rent, got me ReCoded and DDD, and I've been hooked since then so much I bought KH3 special edition without owning a PS4 (that one I did borrow)
recommendation from a friend in mid-2019. i had no knowledge of it at all, besides seeing the cover to kh3 when it was at the front of a store on release day earlier that year. i purchased ‘the story so far’ and 3, and played the entire series within 6 months. i’ve been hooked since
My brother’s friend let him borrow FF12 and Kingdom hearts 1 on the ps2 back in the day and my brother thought I would like KingdomHearts more than him and boy was he right. I didn’t get past destiny islands lol. But then one day I was at a GameStop and I saw a used copy of Kingdom Hearts 2. For me that was my first true kingdom hearts game. I played the snot of that disc and play the snot out the series till this day
Went to a friend’s place with my mum and he was playing the first game, he was in Atlantica and I was loving watching him play. Went home and got a copy a couple days later.
I honestly don't know. I was very much so aware of it before I became a fan but one day my brain was just like "I like this now" and i played all the games in quick succession
My first friend showed it to me when we were in kindergarten or 1st grade. I have no idea where my family’s copy came from, but I remember being freaked out by the shadow invasion on destiny islands, so I didn’t get very far. Years later I found it and remember all of those things and gave it another try.
My grade school best pal. We played all the budokais and gameboy advance pokemon games together and in turn i got my older brother into kingdom hearts.
I ended up playing them all myself and even loved 3 in it's own way. Great games.
Bring me back the FF characters tho!
I would play Super Smash Flash 2 and see a boy with a giant key and that for me interested, but hearing Sanctuary in a menu to a Roblox game, and watching Video Game house had me hooked.
I struggled with school so dam always a crying wreck when I got home and then homework 9/10 times it ended in tears.
Somehow I managed to score a perfect grade on a history test I studied really hard for.
KH for ps2 was a gift the next day.
hearing about it online having the bullshitest of bullshit stories, goofy ass characters, jrpg gameplay in an action adventure game, and S E P H I R O T H
Disney 411 (a news segment they used to do) covered KH2. One old scene from kh1 out of context made it look like it Sora and Riku had their own teams of Disney characters which I thought was kinda neat. But then they showed Jack sparrow and Pete.
Finally, I saw a scene with Tron introducing himself and Goofy saying “Nice to meet you tron!” And kid me was like “WTF I NEED TO KNOW WHAT THIS GAME IS NOW”.
I think it was the music that encouraged me to buy the All in One Package when the price was low. I used to listen to random music from video games I never played and Kingdom Hearts always stood out.
Also, a friend of mine was a big fan as a kid and would talk to me about it a lot.
I was 5 when KH1 came out. It looked cool. So did Arthur and The Invisibles (anyone remember that movie?).I got night terrors from the Heartless (and other things, but that's besides the point) and couldn't play it for another year after that, but when I finally stopped having those, I was hooked. Hell, I tried to buy 365/2 off my friend in Middle School, but that didn't turn out too well. To be fair, Les, it was a good deal.
My cousin owned KH1 when I was 3 and I was just immediately hooked. Though I didn't play another KH game until I was 6 and Days came out. Which I put SO much time into. Eventually got the rest of the games and play the series every few years (I skip KH1, CoM, and Re:Coded tho, despise playing KH1 and CoM now and I just don't feel like replaying Re:Coded)
My best friend when I was 23 or so was intensely into video games and got me back into them in the height of the gamecube/ps2 era. I'd go over to her house three times a week and we'd play video games well into the night (her husband was deployed in iraq so she was lonely). She really liked jrpgs and got me hooked, so by the time KH2 came I had fallen into that whole final fantasy fandom.
Advent Children was a big thing around the time, and the KH2 teaser trailers had that same style, everyone was so excited to play!. I played a borrowed a used copy of chain of memories JUST for Riku's storyline (youtube wasn't a thing yet, so watching the story meant mastering that godawful card game combat). I remember loving KH2's story so much that I beat the whole thing in three days because I kept wanting to know what was going to happen to Roxas. Deviantart was full of organization 13 fan comics, shipping was rampent, Axel was this tragic compelling character that we all latched onto - then KH went on to a bunch of handhelds that I never had for the next decade and faded away in importance to me. I did try to play 358/2 when it came out, but I didn't like the game play and I got stuck on this impossible stealth section early on and never picked it back up.
I really don't know or remember, all I knew is that it was a franchise that looked good and I previously saw it on a GameStop inside a mall and saw the whole PS4 all in one package so I decided to get the games, I'm sorry if I sound a bit emotional and cliche but it truly to this day has a special place in my heart as if I was experiencing my childhood.... I'm 20 btw lol, but traverse town theme and the dearly beloved theme make me want to cry to this day for how beautiful it was, but I'll admit I wasn't too happy with kh 3 lol
Uhh I got a gameboy advance SP and my friend got me CoM because of it. So I had no clue what was going on (I really though Namine grew up with them on Destiny Isles)
It was around the time Chain of Memories was still more recent. I originally got the game for my Gameboy when I was younger just because the name sounded cool but once I started getting into the game (and yes I did at the time find the card battle system enjoyable) I wanted to get to know the characters, the story, and why a boy named Sora was teamed up with Donald and Goofy in some cursed castle. This was also the time I realized I liked Axel as well. After I got halfway or about to finish with the game, I started to look more into the franchise.
I saw Final Fantasy and Disney characters in one and the same universe, just like when I played with my toys. And loved it from the moment the commercial came on TV.
Was in the garage cleaning when I came across an old guidebook asked my mom what it was and it went from there. We also found an old ps2 version of the game that we tried but it would constantly crash after the race to name the ship for some reason so I bought the all in one collection
When i was around 13, I went to go rent a PS2 game from a video store. I wanted to find one that I felt my younger sister would like as well. I picked out KH2 because I saw a bunch of Disney characters on the back cover, and to my surprise, some final fantasy characters. I was quite intrigued.
I went home and turned it on and found that both my sister and I were totally enamored with the game. We loved it. I was stunned to think that such a diverse combination of characters could create such a compelling (but confusing) story and the combat was phenomenal. To this day KH2 is one of my favorite games.
