Who in their right mind could have imagined mixing, in a single RPG, all the Disney characters? What’s more, what kind of lucid mind could imagine mixing all that with the characters from the Final Fantasy saga? A genius for some, a crazy eccentric for others, Tetsuya Nomura blindly trusted an idea that would change absolutely everything in its path: both in the video game industry and in Disney’s vision of video games.

Although the history of Kingdom Hearts 3 has perplexed more than one follower, as well as the route of its different installments (this is the best order to follow the history of Kingdom Hearts ), it is undeniable that Kingdom Hearts is one of the greatest phenomena of video game history so far this century. The thirteen titles that make up the series have been, for the most part, praised by both critics and audiences, which, combined, have sold more than thirty million copies worldwide. Also brewing, along the way, a real Kingdom Hearts maniathat, leaving aside hundreds of merchandising products, has originated comics, novels and even a future television series. Although, probably the greatest achievement of Kingdom Hearts has been to exalt its ideologist, Tetsuya Nomura , who until then had never directed a solo project. Success catapulted him immediately to the top of the Japanese development scene.

Aside from being a spectacular RPG in its own right, Kingdom Hearts was destined to be a resounding success thanks to its seemingly simple recipe: mixing characters from the Final Fantasy series with Disney pets.. The idea of ​​combining characters of the stature of Cloud Strife or Donald Duck in a single title, as surreal as it may seem at first glance, attracted a lot of attention to PlayStation 2 players. So the game worked from the first moment. But who had such an idea in the first place? Who envisioned a universe in which the Disney characters would cross their paths in an epic worthy of the best bill from the SquareSoft studio? Despite being the progenitor of the series in his own right, no, the idea was not Tetsuya Nomura’s. At least not at its source. The project was actually born out of a casual elevator talk .

The first Kingdom Hearts reached 5 million games soldAnd it is that at the end of the last century, the Disney offices in Japan were in the same building in Meguro to which the Square studio had moved due to the monumental development of Final Fantasy VII . So its executives used to meet on the landings and elevators, establishing a particular relationship of cordiality. Apparently, informal talks about the possibility of developing a game starring Disney pets began very early, so it was a common topic of discussion within the studio. However, no one knew very well how to carry out such a project. Not even if Disney was really interested, beyond those inconsequential elevator talks. Especially considering that Disney had founded its own video game development studio in the middle of the decade.

Enter Tetsuya Nomura. At that time Nomura was already a prominent member of the Square studio, who since entering in the early 1990s had shown great ambition to climb positions within the company. His big moment had come in the middle of the decade, when he was a prominent part of the Final Fantasy VII development team. Nomura not only captained the design of his characters (replacing the great Yoshitaka Amano) but even signed, along with Hironobu Sakaguchi, the plot of the game. It was precisely during the development of this game that Nomura began to consider the possibility of championing his own project , which, in his own words, he hoped to be able to replicate “the completely three-dimensional spaces and the freedom to run around” ofSuper Mario 64 .

Not only did Miyamoto’s work continue to be the industry benchmark, but no one was aware that, even with the moderate success of Nintendo 64, the Mario-starring title had managed to sell more copies than Square’s PlayStation masterpiece. . Nomura wanted to replicate that success, but his colleagues in the studio used to remind him, with remarkable success, that he would never be able to outshine the work of an established character like Super Mario with a new franchise that started from scratch. The only way, according to one of his colleagues, would be to use ” characters as well known as those of Disney“Empirical demonstration of how much they talked about the animation studio during those years. The idea caught up with Nomura, so one day, when he surprised the studio leaders, Hironobu Sakaguchi and Shinji Hashimoto, discussing that hypothetical project co -developed with Disney, he persistently ran as its director.The developer was determined not to miss out on this opportunity.

From that moment, according to Nomura, the game began to take shape in his head. So when they held the first meeting with Disney executives to discuss the details of the project, it had already imagined the entire Kingdom Hearts universe and how its characters would interact with its franchises. Nomura had even roughly outlined Sora’s character, although in those early designs, instead of a keyblade, he was wielding a huge chainsaw . Something that, indeed, horrified the animation studio executives.

