Fortune Street is a game by Nintendo and Square-Enix with a long history of Japan only titles but now its finally coming to the US, after an announcement from E3. Where could this rekindled long lasting relationship with Square-Enix lead to? Sora being on Super Smash Bros Wii U, perhaps. Yes, it may sound absurd but there are reasons for this questioning of thought.

Fortune Street Wii

Not much news has surfaced about Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance in E3 but we did receive information on a little project called Fortune Street (Itadaki Street in Japan) on the Wii, created by Square-Enix and Nintendo. It is essentially Mario Party and Monopoly placed together into one game. The aim of it is to buy spaces and make your opponents pay with gold coins by landing on them, much like Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep funnily enough. The winner of the game is determined by a set number of coins and the first person who gets to that amount of cashola wins. This game does involve in majority Mario and Dragon Quest characters but it apparently has secret characters along with it. In previous versions, there have been Final Fantasy characters but this game could possibly have Kingdom Hearts characters in addition to that. Why? Because, many Nintendo fans have shown interest in the Kingdom Hearts franchise: 358/2 Days, Re:Coded and Chain of Memories and soon, Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance.  Fortune Street doesn’t exactly sound that exciting but something else very exciting can lead from this.

Could Sora be on Super Smash Bros 4 on Wii U and 3DS?

Could Sora get a letter from Link?

Square-Enix or workers from within the company have been involved in many Nintendo games now: Mario Hoops 5 vs 5, Super Smash Bros Brawl, Super Mario RPG, Fortune Street, Dragon Quest IX. Kingdom Hearts’ own Tetsuya Nomura designed the costumes for several characters including Fox and Pit. In addition, the composer of Kingdom Hearts, Yuko Shinomura, has also contributed her work on the Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time series and Super Smash Bros Brawl for their soundtracks.   Sora, our favorite hero, also made an appearance in Sakurai’s (the director of Smash Bros) list of possible characters on Super Smash Bros. Sonic and Snake made the cut for the Wii game but Sora never did. Now, Sora has been involved in 4 games on Nintendo systems. and Square-Enix has always been a strong supporter of Nintendo consoles. Wouldn’t it be amazing to see Sora fight Mario? Here’s hoping for Mushroom Kingdom Hearts!! Ha!

Having Mario and Sora together in one game can only be a good thing, right? What are your opinions? Do you want Nintendo to be involved with Square-Enix? Is there a brawl looming between the two companies’ mascots? Who would you want to see in the next Smash Bros? Comment below or post on the forums!

Hey guys, today is March 12, and this is the weekly KHPlanet news update! 

Re:Coded- I’m not going to say a whole lot with this because it’s pretty simple, Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded is number one best seller on the market in the U.S. A round of applause to that.

358/2 Days- Again not going too far in depth, but the cover for the Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days manga cover has been released. It looks pretty sweet!

Japan- This is where I’m directing all my attention to. If you don’t know about this, get out from under the rock.

As of Friday March 11(for the Japanese and some Europeans, Saturday March 12) an 8.9 magnitude struck off sure of Japan. This massive earthquake is the largest in Japan’s history. The earthquake caused tsunamis across the Pacific where people in Alaska and Hawaii haven’t gotten it. This earthquake is much worst that the quake in Haiti last year.

Square Enix has twittered “The Earthquake. We are OK… thanks for the messages” so we can be assure that they’re ok and so are other large developers such as Sony.

Our hearts here at Kingdom Hearts Planet go out to the people of Japan and all their love ones. We are sending our prayers and hope that soon love ones will be reunited and the country can begin to rebuild.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2011/03/12/nr.quake.coverage.unfolds.cnn?hpt=T1&iref=BN1

I distinctly remember, back in high school, our French class was doing a project to learn how to write and pronounce family members and we were asked to make a family tree with these titles. Since we had been allowed to use any sorts of pictures, one girl, and probably one of the only other people in that tiny, tiny school to be intrigued by the new Kingdom Hearts game, used a screenshot of Axel in her project. This was early into the official announcement of the second game, several years before its actual release. The picture of Axel still had Japanese subtitles on it and all I could think was: who is this guy!?

Accepting a New Character Isn’t Always Easy

Since the debut of Chain of Memories, and most certainly Kingdom Hearts II, fans have been intrigued, delighted, even obsessed with the Organization XIII member, Axel. What exactly is his appeal to gamers? His curious appearance, the bad boy attitude, the deadly weapons, or maybe his mysterious background? I’ve thought about this and came to the conclusion within just a few short minutes that it must be all of the above. This assortment of attributes Axel came parading in with are ideal traits for a new role-playing character to be accepted into an already begun story.

A Humanized Antagonist

It’s no question to anyone who has completed their playing of Kingdom Hearts II and 358/2 Days that Axel is not only an important icon in the birth and progress of the plot, but he is also key in the emotional stability of the main protagonists, that being both Sora and Roxas. Axel’s layers create a well thought-out and complex man, someone who isn’t in the Organization just because. Before the release of 358, it was quite obvious throughout Sora’s meetings with the redhead that the member hid frustration and fear for the safety of his friend, Roxas. This makes him appeal to the gaming audience because a character who is essentially supposed to be our antagonist now shows hints of humanity and suffering that we can relate to and understand. Now that we have attached to him emotionally, we become intrigued by his mysterious life and how he came to be.

