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Square and Disney Team Up for Kingdom Hearts
jaredcat writes "Ever wonder what would happen if the incredibly creative talents of Squaresoft and Disney got together? Well I never did, but that didn't seem to stop them. The first joint production of Square and Disney, Kingdom Hearts, was just released in Japan. Its an RPG with a Square CGI, a Square story, a Disney sense of humor, and Square and Disney charectars. If the opening movie is any indication of what's to come when Kingdom Hearts becomes available in the US, its going to be the best thing to hit the PS2 since, well, Final Fantasy X :)." Very positive review. Gotta admit, I'm intrigued.
Update by J :
Check out
this review too, with a ton of screenshots, from
the GIA:
"By all rights [it] should be an awkward, conflated mess... instead, it's an epic piece of crossover fanfiction."
The GIA has a great set of impressions up that I highly reccomend. Also a crapload of screenshots to peruse, but the impressions are top choice.
So, Disney's NOT evil this week?
I can't believe it! The main character looks just like every other main Squaresoft game character! Such clever people.
Disney sense of humor
Oh no no no...
"""
Ever wonder what would happen if the incredibly
creative talents of Squaresoft and Disney got
together? Well I never did, but that didn't
seem to stop them.
"""
It doesn't really appear that any actions or
thoughts by individuals have much effect at
all on businesses the size of Disney (or
Squaresoft for that matter).
Remember who owns Fritz Hollings.
I didn't mention this up above, but there is more...
- Many of the side charectars, shop keepers, etc., in Kingdom Hearts are well known Disney charectars or charectars from past Squaresoft games. For instance, Donald Duck is the chief magician to the court. Cid from FFVII runs an items shop. Even Wakka from FFX makes an appearance.
- The Disney voice acting and animation seem to be authentic. i.e. Donald Duck moves and sounds exactly how you would expect him to. Check out one of the movies where he enters the throne room and says good morning (in Japanese), and runs into Pluto. The camera angles and the voices look like they are right out of those old Disney cartoons that we all grew up with.
Last but not least... Make sure to check out the opening movie. Its ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, and 10-times better than any FMV from FFX, which is saying a lot as FFX FMVs look 10-times better than any CGI DVD I've seen.
"I've been having these wierd thoughts lately..."
Gee, that doesn't sound anything like "If they knew that I'd been having these dreams..."
The Gaming Intelligence Agency has a short write up on it.
Also, you can see a movie at rpg Gamer.
The CGI looks incredible. It is weird having Final Fantasy characters mixed in with Goofy and Tarzaan, though.
I wonder what inspired this?!? It looks cool (visually), and Square does tend to make great games, but what were they thinking? What is Disney up to? Why not just a Disney character RPG? This is an odd marriage. Then again, Street Fighter v. X-Men worked well. I saw some screen shots. The Alice in Wonderland parts look great.
....not funny at all? Bland 'family' entertainment wih the odd fart joke thrown in?
Obviously Disney must have had huge control on how their characters were used but this still smells of gimmick
The damning quote from the review
If you're going to have a game/book/movie/whatever with famous characters in it then the work ought to have some reliance and relevance to those characters. Don't just drop them in to make a quick buck.
Yeah
0xB
IGN won't let you view more than 5 screenshots/movies per day unless you pay for their "IGN Insider" subscription service. So choose wisely!
I posted a copy here
Kingdom_intro.mov
Yeah, I'm intrigued too, Taco, but it's still Disney. Ever hear the one about Michael Eisner in the Senate hearing saying he couldn't think of a single reason for Michael Dell to sell PCs without hardware copy prevention except to sell to infringers?
/. that you'd still consider giving money to these sleezy bastards.
I can't believe as an EDITOR (the founder, no less) of
I don't care how "great" this game might be. It's Disney, therefore I'm not buying it.
The Free desktop that Just Works
Is it just me or does Square start 90% of their movies (in-game or on big screen) with a close up of an eye?
sig this
I saw this in the store the other day (I live in Japan), and it didn't seem too impressive. Granted, all I saw was the box and the intro screen they had running on a demo machine (no controllers plugged in), but my impression was that it seems to be aimed at little kids. Anyway, it didn't make me feel like buying it or even want to play it.
:)
Mod away, I just thought someone who reads at -1 might want to know
By the way, I am a Square/RPG fan and I do own a PS2 so it's not like I'm biased against it for some weird reason.
if I had mod points right now....