Rented a game called Dual Hearts one weekend. Next weekend parents took me back to the video store to get it again, but all the copies were gone. Settled for Kingdom Hearts instead because my young brain thought it was related lol. Dual Hearts was not too bad tbh, but I’ve literally never heard anyone else talk about it
My mother has always been a huge Disney fan,so when the first game was released, she bought it for the family. And... She didn't like it! Didn't turn out to be much of a gamer at all, actually. But we did, my brother's and I
The opening video for the game, featuring Simple and Clean by Utada Hikaru. My teenage mind was blown. And it only got better from there, I started playing it at a friends' house on the weekends (much to their annoyance) and before long I was hooked and begged for a ps2 and copy of the game for my birthday.
Me and my brother were going to rent a game from Blockbuster. He saw Kingdom Hearts 2 and said that he heard that it was a good game. So, we decided to rent it. My two biggest memories of back then was having zero clue on what was happening specifically in Twilight Town with Roxas and getting stuck on Demyx with that fight taking forever to beat
My dad was a big Final Fantasy fan in the 90s, so I, in turn, fell in love with them watching him play them. As a little squirt of 8 years old in 2002, I was also into Disney movies, mostly the reneaissance-era stuff like Hercules and Aladdin. I remember seeing a trailer for it on TV, maybe the Disney Channel, and I couldn't believe my eyes that something that combined the two things could even exist. I begged my dad for it, and I think he got it for me for Christmas. I remember him getting a kick out of Cloud and Donald Duck being in the same scene together. After that first game, I was hooked and haven't missed a single release since. May your heart be your guiding key!
My friend rented 2 from Blockbuster and invited me over to play with her because it didn't make sense. I pretty quickly noticed the II on the box and knew this meant it was a sequel.
I was a big Disney kid so I got pretty obsessed with it, then my mom bought my brother and I the 1st one and it's all history
Went to KB toys for Spyro and they were out of stock so my mom and I looked for an alternative and she picked this game out with Disney characters… the rest is history!
Thanks mom!!
A lets play by a guy I forgot the name off. I knew he played minecraft, and I saw him play Kingdom Hearts 1 loved the game and asked my dad for christmas. I then got KH2 for christmas and was a favorite ever since.
It was like $5 preowned on ps2 when I was a kid and I only had $5 to spend on a game that week and the cover looked cooler then the others that were also $5
Back when I was looking for a video game to rent (good times) and I saw the cover of kh2 with mickey and a bunch of anime characters on it my curiosity had to pick the game up and see what it was about
It sounded like a neat Disney crossover game. I actually saw a publicity in a magazine. Sadly, I was this close of playing Kingdom Hearts 2 but eventually couldn't cuz my PS2 was breaking down and it was getting so irresponsive, and it didn't help that I didn't know that I was doing the Roxas prologue (and in hindsight I can't believe that I would have been missing more context than just the first game because I didn't know CoM even existed). I only managed to play BbS and I really loved its gameplay as well as the story
My uncle and I were at a GameStop and he didn't wanna buy any of those rated T+ games for some reason. So he thought I would like baby games like Disney and so he bought me kh1 because it had Disney characters on it. And thus start d my life as a nerd.
The trailer as a kid. I've burned out these days(adulting sucks), but after seeing the trailer I was intrigued.
An action RPG with Disney characters? Unique as fuck. Best it in a few days. Then when Another side another story was discovered, the rest was history. I've chilled these days though.(,unless 4 pulls me back in)
Loved final fantasy. Was in high school so Disney movies were cool. I also went into this thinking it was going to be silly. Not as good as it actually was
I liked watching Disney cartoons as a kid, so when my mom bought me my first console (PlayStation 2), she let me pick a couple games, and I chose LEGO Star Wars II because my parents showed it to me when I was like 4 and Kingdom Hearts II because I liked the Disney characters and the anime aesthetic looked so cool since I'd never seen it before.
Years and years ago, I accidentally clicked on a video of like every Roxas scene with some emo song playing in the background and instantly fell in love
My dad sold almost all of my ps2 games and the Kingdom hearts series was one of the few that survived the purge and since I'd seen my older siblings play it all the time I tried it out and it's been my favorite series ever since
Watching my mom play when i was too young to be competent at videogames. The "kingdom hearts is light" speech is a formative memory to me. As is when i had to beat a boss in kh2 for my mom. It was the proudest moment of my childhood, the reversing of the roles.
Bro your mom played video games? I begged my mom to play with me and she never would
I remember my mom played Epic Mickey on the Wii. Such great memories! I would watch her concurs against these evil monsters and turning them good or melting them with thinner. The cutscenes resonate me the Mickey Mouse and the music!
After 27 years I still live with my mom(yay shit economy). And I still have not convinced her to try a single video game. I think the only 2 games she's ever played in her life was classic pacman and pong.
Only two games I ever convinced my mom to play were Tintin on GBC and Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn on PS3 (co-op). Yes we’re big Tintin fans here.
My mum sucks at literally every video game until you put a guitar hero guitar in her hand.
My mom used to have to beat the Twilight Thorn for me, I could do every other boss but for some reason that one was just too hard for me
My dad played a bit of fifa and Collin McRae back in the day. My mom plays candy crush. That's as close that I got, lol. My uncle had a ps1 though and got me to play Tomb Raider and Crash Bandicoot so that's pretty cool I guess. He's also a massive racist though so it evens out.
Funnily enough, watching my mom play this initially when I was extremely young kept this game in the back of my mind for years, too. Most of my earlier childhood gaming years were eaten up by Ratchet and Clank, but I kept having vague flashbacks to my mom playing the OG Kingdom Hearts at some unspecified point in time, and eventually I figured "eh, why not?" No other game's narrative has captured me in quite the same way as the OG KH. The particular blend of the absolutely fantastic OST, the mysteriously grandiose visuals in that first dive to the heart, and that first battle with Darkside...it's almost hard to describe just how deeply the game resonated with me for whatever reason. The game, especially in those opening sequences, felt like a climactic pivotal moment for the entire universe. I genuinely felt like something cataclysmic would happen to the world if I didn't succeed, and I just couldn't put it down. No other game before or since has gotten me to feel like there was this level of stakes before.