Drawn to the Flame

In regards to his appearance, Axel embodies all aspects of fire, an element that is both beautiful and powerful. He has weapons that radiate fire on top of their already deadly appearance. His red and spiky hair causes him to stand out from every other member of the Organization and its inability to be kept under control appears to be much like his attitude. Axel does what he pleases, despite the ramifications from his superiors, although for as much as his bad boy personality is used to get him out of sticky situations and jobs he wants to take on, it’s also used as a guard to hide behind. There has always been an appeal to viewers, or in this case gamers, of the lone wolf’s hard, outer shell being slowly dismantled to show off a more gentle person. In these regards, that would be the meeting of Axel and Roxas.

A Great Addition to Kingdom Hearts

Axel is a very well balanced character with enough of that unique twist and mysteriousness that grabs at RPG players. With his dangerous appearance and brash personality coupled with a kind nature hidden deep inside, it’s no surprise that he should be one of the more popular characters introduced after Kingdom Hearts I.

The introduction of Organization XIII into the Kingdom Hearts franchise created endless possibilities for the continuing of Sora’s story and adventure. Thirteen new, mysterious and tricky villains would harbor new obstacles, worlds, possibilities, and alliances in the universe of Kingdom Hearts. Although having said that even something as fresh and intriguing as these nobodies comes with its set of drawbacks.

Unstoppable Faction Or Not!

I feel that, while the concept of this group is truly original and fantastic, there actually being thirteen living and fighting forces for Sora to confront is a bit of an overkill. The fact that half of the group is eliminated in Chain of Memories alone takes away the danger this once thought unstoppable faction held.

Their deaths, while also blamed on the fact that there was an internal strife within the Organization that led to their defeat as well as Sora’s strength, does not take away from the fact that meeting a new member every other floor of Castle Oblivion was beginning to become repetitive. It had lost its charm and uniqueness after several victories.

Let’s Pull A Roxas

After playing all of the current Kingdom Hearts games, what I feel would have been an interesting concept would be not to have introduced every member. Pull a Roxas, by which I mean, he was the missing member, the rogue. Have the Organization hold thirteen nobodies, but they don’t all have to be in the same place, fighting for the same goal.

Creating conflicts within the conflicts of Marluxia’s band could have spared some of the members and held onto their mysteriousness a bit longer, perhaps even going so far as to not even introduce one or two of the nobodies, or already have some dead at the start. These ideas would have, I feel, helped create more of an impact with the members that Sora did meet and confront and I wouldn’t have just groaned and complained about having to stop what I was doing to fight another Organization XIII member.

Instead, I would have been much more excited, such as when Sora is first introduced to these black cloaked figures and I thought that Kingdom Hearts couldn’t possibly get any cooler.

So What’s The Up Side

It’s not all negative though, when it comes to the Organization. Linking the group to the antagonist of the first game was genius but introducing those like Roxas and Axel was a truly awesome. These two give sympathy to the group, make them human, in a sense. Not all of the members are out to destroy Kingdom Hearts, the keyblade and Sora, there are those like Axel, who mirrors the struggle of Sora in trying to find his best friend.

Axel creates problems for our heroes, but he is a conflicted character, desperately in search of his only friend, Roxas, and that leaves Sora with confused feelings towards Organization XIII, good drama for any role playing game.

Final Words

I love the Organization and I feel that they fit into the world well, even adding a bit more darkness to it, since Sora is older and it’s necessary to up the danger for any sequel. Organization XIII is still being explored with the soon to be released 358/2 Days and this game is looking to promise more development with the many characters as well as the introduction of a new one.

Oh and a big thank you to allzquiet for the image used in this article.

Nothing like having a private invite party for the fans and that’s exactly what Square Enix did on the 2nd and 3rd August 2008. The two day event was filled to the brim with announcements, trailers and playable demos, which for many die hard fans was a welcome release of both information and dates regarding some of Square Enix’s most anticipated games.

As expected the event focused heavily on both Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts but other titles such as Sigma Harmonics and The 3rd Birthday (Parasite Eve III) were also there.

So lets take a look at the release dates for the Kingdom Hearts games which despite being tentative are still a good indication of when these games might be available for release.

The dates mentioned are of course for Japan only so when and whether these games will be released outside of Japan still remains a mystery. In fact whether Coded will even be released in the West seems quite doubtful as unlike Japan where mobile gaming is quite popular, the west is still very far behind. 

For more information and articles surrounding the event be sure to check out some of the other sites such as IGN, GameSpot and KHInsider which have more details on the actual games, stories and trailers that were presented at the event. We’ll keep you posted on any major updates.

Square Enix have finally released the Japanese mini site for the up coming game Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days.  So far not much there except for basic information on the story, characters and some wallpapers to download. The release of the site is obviously a great sign for us gamers and we’ll be keeping a close eye on any major updates surrounding it.

It’s Christmas and quite fittingly we have a selection of special scans and some new information about the focus gauge display for the upcoming Sony PSP title, Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep.

As you can see from the scans, the focus gauge looks a lot like the Kingdom Hearts 2 drive gauge and seems to represent a speciality for each of the main characters Terra, Ven, and Aqua. 

Once filled it allows the launch of massive attacks and finishing moves for the character in question. Now despite the scans carrying Sora, we have to remember that this is a prequel to the original Kingdom Hearts. So yes it will probably carry the usual mix of Disney characters but the visibility of Sora is probably for cut scenes only.

At this point there’s not much else we can gather but we’ll keep you posted as new information comes in. On a closing note don’t forget to check out the rest of the scans for the other two Kingdom Hearts games, KH 358/2 days and KH Coded (see below).