I do wish slashdot, as a community, wouldn't fawn over entertainment pieces such as this. These type of posts always seem kinda shallow for a "geek" community. Not that the entire world should be design patterns and aglorithm analysis... but what do I know....
Check out my podcast: DreamStation.cc Video Game Show
Later stages in final fantasy games have always gotten weird yet fun as your characters begin to get increasingly demi-god like powers. It's kind of fun when your characters have abilities challenging even the power of imaginary legends.
But introduce Disney characters into the equation, and it gets seriously creepy for some reason. The alchemy of psuedo-religious legendary power, and 50-year old irreverent cartoon characters does not sit well in my stomach. Snow white as a stained glass icon, revered as a revelation once seen, is like seeing coke machines being installed in the carved-out mouths of the easter island heads for tourists.
Not that I'm a religious person - I'm agnostic for the most part - but it still feels all wrong.
:^)
Ryan Fenton
..what would happen if the incredibly creative talents of Senator Hollings and Disney got together?
The CBDTPA!
*sigh*
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
...its going to be the best thing to hit the PS2 since, well, Final Fantasy X
Excluding Metal Gear Solid 2 and GTA 3 which, if I remember correctly, were much better received critically and sold more than FFX.
Final Fantasy has basically become watching a DVD with a broken pause feature: you have to intermittantly hit a button to get the movie started again.
Freedom Force, on the other hand, is as close to a pen-n-paper RPG experience you can get. Exciting, personal, and thrilling. Oh and replayable. Another classic from Crave/Looking Glass.
BTW Kingdome Hearts does look cool though. It seems Sony is going to try and take the demographic they don't have: the kids from Nintendo.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Characters?
Hopefully this movie will be a lot better than their last attempt (the spirits within)
...a Disney sense of humor...
You mean the sense of humor that says "You vill vatch our product, und you vill like it, or you suffer penalties under federal law."
Is that the sense of humor you mean?
Edith Keeler Must Die
I hope they go out of business along with disney
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest was bad enough - I don't even want to think of how terrible Final Fantasy: Mickey's Quest is going to be.
Aside from the monney grubbing whore that is it's current CEO, Disney has always been just a bit evil. I mean I know that's what corporations do, they co-opt, they commercialize. but there's something a bit more then subtly wrong with the commercialization of children's imagination.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If I go to the movie store and see that they split up the store for my convenience into action, drama, comedy and horror, then I know I can usually find the movie I want based on that. Sure some movies will seem at first glance to be cross 'genre' but what is the point of the movie? Would I find superman in the drama section? Would it make sense there? It had drama types of themes sometimes, but perhaps comedy is where it belongs.
The point is that roleplaying game (RPG) is supposed to tell a potential customer 'Hey, I am a game that allows you to immerse yourself into the character and make that character do what you want it to do. I don't force you to fit some predefined role, thus forcing YOU to do what I want you to. I give you freedom, much like you would if you were roleplaying in a small LARP or such in which you 'play the role' by bringing it alive through word and deed." Dragons, magic, elves and the like do _NOT_ make a game an RPG, anymore than a game that is set in modern day or in a science fiction setting is not a RPG simply because of the lack of said dragons and elves. (nanotechnology seems the 'magic of the future' however).
I played many a Final Fantasy game and enjoyed it, however that does not mean it is an RPG simply because it modeled the look and feel of some CRPG's at the time. Recently the trend has grown so that the 'console style RPG' really means a movie. Notice that I didn't even say interactive movie, as that trend is to decrease interaction and control more and more until you basically have a sort of adventure game like the old Dungeon Lair game. Perhaps a 'choose your own adventure' book, but with only 2 to 3 very limited, static and predifined choices available at any time. You might soon notice that you were obviously being steered into the conclusion they want you to be at.
So, please understand this before having a terrets type of reaction, jumping up and saying 'RPG'. That is silly and helps no one. Call it like it is, if you feel like you have to 'sell it' then that is an indication that you are justifying your actions and choices and perhaps should stop being a social slave.
But it's Disney,
which we all know is evil..
Or maybe our attention span is really short.
Hmm. I downloaded the 'Kindom_0327_8.mov' and counted 3 sets of breasts on both sides of the throne just as it zooms in after Donald says "huhh??!" Check it out.
CAKman
gratuitous sex and violence. That makes anything better. Hey Bob, this movie sucks. Hey Bob, it should be obviousl that the sex and violence you added is not a part of the story, but was blatantly added to cull my favor... but I _DO_ like it! What's that Bob, I'm your bitch? Well yes I am!