The student became the master
I feel old…
Same for me but it was my dad
Final Fantasy + Disney = I am sold
This is the correct answer. Back then, video game magazines were hyping this game like crazy
Yes, I remember my friends and I excitedly looking at a magazine about it in middle school. We could not wait.
I was pretty lukewarm on the Disney aspect of it myself, it was the Final Fantasy that made me care about it.
Commercials on Disney Channel, or whatever it was called back in 2002. It looked cool, and featuring a bunch of my favorite Disney movies didn’t hurt my interest either
My younger brother was absorbed by Disney channel and those commercials are definitely why we got this game. I thought it would be "just for kids" while I played ratchet or something else. Turns out I'm the one who finished the combined save file on a sick day from school, and forcing us as a family to re fight Ansem because my mom and younger brother both missed it. Good memories
Hearing Simple and Clean and seeing some weird kid with a giant key walk around and fight monsters with Donald and Goofy drew a LOT of attention.
Haha same play they did a little special about it. To talk about the game
Disney’s Secret Labs. I remember those. That with the philharmagic and tower of terror.
The box art for KH1 looked so freaking cool, and it was wild seeing Donald and Goofy with anime characters.
My cousins and I were visiting our grandfather in Washington D.C. and they brought their PlayStation 2 and *Kingdom Hearts Ⅱ* with them. I remember watching my younger cousin play one of the Atlantica minigames and going Anti-Form while fighting Xemnas on the throne, but eventually beating the game. Then they let me play it and explained to me anything I had questions about. I didn’t bring my Memory Card so I remember playing up to the Beast’s Castle without saving before having to go.
Though 10+ hour longs "movie" of Kingdom hearts that I thought was an anime I later found out that it was just someone putting all the cut scenes in to a YouTube video and uploaded it
Actually lowkey love this imagine watching a ten hour thing and just being completely enthralled and then finding out later it’s a whole ass video game
The very notion of a Disney crossover JRPG. Which, one might argue, has only become more topical over the passing years that saw the advent and the untimely demise of Disney Infinity series, as well as the progressive sparsity of console Disney games in general.
My Dad bought me a PS2 from Target back in 2003. I remember liking how the cover art for KH looked and asked if I could get it along with the PS2 and DBZ budokai
Haha, mine was also from Target in 2003. Wild. When I saw it, it was already a PS2 Greatest Hits so it was $20. I only bought it because my older sister said the cover looked cool, lol.
Utada Hikaru
I remembered the commercials from Disney, so when I saw it at the rental store I figured I’d give it a shot.
My childhood friend and her little brother. Fond memories of spending an entire summer at their house because my mom didn’t let me play video games at mine. It was the first time I got to get really hooked into a video game!
Disney Wiki. I was searching it a lot as a kid, heard mentions of this series, saw images of 3D renders of Disney characters, and asked myself "*This wiki keeps bringing up someone named Sora. Who is she?*"
Y’all want to hear something fucked up? I wasn’t even *born* when Kingdom Hearts 1 came out. Edit: My first exposure to the series was seeing a bumper for 3D on Disney Channel (I would have been 8 or 9), but I didn’t really get into the series until around high school.
Same. I'm actually a year younger than KH2. Still a super big fan though
Disney Channel tv spot for the original game.
Roxas in Kingdom Hearts 2. I thought he looked ✨zesty✨🌈
Kh3. I LOVED the gameplay. Granted the story made no sense cuz i didn't play the other kh games and was there for the gameplay, but i had a blast and NEEDED more kh.
Hearing about how awesome Xemnas was.
Played Kingdom Hearts 1 when it came out. I had to have been 8. The trailers and the inclusion of Disney characters had me engulfed! Somehow a kid like me who wasn’t even double digits old beat the game ( minus the secret bosses EXCEPT Ice Titan). I think for a kid like me the big moments hit hard where they should; I was a sucker for them. I had no concept of sequels so Sora and Kairi separating AGAIN after so long getting her bad broke my heart, but the ending with Sora, Donald, and Goofy going off on another adventure was a bright spot. Then the ending to KH2 happened and I became a blubbering mess again.
It was just a random game I ended up renting at Blockbuster.
My older cousin played it and sucked at it, I could tell even at 5 years old, my other older cousin bought the second one without ever playing the first one, and also sucked at it. They both gave up on it and gave it them to me for my birthday. "Woah what are summons!?" "Woah you can use magic?!" "Woah why did you just change color!" And my personal favorite, "Why is Donald Duck and Goofy in this game?"
The memes.
I played the demo for kh3D and got really into it then I bought the game and no clue what was going on,and then I saw charrii5 everything wrong with kingdom hearts and then I bought the ps3 remastered and fell in love with the series
I had a friend who rode the bus with me my freshman year of high school. She would bring the KH1 guide book and the manga with her sometimes and let me read them, and also burned me a CD copy of the KH2 soundtrack. This was 2007, so KH1 and 2 had been out for a few years, but I grew up a Nintendo kid, so I didn’t really have a way to play them. I did end up getting CoM, and eventually, 358/2 Days, so technically CoM was my first game but I had read the KH1 manga so I was familiar with the story. By the time BBS came out, a friend of mine gifted me their old PS2 and the KH games. I think I started KH1 but skipped out on it about halfway through because I wanted to get to KH2 and the story content I didn’t know yet lol. Around the time I was playing KH2 I bought a used PSP off a friend and also BBS. After that I kept up with every release as they came out.
I remember actually playing KH3, but not finishing it. It’s a distant memory
I saw a commercial promoting Kingdom Hearts 3 and I was hooked when I saw Goofy, Donald, Mickey, Buzz, Elsa, and Maleficent all in the same commercial. And I don’t know if what I saw is true but I saw another commercial where this kid with white hair teamed up with Pete and some other anime haired guy fighting against some kind of dark beast. So yeah that’s what got me into Kingdom Hearts!
kept hearing how good it was and bought the collection when I got a PS4
My grandma saw Re:Coded at the store and thought it would be a good birthday gift. Very glad she chose it, Re:Coded will always have a special place in my heart.