Sora was wielding a chainsaw, which horrified Disney executivesIn Nomura’s words, Disney leaders were very generous to him. In my opinion, more than generosity, I would speak of patience. Nomura has proven himself to be quite the character on numerous occasions, and in his own words those meetings were not easy. It shows that in their first meeting, after a long time during which his executives presented their ideas for that hypothetical video game, Nomura got up and gave them a direct ” I’m not going to make such games“In other circumstances, knowing the strict code of business conduct of the Japanese, it is possible that the project would have ended there. Moreover, knowing how inflexible they are at Disney with the treatment of their franchises, than a relatively nobel tried to turn his entire universe upside down, it could have been seen as a terrible lack of respect. But either because Nomura had fallen in favor with the president of the corporation, or because Disney understood that they should surrender to the evidence that they were working With one of the best developers in the world, the project prevailed. In the end, Disney executives only put one non-negotiable condition on Nomura: they could not use Mickey Mouse. Except anecdotally for a few seconds at the end of the game. It was the only guarantee that, if the project failed, at the very least it would not tarnish the image of his pet.

Beyond this remarkable condition, at Disney they barely vetoed Nomura’s creative decisions, despite the fact that according to their contract they had total freedom to do so. It was totally uncharted territory for Disney, which until then had only licensed video games based on its movies or one of its characters. In fact, since that golden age of the early nineties, in which titles such as Castle of Illusion, Duck Tales or Aladdin shone, the video games championed by Disney had stood out not precisely for their qualities. In the words of Disney Interactive Studios vice president Graham Hopper, some of its products were made “more for economic reasons than for quality outlooks.” That suddenly someone wanted to mix all their franchises in a single title,Final Fantasy universe , it was something that many were not prepared for. In Hopper’s words, during its development, Kingdom Hearts was considered ” an abomination ” by many. disney-called-it-an-abomination-but-kingdom-hearts-was-an-absolute-success

A non-negotiable condition for Nomura was not to use Mickey Mouse in the gameThose who had it more complicated, probably, were the members of the Disney legal department, who did not know very well how to fit that puzzle. Nomura was forced to give up some of the worlds he had planned in the first place, like the one based on the movie Tron, which didn’t see the light of day until the immediate sequel. And for a moment, the universe based on Tarzan was also in danger, because the rights to the film were not owned solely by Disney. Nomura also had to give up the world based on The Lion King, albeit for technical reasons, as there was no time to develop movement mechanics for characters on all fours. In any case, issues aside, development continued without further complications until its appearance in early 2002. The last difficulty Nomura would have to face was also legal. Inspired by the recent opening of Disney’s largest amusement park to date, Animal Kingdom, located in central Florida, the developerI wanted to baptize the title Kingdom . Something very complicated from a legal point of view, so in the end it gave up somewhere in between, titling it with the definitive Kingdom Hearts. disney-called-it-an-abomination-but-kingdom-hearts-was-an-absolute-success

The game was an immediate success. In a few months it managed to overcome the million-copy border in Japan , so its premiere in the rest of the world was a matter of time. Imitating the example of the previous Final Fantasy VII, the studio prepared an international release with a version with previously unreleased content, such as an extra difficulty mode or new final bosses, such as one called Kurt Zisa, named after the winner of a contest organized by Square. The title replicated its success in the rest of the world, and although it failed to surpass Super Mario 64 in sales, as its creator expected, it did manage to reach five million copies . What at the time was a very respectable figure.

The rest is history. Even before appearing internationally, Nomura was already planning the sequel, Kingdom Hearts II , which would replicate the success of the original, making way for a series that already includes deliveries on systems such as Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS or PlayStation Portable. In theory, the recent Kingdom Hearts III was going to close the saga, but Nomura took very little to confirm that there is already a new Kingdom Hearts on the way . In any case, the influence of Kingdom Hearts goes beyond that directly related to Nomura. Although Disney closed its video game studio a few years later, the success of Kingdom Hearts radically changed the company’s perception of video games.. Among other things, Hopper said, it opened the doors to projects like Epic Mickey , which would have been very difficult to materialize without the example of the Square studio. Other titles, such as Tron Evolution or Pirates of the Caribbean: The Armada of the Damned, also owe their existence to the success of Kingdom Hearts. And even games like the underrated Split / Second, the wacky racing game developed by Black Rock Studio, might never have seen the light of day if one day an unknown Tetsuya Nomura hadn’t stood in front of Disney executives with an idea that many considered, verbatim, “an abomination”. disney-called-it-an-abomination-but-kingdom-hearts-was-an-absolute-success