Hmm...
One day, Slashdot publishes a story about the CBDTPA, saying how horrible it was, and how they hope that Senator Hollings gets voted out.
The next day, Slashdot publishes a story about a collaboration between Square and Disney, with Square everything except a Disney sense of humor and characters from both.
Now, I'm willing to give Taco the benefit of the doubt. Maybe both Disney and Square are in bed with Hollings, so it makes sense that they're working together. However, he then says, "Very positive review. Gotta admit, I'm intrigued." Aside from the fact that any game with a "Disney sense of humor" and Donald Duck as the court's chief magician is bound to suck, Taco is endorsing the very company who bought a senator to make a law to outlaw open-source!
<sarcasm>Maybe the CBDTPA isn't that bad after all. You won't have your PS2 Linux kit, or Linux anywhere for that matter, but you'll have all the Square-Disney collaborations you could ever want!</sarcasm>
Slashdot is "News for nerds, stuff that matters", right? Well, you're faced with a "difficult" decision. Which matters more: Linux or Disney?
creative talents of ... Disney
So this time they didn't use someone else's story, or make a sequel? Oh, wait, they reused characters originally drawn decades ago.. never mind.
While we're at it, anyone see the McDisney ads at Walt Donald's World? "Disney, 100 Years of Magic"
Now unless they count baby Walter's used diapers as "Disney Magic" I don't see how they can reach back to 1902. But I suppose anything's possible when the Marketing Dept. is involved.
Then again, I suppose the 79 years since 1923 isn't quite good enough for the boredroom "executives" who's only creative contribution is the fragrance in the conference room after the catered lunch of Mexican food.
I still think someone ought to make the following movie:
"REVENGE OF DISNEY"
Starring Jackie Chan as Walt E. Disney
A story about a victim of mistaken identity arriving at the very gates of the "Magic Kingdom." Looking around, he sees his own name and only the outline of his beloved character's disembodied head plastered over every flat surface in a display of wanton greed so profound that the enraged cartoonist vows to carry out a one-man campaign to wrest control of the entertainment behemoth from its corporate masters.
Following scenes of frantic, moving, dubbed speeches, gripping courtroom drama, and an action-packed chase through the back hallways of a cineplex on opening night, the film culminates in a spectacular 45-minute "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"-esque kung-fu fight scene in the Disney Corporation's board room as the screaming, elderly, bandanna-wearing animator defeats the entire company's senior management single-handed.
The film ends with Disney, having liquidated the company, and placing its entire portfolio in the public domain, opening an art school with a record $800 million endowment, then retiring to a life of drawing one of a kind cartoons for children in the park.
Truly an instant classic.
That was quite stupid :P Have you really been clicking the "no score +1 bonus" checkbox all this time?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Sure the latest Final Fantasies have had wonderful movies to look at, there games are far more than the movies. Roughly speaking, you get just about as much gameplay (if not more) in the modern games plus you get about an hour (oh my god, an hour of movies in a 40 hour game...its ALL FMV, isn't it?) of movie content as well. I still play them all. Now, with that being said, I do think that Kingdom Hearts is supposed to addressed more to kids than to adults, but I am sure it will be somewhat enjoyable to everyone else. Disney may or may not be evil (a personal choice), but Square is at least a True Neutral diety (yes, an RPG reference). As for how MGS2 and GTA3 compared to Final Fantasy 10, I have no idea about which sold more but I would say that critics tended to look at them close to the same. I personally thought FFX was a better game (but then I tend to prefer that sort over those sorts) but I realize the other two are good as well.
Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday March 31, @12:50PM
But what if I set it to Japan time?
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday April 1, @2:50AM
Nice try.
Granted, it was posted to IGN on 27 March, but not Slashdot. I'll believe it when it's still there on 2 April.
Evil bastards.
I love it how people piss and moan about the DMCA/SSSCA/CBDTPA and then howl with delight and help subsidize it when something neat looking comes along. Grow a backbone and vote with your feet people! Don't buy CDs from the maggots in the RIAA, and don't buy DVDs and Disney games from the scum in the MPAA/Disney.
Oh, but I'm a troll no doubt for not gobbling up everything those enemies of freedom toss to me.
I know I may be modded down as a troll, but you shouldn't be seeing this! By doing so you are supporting Disney and therefore supporting the SSSCA/whatever acronym it is today.
To view this page without the large, annoying advertising images, add "images.slashdot.org" to your WebWasher URL block list.