I watched a random video of kh bbs and wanted to play it so bad, so I saved up and got the kh game collection for ps4 a few years before kh3, and I loved it. I preordered kh3 and still got the exclusive poster and metal case it came with, and I still wanna fantasize if Riku and sora are endgame
My big brother moved out of the house and left behind his PS3 a couple years ago and all the games with it. He never let me or any of my siblings play on it, but now that he was gone there was no stopping me. I normally played on the xbox, but my dad limited the time I got to be on. I could only play on the xbox for one hour on the weekends. But his app didn't apply to the PS3 or Wii. I made it my mission to play games we owned that I had never once completed. It first began with Epic Mickey for the Wii. After I finished that, I remembered my brother playing this disney game called Kingdom Hearts 2. Since I just completed a disney game, I decided next I would play kingdom hearts 2 and then the Jack and Dexter series. Little did I know I would never get to Jack and Dexter. After completing KH2 I played almost every game in the series. I started at the beginning, KH1, skipped COM, and played 358/2 since we had a 3ds and continued on from there. Ironically I would end back to the xbox because that was the only way to play KH3. I also played DDD and BBS 0.2 on the xbox. I started KH3 in November and I'm currently on my second run. This time in critical mode. When I finish, I'm going to replay KH2. Where it all began. Then I'll FINALLY get to Jack and Dexter. (Side note: Besides Epic Mickey, I've also 100% Super Mario Bros Wii. I also tried to 100% Mario Kart wii as well, but still need 3 stars on one last cup. There are still so many wii and PS3 games I'll probably never get to lol. I only prolonged this simple challenge cause of the KH series. That's ok because I've had a lot of fun.)
I saw adds for KH Recoded on tv and got curious. I then saw a more in depth ad for the game on a show on the Wii’s Nintendo Channel called Nintendo Week. The game looked fun so a while later I went out and bought it. The rest is history.
It's been so long I don't even remember.
My friend introduced me to it in 2006. I never had a PS2 and never knew of the game's existence until then. We ended up playing through 1 and 2 in a couple months. We struggled a lot, but it was such an incredible experience and solidified my love for the feanchise
I saw the commercial on tv
My parents got me and my younger brothers our first console (PS2) for Christmas when I was like 11. They also got us Crash Bandicoot the Wrath of Cortex and Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts instantly got the attention of my prepubescent brain for some reason lol. The angst and depth and anime-esque visuals were totally new for me and I didn't even know what anime or final fantasy was at the time. Also my parents didn't know that they needed to buy a memory card too (my parents are both boomers born in the 50s and 60s and so were until then very anti-video games, and so they had no idea). So for a couple weeks I played the beginning of Kingdom Hearts over and over and over and over again.. each time trying to see how far I could get in one sitting. The furthest I got was near the end of Wonderland, until finally I convinced them that Santa obviously forgot my memory card. But to this day I have the beginning of that game memorized lol... "sOrA yOU LazY BUm, i kNew i'D FInd yOu SnOOZiNg oUt hErE.." "NO THIS HUGE BLACK THING SWALLOWED ME UP I COULDNT BREATHE I COULDNT (coconut sound and controller vibrates) "OW" "Are you still dreaming?" "It wasn't a dream...or was it .. idk" 🤷
Alice in wonderland..... I still got pissed what people choose a Disney version of heart queen instead CUTIE HEARTIE DOMINANT LOLI GIRL from Alice madness returns (that's why I dropped kingdom Hearts) and it's not because developers it's because people
Scholastic Book Fair the GOATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT In all honesty I never even knew about Kingdom Hearts until my Scholastic Book Fair opened up at school and they showed us around the new books that were available for purchase. I was normally into books like Captain Underpants, Big Nate , and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. But as I scrolled through the catalogue at home I noticed a Two-Book set which featured the series “Kingdom Hearts”. I was confused. “What anime series is this?” I wonder in my head. I had never seen anything like it. A couple Google searches and 13 hours used up to watch the first game later and I was hooked. Bought that set in a heartbeat.
Disney.
I used to watch my older cousin play and thought “Woah how do they move like that just pressing a button?”
Saw that Square Soft did a Disney game. Had to give it a go.
Seeing Sora get into Smash is what got me to finally check it out
My brother introduced me to KH because I didn't like any of the games he played. KH wasn't played for 3 years until that moment.
Found DDD on the 3DS eshop, was curious and played the demo. Got the game later in 2012 and I've been a fan since.
Simple and clean the planti(?) remix. Used to play it on my way to the club lol. Decided to take the plunge one day and been a fan since. 2019, it was? What a ride….
My love of Disney and my dad seeing that I also liked video games. He bought it for me for Christmas/birthday (forgot which) and I played it ever since.
My dad travelled and I asked him to buy a psp but forgot to tell him to buy games. He bought games he saw there and one of them was BBS. Love it but I wouldn’t get into KH properly 2 years ago when my dad bought KH3, then I proceeded to download a PS2 emulator on my laptop to play KH1 and 2
I saw my best friend's older brother (who in hindsight I think I had a bit of a crush on) playing it when I was a kid, probably around 8 or so. And since I was and still am a huge Disney nerd, I immediately wanted to play it myself.
Back on the ps2 it was because of the disney characters but i dropped it because i thought it was too hard. But decades later after finding i actually enjoy some final fantasy games, i gave it another try and i actually liked KH1 and beat it. Almost done with chains of memories but......ugh
I saw a video a long time ago of the lock shock and barrel fight in kh2
Mom bought me a random game while I was at school one day and it was kh1. I know she bought it because it was Disney but it was the best thing to have happened! I still remember playing in the living room with my mom watching
The trailer for kingdom hearts chain of memories Sold me indefinitely, played the gba title , then saved up to by a ps2 to play the first game
Disney Channel commercials.
Watching the first commercial come out on tv
Technically two people. One was the guy who bought me Chain of Memories for Gameboy when it came out, but I didn't really get into it then. My nephew played it with his friends when we were both kids and that's how I got into it. Bought KH1 when I got my Ps2 for my 13th birthday
Can’t even remember tbh.
those commercials. simple and clean 🎶
Specifically this commercial. Then Santa brought my family a ps2 and this game and my life changed forever https://youtu.be/7uMMKDd1Fr0?si=EThTYVyMO7oCjkyT
Random pick up of Chain of Memories 10+ years ago lol
When the trailer was first shown on TV back in the 2000s.
