21 years after its release, Kingdom Hearts remains one of the most beloved sagas in the industry. Zillions of spin-offs, sequels, interquels and all kinds of installments later, the community’s love for the adventures of Sora, Donald, and Goofy is directly proportional to the wackiness of their incomprehensible plot.
Final Fantasy characters mixed with Disney ones along with a handful of completely original ones; Of course, the beginning must have been really difficult. And so it was, because the origin of the franchise occurred in the most unexpected place that could be imagined for a fantasy of this caliber: inside an elevator.
In search of a new bombshell
Super Mario 64 had changed absolutely everything. Nintendo nailed how to make a 3D platformer in one time of technical revulsive for the industry, so the adventure of the mustachioed plumber became the beacon to aspire to -even today-. Shinji Hashimoto, producer of final fantasyand Hironobu Sakaguchi, father of the fantasy series, had a discussion about the platform, but could not find enough appeal to match the figure of Mario.
Disney characters seemed like the only possible option. “Mickey Mouse would have been great, but we can’t use it,” recalls Tetsuya Nomura, creator of Kingdom Heartsabout that talk.
Just as I was working on Final Fantasy VII, Super Mario 64 was released. The fully three-dimensional spaces and the freedom you had to run around them had a huge impact on me. When I told my colleagues that I wanted to make a game like that, they said, “But Mario is already a world famous character. It would be impossible to start from scratch with a completely new character.”
Little did Nomura care about the difficulty of the project, who volunteered to direct it immediately, so the two managers accepted his proposal. Fortune smiled on Square, as the company’s offices and those of Disney in Japan were located in the same building in the late 90s, which is why they ran into one of the complex’s elevators.
Hashimoto and an executive from the animated company began to talk about the idea, but in a very casual way and without going much further. “The conversation in the elevator was more along the lines of ‘It would be great to do something together sometime’ and it wasn’t really a formal idea pitch,” remember Nomura. Of course, that began to roll little by little.
Nomura’s presentation
The truth is that Nomura and Disney ended up agreeing to a meeting so that the character designer of several final fantasy bring your vision. The truth is that the positions took a bit to find, just as recounts the developer:
“At first, we decided to just have a meeting. I had no idea what we were going to talk about; I just went to hear what they had to say. However, I already had a vague idea of the game I wanted to make. In fact, I had already envisioned the I play in 3D space, and this was taking shape in my mind when I went to see Disney.
Of course, they had their own ideas and asked us if we would be interested in turning a variety of their ideas into a game. They seemed to believe that we would do whatever they wanted us to do and we were presented with quite specific requests like: ‘We would like this character to be included in the game.’ They were very excited, explaining their ideas… However, to be honest, I wasn’t really interested in any of them.”
The match was going down a path that Nomura was not convinced about, so I “stopped the presentation in the middle. We didn’t have a lot of time, and it seemed like everything was going to be taken up by various Disney presentations. So, I interrupted them and told them the conclusion saying:I will not make such games‘”. It was from that moment when the creative began to explain how it was configured Kingdom Hearts In his mind.
“I visited his office several times afterwards. At the first meeting, I showed them a design document with a picture of Sora, the game’s main character. I drew him holding a weapon that looked like a huge chainsaw. “What the hell is this! ?” they said. When I told them it was a chainsaw, they seemed really surprised, absolutely speechless. (Laughter) They were looking at the design document, probably saying, ‘this is terrible!’ However, everything was in English, So I didn’t understand a word.”
The good thing for Square’s interests is that the president of Disney at the time, Michael Eisner, he was very open-minded regarding the creation of such an unusual video game. “He was very generous with us. Even when the people around him objected to something, he would say that he was fine and we could move on,” Nomura notes.
With absolute green light, it was in February 2000 when development began, with Tetsuya Nomura directing and Shinji Hashimoto producing. From then on, the rest is history.
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