Honestly though, I don't think ole walt will have too much of a problem with what's beccome of his company when he gets defrosted :P
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It looks so gay. I couldn't stand to play an RGP with that many colors.
I might be wrong with this, but I think they are teaming up with disney because they need the money. You do remember "Final Fantasy" the movie, right? It was a great movie, but it shouldn't have been called final fantasy, but that is a whole different topic.
Okay, Square lost a HUGE amount of money on that movie, so teaming up with Disney might have boosted their money supply a bit, and the game might actually appeal to younger kids and big kids alike.
You never know, this game might be good, but remember, I did say might, so don't hold me to it...
-=J=-
-- Goto Blasto.Net for GOOD, FREE E-Mail, with many names to choose! Really! GO!
As I was browsing through the screenshots, IGN suddenly made all the media subscription only. Must be a clever ploy at getting the slashdot effect to work for you.
Some might think a game that is 50% Squaresoft/50% Disney might be the same thing as a game that is 50% Capcom/50% Barney but I dont think it will be too bad. Ive been curiously watching the Gia over the past few months and the screenshots look somewhat interesting. I think the two companies are trying to draw in the younger crowd to play more RPGs. I think they will succeed with the extremely crisp graphics and similar battle system to the Final Fantasy series. Im used to such games Final Fantasy, Persona, and Dragon Warrior and this will be a unique addition to my collection of games. I dont mind Disney that much just as long as Pokemon doesnt make a cameo in the game somewhere. :)
Oh, and a unanimous certanity that the kid hero is going to turn out to be Mickey in the end, since the mouse was very conspicuous by his absence in all the bits they were showing.
This is the sort of game where you wonder if the history of making the thing might not be more interesting than the actual game itself. Who approached who with the idea of 'Let's make a game that jams together the wholly-alien styles of Square and Disney together, with lots of fannish references!'? Who's paying money to who? Who's publishing it in the States: Disney Interactive, Square, Sony, some un-named party to be named later?
Meanwhile, Treasure is working on no less than three different Tiny Toons games. Sigh.
"If the opening movie is any indication of what's to come when Kingdom Hearts becomes available in the US, its going to be the best thing to hit the PS2 since, well, Final Fantasy X"
Umm, maybe I'm in the minority here, but that was possibly the lamest game intro I have ever sat through. Maybe the game itself is good, but as I watched the intro, I just kept finding myself asking 'wtf is this?!?!' over and over. Is falling in the ocean over and over until you find the hidden underwater Disney shrine the point of the game? wtf?!
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
...to count and publicize the wonders and qualities of Disney. Meanwhile, they are one of the most powerful members of a consortium that's working hard to eliminate freedoms enjoy most by the type of readers that consume Slashdot.
Way to go guys. Not only are most religious and polotical leaders hypocrites, but so is a huge group of the geek archtype.
Why bother.
Did anyone else read that title as "Square and Disney Team up For Klingon Hearts," or am I just too much of a star trek fan?
Well you got the details on the game now, check out the soundtrack. It seems pretty killer.
Spilled.net
Every time you spend a dollar on a Disney film
or buy something advertised on ABC, you are
placing a vote in favor of the DMCA.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Disney has also teamed up with another gaming company (T&E Soft). But this one isnt turing out as good as the Square relationship. The SEC is investing the company who got involved in this big mess. Check it out here.
Spilled.net
Please note that this is NOT Usenet. This is Slashdot, a completely different web-based discussion system.
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." Bill Hicks
Disney is "highly creative" now? Granted, I'm not a big fan, but the last two Disney movies I can think of off the top of my head are Tarzan (thats never been done before),and Atlantis (apparently a close approximation of an older anime movie). I saw a commercial the other day for "Cinderella II" on DVD. Whatever magic there ever was left that kingdom long ago.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
at network hearts.
Oh Kingdom.
I've been coding X *and* win32 in one application today, it has turned my brain to Emmenthal
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
I heard the main characters were followed around by a cute little fairy named Cbdtpa who casts protection pixi dust on all the good little electronic devices. It was also rumored that this fairy locked up the infomus Packet Fairy and put new locks on her magic packets. :)
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Disney has lost any sense of imagination - they just keep recycling the same characters over and over again. Hell, they didn't even create most of their characters to begin with.
Square? Same thing. So, who's the hero this time? Cumulonimbus? Let me guess, he's fighting an evil villain! Oh, and I bet you have to save/see his girlfriend get killed!