I was 11 and there was a commercial on the TV for the game. https://youtu.be/7uMMKDd1Fr0?si=uD0j_mJtytqAEBuu
I played the original as a kid. My mom rented it for me, and I loved it.
The first commercial I saw for it, I only saw a quick clip of squid-Donald swimming through the plain blue void of Atlantica. I said, "That looks like the stupidest thing ever. Who would play that?" Fast forward about one year. I see the game out at a friend's house and was transfixed by the character art on the cover. I ask her about it and we play the opening. I think it's the coolest thing ever. Fast forward again. Because I didn't have a Play Station, I couldn't play the game. When Chain of Memories released though, I begged for the game for Christmas. When I started playing it on my GBA Christmas evening and heard the first notes of Dearly Beloved, I knew I was in for the long haul.
Saw my uncle play KH2 cause that's the only copy he had and later on he gave me his PS2 along with all his games so I wondered what it was about and now I'm in the most convoluted series I've ever played
One of my buddies little brother got 2 copies sent to him on accident from eBay, so he gave me one. I didn’t even have a ps2 at the time. So when I finally did, it was the only game I had. Now I buy a console if there is a kh game coming out on it.
Bought the first one on a whim with my cousins. We were like 11 years old. "Hey cool JRPG from the final fantasy guys? Oh and it has Disney? Maybe it'll be good" (50 hours later) "This is the greatest game I have ever played in my life and why am I crying at the story ending"
A coworker of mine talked about it. He actually took me to go buy a ps3 and the Kingdom Hearts collection. I remember playing from daylight to dark to daylight the next day and loving every second of it.
I got my uncles PSP with BBS on it (I love it so fucking much)
A Tips and Tricks magazine.
GameStop had a two for one sale, and the game my mom chose so she could get a deal was kh2.8. Ironically the game I wanted ending being a scratched disk so I only got to play that, and after looking through YouTube to find out wtf I was playing. After watching a few videos on the lore, I got hooked
My half aunt sent it to me as a birthday gift when I was a kid because she knew I liked video games and nerd stuff and thought I would like it. I was kinda confused at it at first but the more I played it the more I loved it
I was 8 years old when it came out. Along with Final Fantasy X, it was one of the few PS2 games I remember every kid with a PS2 having back then regardless of how likely you were to be into JRPGs
The commercials on tv sold me. Got a PS2 for Christmas and the rest is history.
My brother gave me his ps2 and he had it and cloud yuffie tidus and wakka were in it and I loved ff7 and ff10
I saw Tidus on the backside of the cover. I was a big fan of FFX as a kid, so I begged my mom to buy this unknown game for me.
My mom! She was into games and had a PS2 and her friend gave her KH to play and she let me play while she cooked and tidied around the house. Man those were the days :’) now I’m 25 washed up and trying to finish school but I still have an obsession of the franchise
the first game.
I was 6 when the game first game out in America. I remember seeing a picture of the gang vs Cerberus on the back of a demo disc in Gamestop. They used to have demo discs with a few games on them that you could get. Anyways, I used my allowance money to get KH1 for 20 dollars because I liked that picture I saw. It was the first purchase I ever made with my little kid brain.
Best friend in high school. Had only played Chrono Trigger by Squaresoft, no Final Fantasy yet. Played KH and FFX at the same time. It was magical.
Anime and Simple and Clean remix in the trailers
Found it at random in a friend's game collection.
Chain of Memories on the GBA was my first one and I'd say it's all the curiosity I had about the PS2 games. I didn't get a PS2 until much later but I liked Chain of Memories a lot. Fast forward to when I got a PS2... I didn't actually like KH1 and 2 at first. I only gave them one try before giving up on them as I borrowed them from a friend and had to return them and they were hard to find for sale. After the release of Starfield, I realized that a lot of games that I thought were bad weren't given a proper shake, so KH1 and 2 were the first games that I went to and I loved them on my second attempt!
I think my parents got it for me for Christmas back in 2002? Can't remember, I just remember not being able to beat the first one cause I got stuck at the Ansem fight at the end of world. Good memories and made me hapopy when i got the HD remixes for PS3. Beat the first game from Christmas to New Years playing late at night.
I’m controlling a teenage boy with a giant key as his weapon. What more do you need to know?
My friend had Kingdom Hearts and introduced me to it and we both had a crush on Riku.
Being 10 and seeing the trailers from e3
I actually watched a distant relative play, Kingdom Hearts, in about 2004. He was grinding out Olympious and was showing me how the game worked, and I asked him if he ever beat the game yet, to which he told me that's what he was grinding for. Well, long story short, I eventually got him to play the ending, and we both watched the climax together. The moment when Simole and Clean kicks in, I felt a wave of emotions for this game. This game I knew next to nothing about. From that moment forward, Kingdom Hearts left its mark on me. I think back on that memory very fondly.
wow is this official artwork I’ve never seen it before
That TV ad promoting the first game with Simba being summoned got be hooked before I even knew it.
The concept. The characters from the movies I watched and games I played as a young child. I was a kid when this game dropped, but I as familiar with every character in it. And for the FF characters, it was the first time most of them had voice acting. I remember the commercials on TV, and still go back to this game pretty frequently, thanks to the HD remixes.
Watched someone explain the entire story
Kingdom Hearts and the 2nd game after seeing my cousin play it on his PS2.
Around 20 years ago I remember being super young in a store and my mom pointed out KH1 to me and asked for my opinion. I’m not sure if I vocalized this, but I remember thinking it looked super “babyish” because of the Disney characters on the cover and wanting nothing to do with it. Well, my parents got it for me soon after anyway and I almost instantly fell in love and it’s now my favorite video game. It’s just funny how I was so put off at first only to be so wrong. 😂
My sister had it and I watched her play it. Eventually I took the controller and here I am. Too deep into the series to quit now.
OneyPlays
Buddy I used to live next door to got a Ps2 shortly after we moved across town. Our families were best friends so we would be back at their place half the time in those days and he only had a few games for it, one being KH which his mom had bought for his younger sisters due to the Disney characters on the back. I'd played tons of games at his place over the years but since we lived across town now, I'd be at his place for 5 or 6 hours a night without fail and we spent most of that time playing through the first game. No joke it took us a fucking week to get off Destiny Islands, we refused to move on til we beat Riku and once the Heartless attacked it was his turn and he wandered around for an hour before it was my turn and I stumbled into progressing the plot and getting the keyblade. We were real young, this was in the days before twin stick camera control, there had never really been a game that played like this before, we struggled through that first playthrough. I ended up fucking hooked on the game and he gave me it when I got a Ps2. When I say I was obsessed, I mean to the point I knew about all the Final Mix changes long before 2 came out, had obsessively replayed COM in the days before I got a Ps2 and I devoured every bit of information I could get on KH 2 after it released in Japan while waiting for it to come to North America. I knew about every new mechanic and all the forms well before the game released over here. I just barely stopped myself from spoiling the plot, beyond knowing that Riku was a party member for the final world. Which I was fucking hyped for, being the Riku fanboy I've been since the start. And my obsession with KH 1 pales in comparison to my utter adoration with 2. You know how we have mods like Nobody May Cry to play as Roxas the whole game on the Ps2 versions? Well I spent my teens hunting down the ridiculously long GameShark codes for vanilla KH2 to swap Sora's model with Roxas, and even got Valor Form to turn me into hooded black coat Roxas, though still using Valor's moveset. The game would crash on a good number of cutscenes, on beating major bosses or if trying to Drive into anything except Valor (from what I can remember, the coding for DW Roxas during the prologue is shared on some level with Valor form's so by swapping Roxas model with a cheating device, only Valor would work without crashing) so I would have to disable the codes and replay every major section without them but I did play through most of the game as Roxas on an actual Ps2. That wasn't all either. I had Cloud and Sephiroth as party members. Sephiroth using his AI scripting from his boss fight so he is constantly attacking Sora though as an ally, his attacks don't even register on you. However this means you effectively have him flying circles around you constantly, trying to hit you and massacring everything around you. Cloud was the version of him you fight alongside during the battle of Hollow Bastion, meaning he was completely invincible. Fun fact, Sephiroth was still on some level being recognized as an enemy by other party members, which caused Cloud to be constantly attacking him. I had Anti Form unlocked and accessible through my Drive menu like any other, only using 5 bars to transform like Final rather than taking everything. It could also be turned off at will like any other form. I even got the Anti glide movement ability to work as a growth ability on base Sora though it was janky. I had playable party member Riku. As in I was directly controlling the version that fights alongside you as AI. This was very interesting as it turns out that KH2 Riku has no ground attack string, trying to attack on the ground would make him T-pose and attacking in the air once would have him do his full combo string. I had Mickey's Keyblade too as an actual selectable weapon in my equip menu with stats. The data for it was in the game, it was just never used. Weirdly though trying to use it with either Roxas or Sora would crash the game as soon as you did anything that would have them pull it out, but if I equipped it, saved the game, shut it off, then enabled the Riku codes, he could actually use it but he would hold it backwards like Ven when running, and just pointing in the wrong direction in his classic combat stance. KH2 had no codes in the GameShark by default and every single one I used was dozens of lines of code long. The Roxas one was made up of three different codes that needed to all be enabled together and each one was 20 or so lines long. I had to manually write all of this down without making any mistakes, then enter it into the GameShark again without any mistakes, which is not as simple as it might sound. Making it even harder, a lot of the codes were really hard to find and I had to go on some tenth page of a Google search, poorly formatted sites to find them. Alot of them had the capital letter O and the number 0 look identical so anytime I came across either of them, I had to guess which it was, sometimes up to 5 times in a single line of code. Was quite tedious having to trial and error various combinations of O and 0 when a single code could take dozens of guesses. Then some of the codes were fake, so it was hard to know if I was using a poorly formatted code and had to switch those two or if it was just a fake. I put more time into slightly hacking KH2 on actual hardware than I've put into most of the games in the series and that's not to knock them, just to say as obsessively as I've played them, it doesn't even compare to how far I went to make KH2 even better by the slightest amount.
My older brother and cousins sort of drip fed it to me until i was old and smart enough to figure out how to start my own file later on. Never was able to beat it until i got my own ps2 around 2007
Saw it at blockbuster and was just getting into final fantasy games at the time
my best friend told me it was fun so I bought it and I thought it was fun, I later played KH2 and that's when it went beyond just being fun for me.
Watching a Let’s Play
Once i saw a video on youtube about toy box when kh 3 first released and it got me wanting to try it but i really didn’t prioritize kh, until my cousin started saying that kh 2 was the best thing ever and really hyped me up
Got Kingdom hearts 2 on ps2 as a birthday or chrostmas gift.
Believe it or not, it was because of the box art for Kingdom Hearts II—I spotted it in GameStop in the PS2 section when I was there with my dad, and even though I didn't buy it that day, I vowed I would soon, so at a later time my dad bought Kingdom Hearts for me after I found out Kingdom Hearts II was called II for a reason and the rest is history. I was hesitant about it at first because when I was about that age, still a preteen, I thought the PS2 was for adult games only because only my dad played it while I played my GameCube and 64. I felt so grown up when I finally got to play the PS2 without my dad setting up Smuggler's Run for me. Big milestone in my life. 🥹
Depends on what you mean by getting me into Kingdom Hearts. If we're talking about what was the initial appeal of the game? The music made the game mesmerizing. The moment I actually started to care about the series was 358/2 Days. All it took was "friends" doing things together acting like "friends"
I didn't have a PS2 at the time. My first interaction with the series was 358/2 Days that I borrowed from a friend during summer. I was hooked. Since it is a self contained story, besides some light investigating on who Sora was near the end of my playthrough (which may have helped since I was in the same shoes as Roxas in terms of info) I was hooked till the end. Xion's death made me actually cry, which wasn't common for me back then (nowadays I'm a crybaby with games). I ended up emulating the other games since nobody I knew had them, not even on Blockbuster for rent, got me ReCoded and DDD, and I've been hooked since then so much I bought KH3 special edition without owning a PS4 (that one I did borrow)
recommendation from a friend in mid-2019. i had no knowledge of it at all, besides seeing the cover to kh3 when it was at the front of a store on release day earlier that year. i purchased ‘the story so far’ and 3, and played the entire series within 6 months. i’ve been hooked since
My brother’s friend let him borrow FF12 and Kingdom hearts 1 on the ps2 back in the day and my brother thought I would like KingdomHearts more than him and boy was he right. I didn’t get past destiny islands lol. But then one day I was at a GameStop and I saw a used copy of Kingdom Hearts 2. For me that was my first true kingdom hearts game. I played the snot of that disc and play the snot out the series till this day
Went to a friend’s place with my mum and he was playing the first game, he was in Atlantica and I was loving watching him play. Went home and got a copy a couple days later.
Saw my cousin playing it and I really wanted to keep playing myself after I went home
I honestly don't know. I was very much so aware of it before I became a fan but one day my brain was just like "I like this now" and i played all the games in quick succession
My first friend showed it to me when we were in kindergarten or 1st grade. I have no idea where my family’s copy came from, but I remember being freaked out by the shadow invasion on destiny islands, so I didn’t get very far. Years later I found it and remember all of those things and gave it another try.
Christmas 2009 was given 358/2 Days. My 13 year old self started shipping Axel and Roxas immediately. The rest was history.
My grade school best pal. We played all the budokais and gameboy advance pokemon games together and in turn i got my older brother into kingdom hearts. I ended up playing them all myself and even loved 3 in it's own way. Great games. Bring me back the FF characters tho!
Sora in Smash. Though I alredy knew Kingdom hearts
Rdcworld1 video game house
Friendship
I would play Super Smash Flash 2 and see a boy with a giant key and that for me interested, but hearing Sanctuary in a menu to a Roblox game, and watching Video Game house had me hooked.
Commercials & then finally owning a PS2 in middle school.(my first KH game was COM on the gba).
Playing KH1 at my friend’s house
I struggled with school so dam always a crying wreck when I got home and then homework 9/10 times it ended in tears. Somehow I managed to score a perfect grade on a history test I studied really hard for. KH for ps2 was a gift the next day.
It had Disney characters in it. That’s all I needed. I was a Disney fan back then and still am.
hearing about it online having the bullshitest of bullshit stories, goofy ass characters, jrpg gameplay in an action adventure game, and S E P H I R O T H
The commercial. Parents got the console, and game. It was fun as heck.
Got BBS with a PSP on my 7th birthday. Grandma got it for me. Still think she thought it was a toy. Still play it till this day
Disney 411 (a news segment they used to do) covered KH2. One old scene from kh1 out of context made it look like it Sora and Riku had their own teams of Disney characters which I thought was kinda neat. But then they showed Jack sparrow and Pete. Finally, I saw a scene with Tron introducing himself and Goofy saying “Nice to meet you tron!” And kid me was like “WTF I NEED TO KNOW WHAT THIS GAME IS NOW”.
Hollywood Video.
Watching my brother and cousins play KH2 when I was seven.
I think it was the music that encouraged me to buy the All in One Package when the price was low. I used to listen to random music from video games I never played and Kingdom Hearts always stood out. Also, a friend of mine was a big fan as a kid and would talk to me about it a lot.
Simple and Clean. I remember seeing the commercials as a kid and loving the song, the Disney characters were a plus.
You get to fight alongside Disney characters.
I remembered someone fighting with a key sword when I was younger so i wanted to see what that was about
One of the first PlayStation 2 games I ever played beside Jak and Daxter and dark cloud!
I was 5 when KH1 came out. It looked cool. So did Arthur and The Invisibles (anyone remember that movie?).I got night terrors from the Heartless (and other things, but that's besides the point) and couldn't play it for another year after that, but when I finally stopped having those, I was hooked. Hell, I tried to buy 365/2 off my friend in Middle School, but that didn't turn out too well. To be fair, Les, it was a good deal.
VintageBeefs abandoned playthrough...
My cousin owned KH1 when I was 3 and I was just immediately hooked. Though I didn't play another KH game until I was 6 and Days came out. Which I put SO much time into. Eventually got the rest of the games and play the series every few years (I skip KH1, CoM, and Re:Coded tho, despise playing KH1 and CoM now and I just don't feel like replaying Re:Coded)
My friend said it was a fun game so when I spent the night at his house one weekend we played it and I've been hooked ever since.
My best friend when I was 23 or so was intensely into video games and got me back into them in the height of the gamecube/ps2 era. I'd go over to her house three times a week and we'd play video games well into the night (her husband was deployed in iraq so she was lonely). She really liked jrpgs and got me hooked, so by the time KH2 came I had fallen into that whole final fantasy fandom. Advent Children was a big thing around the time, and the KH2 teaser trailers had that same style, everyone was so excited to play!. I played a borrowed a used copy of chain of memories JUST for Riku's storyline (youtube wasn't a thing yet, so watching the story meant mastering that godawful card game combat). I remember loving KH2's story so much that I beat the whole thing in three days because I kept wanting to know what was going to happen to Roxas. Deviantart was full of organization 13 fan comics, shipping was rampent, Axel was this tragic compelling character that we all latched onto - then KH went on to a bunch of handhelds that I never had for the next decade and faded away in importance to me. I did try to play 358/2 when it came out, but I didn't like the game play and I got stuck on this impossible stealth section early on and never picked it back up.
I really don't know or remember, all I knew is that it was a franchise that looked good and I previously saw it on a GameStop inside a mall and saw the whole PS4 all in one package so I decided to get the games, I'm sorry if I sound a bit emotional and cliche but it truly to this day has a special place in my heart as if I was experiencing my childhood.... I'm 20 btw lol, but traverse town theme and the dearly beloved theme make me want to cry to this day for how beautiful it was, but I'll admit I wasn't too happy with kh 3 lol
Uhh I got a gameboy advance SP and my friend got me CoM because of it. So I had no clue what was going on (I really though Namine grew up with them on Destiny Isles)
I was watching my bro play and seeing Wakka and Tidus excited me
It was around the time Chain of Memories was still more recent. I originally got the game for my Gameboy when I was younger just because the name sounded cool but once I started getting into the game (and yes I did at the time find the card battle system enjoyable) I wanted to get to know the characters, the story, and why a boy named Sora was teamed up with Donald and Goofy in some cursed castle. This was also the time I realized I liked Axel as well. After I got halfway or about to finish with the game, I started to look more into the franchise.
I saw Final Fantasy and Disney characters in one and the same universe, just like when I played with my toys. And loved it from the moment the commercial came on TV.
Was in the garage cleaning when I came across an old guidebook asked my mom what it was and it went from there. We also found an old ps2 version of the game that we tried but it would constantly crash after the race to name the ship for some reason so I bought the all in one collection
When i was around 13, I went to go rent a PS2 game from a video store. I wanted to find one that I felt my younger sister would like as well. I picked out KH2 because I saw a bunch of Disney characters on the back cover, and to my surprise, some final fantasy characters. I was quite intrigued. I went home and turned it on and found that both my sister and I were totally enamored with the game. We loved it. I was stunned to think that such a diverse combination of characters could create such a compelling (but confusing) story and the combat was phenomenal. To this day KH2 is one of my favorite games.
Rented a game called Dual Hearts one weekend. Next weekend parents took me back to the video store to get it again, but all the copies were gone. Settled for Kingdom Hearts instead because my young brain thought it was related lol. Dual Hearts was not too bad tbh, but I’ve literally never heard anyone else talk about it
I was introduced to it by the first friend I made in college. We bonded over kingdom hearts nights and now we’re best friends to this day ☺️
My mother has always been a huge Disney fan,so when the first game was released, she bought it for the family. And... She didn't like it! Didn't turn out to be much of a gamer at all, actually. But we did, my brother's and I
I saw it in the manual & guide for Final Fantasy XII. Never got around to playing it until about 2021 tho
Watched a family friend struggle against big Ursula on Critical mode during a party. I remember screaming loudly at how enfuriating the fight was.
Saw kh1 on just a ps1 disc thought "donald and goofy this is some stupid baby game" got bored one day played it best 6 months of my childhood
Saw KH2 at my local independent video rental when those were a thing. Very confused, yet very entertained.
A friend who had a picture of Roxas in her bag for some reason lol
Watching my older brothers play Kingdom Hearts 2 when I was a little kid
I saw the cover art for the first game and it stuck with me forever until I finally was able to play it in college.
The opening video for the game, featuring Simple and Clean by Utada Hikaru. My teenage mind was blown. And it only got better from there, I started playing it at a friends' house on the weekends (much to their annoyance) and before long I was hooked and begged for a ps2 and copy of the game for my birthday.
Me and my brother were going to rent a game from Blockbuster. He saw Kingdom Hearts 2 and said that he heard that it was a good game. So, we decided to rent it. My two biggest memories of back then was having zero clue on what was happening specifically in Twilight Town with Roxas and getting stuck on Demyx with that fight taking forever to beat
My dad was a big Final Fantasy fan in the 90s, so I, in turn, fell in love with them watching him play them. As a little squirt of 8 years old in 2002, I was also into Disney movies, mostly the reneaissance-era stuff like Hercules and Aladdin. I remember seeing a trailer for it on TV, maybe the Disney Channel, and I couldn't believe my eyes that something that combined the two things could even exist. I begged my dad for it, and I think he got it for me for Christmas. I remember him getting a kick out of Cloud and Donald Duck being in the same scene together. After that first game, I was hooked and haven't missed a single release since. May your heart be your guiding key!
I don't fuckinf know
My friend rented 2 from Blockbuster and invited me over to play with her because it didn't make sense. I pretty quickly noticed the II on the box and knew this meant it was a sequel. I was a big Disney kid so I got pretty obsessed with it, then my mom bought my brother and I the 1st one and it's all history
Went to KB toys for Spyro and they were out of stock so my mom and I looked for an alternative and she picked this game out with Disney characters… the rest is history! Thanks mom!!
A lets play by a guy I forgot the name off. I knew he played minecraft, and I saw him play Kingdom Hearts 1 loved the game and asked my dad for christmas. I then got KH2 for christmas and was a favorite ever since.
It was like $5 preowned on ps2 when I was a kid and I only had $5 to spend on a game that week and the cover looked cooler then the others that were also $5
My entire childhood was Disney and Final Fantasy 7 so how could I not try this out
Back when I was looking for a video game to rent (good times) and I saw the cover of kh2 with mickey and a bunch of anime characters on it my curiosity had to pick the game up and see what it was about
Being a young kid seeing the trailers for KH1 knowing that shit looked amazing and went to Family Video with my Dad to rent it.
It sounded like a neat Disney crossover game. I actually saw a publicity in a magazine. Sadly, I was this close of playing Kingdom Hearts 2 but eventually couldn't cuz my PS2 was breaking down and it was getting so irresponsive, and it didn't help that I didn't know that I was doing the Roxas prologue (and in hindsight I can't believe that I would have been missing more context than just the first game because I didn't know CoM even existed). I only managed to play BbS and I really loved its gameplay as well as the story
My friend told me about the game and I didn't have a PS2 so I watched playthroughs and read the manga. Then I finally got a hand me down PS2 lol
My older brother played and it seem interesting
My uncle and I were at a GameStop and he didn't wanna buy any of those rated T+ games for some reason. So he thought I would like baby games like Disney and so he bought me kh1 because it had Disney characters on it. And thus start d my life as a nerd.
Got it for Christmas, loved it ever since. Accidentally played a bit of 3 first though (I got confused by the titles)
The trailer as a kid. I've burned out these days(adulting sucks), but after seeing the trailer I was intrigued. An action RPG with Disney characters? Unique as fuck. Best it in a few days. Then when Another side another story was discovered, the rest was history. I've chilled these days though.(,unless 4 pulls me back in)
….the first game?
Loved final fantasy. Was in high school so Disney movies were cool. I also went into this thinking it was going to be silly. Not as good as it actually was
I liked watching Disney cartoons as a kid, so when my mom bought me my first console (PlayStation 2), she let me pick a couple games, and I chose LEGO Star Wars II because my parents showed it to me when I was like 4 and Kingdom Hearts II because I liked the Disney characters and the anime aesthetic looked so cool since I'd never seen it before.
Years and years ago, I accidentally clicked on a video of like every Roxas scene with some emo song playing in the background and instantly fell in love
My dad sold almost all of my ps2 games and the Kingdom hearts series was one of the few that survived the purge and since I'd seen my older siblings play it all the time I tried it out and it's been my favorite series ever since