I'm actually surprised. Though Square's games utterly suck in terms of any sort of story, they have done pretty things with graphics. But to think they'd sink as low as partnering with Disney..
Oh, and whiners, keep in mind, Slashdot is a news site. It's supposed to be as unbiased as possible. You people screaming about 'Wot, Disney isn't evil t'day, love?!'.. Are morons. You're the same ones who bitch when Slashdot only posts stories about MS, or stories spreading the love of Linux.
Christ.
So they have so little money but ENOUGH to buy out a very popular franchise from another company
(one that they pretty much blatantly ripped off for their widely praised FFT).
I've been a fan of Square games for a loong time, but I get the sense they're developing more and more giant-corp mentality like Disney. Maybe it's a vision of things to come. I never believe a second that Square is doing this just because of their "financial" crisis.
Erm, it's not hypocrisy. Taco is just telling us loyal Slashdotters about a neat up-and-coming game that we should pirate. It's ridiculous to think he'd be telling us to BUY it, because it's from Disney.
/. crowd is, on the whole, technically competent enough to copy PS2 games, as opposed to the rest of the general populace.
Of course he can't explicitly tell us to pirate it or else he'd get sued, but did you see him tell us to buy it either? No. Plus I'd say that the
Not to sound like a flame, but do you need everything spelled out for you?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Utada Hikaru is singing something for that isn't she? she rocks my socks.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
I was into it for the most part but for two major points.
1) I am just not interested in playing any more games about 12-year-olds. I can't play Illusion of Gaia anymore for that very reason. I similarly shied away from FF9 because the the would-be womanizing first character looked about 13, and, well, I don't find the prospect of directing or even bearing witness to a character's poorly written, barely-pubescent escapades very appealing. If you are going to put female characters in tight outfits, at least make *some* effort to reduce the head-body ratio. They look *far* younger from the neck up than they do from the neck down. I understand that's a general anime convention, but I don't think the formula translates comfortably into 3D.
2) The Disney part. If after such a fantastically vivid and surreal dream, I found myself on a giant stained-glass picture of Snow White, I would consider my imagination a loss. [This dream brought to you by Disney...eucch] Some things just don't belong in my subconscious, and Disney iconography is counted among those things.
Someone at the office put 500MB of kingdom hearts movies on the file server. Thus causing sourcesafe to corrupt its database (its response to "disk full" errors) the next time it was used. Curse those DVD filling developers! I remember when 64K was considered huge... mumble mumble...
Haha! This is just an early April Fools joke (early for US timezones, but not for the Japanese game sites where this originated). They took promo shots from the unreleased Final Fantasy XI, and used Photoshop to mix them with characters and backdrops from Disney 3D Creations. I can't believe how many people have fallen for this already. Good job, guys.
Uh, trading Shiva for Dumbo as my summoning in a Square RPG? No thanks. Back to XenoSaga for me :)
I just want to respond to all the posts on this story and others decrying the DMCA and the CBDTPA.
The reason these laws exist or will exist is that many people, including many slashdot readers, have been pirating music, software and movies like hyperactive baboons for quite some time now. The establishment wouldn't care about DRM or anything like that if all people did with mp3's was to rip 'em and listen to them off their hard drives. But abuse of fair-use privileges has provoked this response. Evil corporations have the right to defend their own intellectual property. That's the law, and it makes sense.
There's no use now in whining like spoilt children. Your own (or your peers' own) actions are directly responsible for the current situation. Tough luck.
My other sig is also a
It is probably inappropriate to support Disney in any way. That includes recommending anything from which the company may derive either money or favorable publicity.
Remember that Disney is the real backer of the bill formerly known as the SSSCA.
I have been recommending against every Disney product that I encounter whenever any reasonable opportunity presents itself. It's usually quite easy to find good reasons to be against them. Flat characters, shallowness, etc. and I will use this. But if it seems at all appropriate, then I will also mention the way Disney has been spreading political corruption (I consider the purchase of Senators to be political corruption!). And I will mention that the copyright laws have been continually extended specifically to keep Mickey Mouse covered by the copyright law.
And I will particularlly display clear distain for the artistic quality of the Disney works. They merit it, too. Some of the older ones were decent, I suppose, but none of the recent ones were worth the price of a ticket to a rerun. At best they are an expensive version of lonely-hearts columnist. And that's their high point. The characters are flat. The coloring is unskilled. The plots are either missing or stolen. I suppose that the action is usually smooth, and there are a few nice details, but that hardly makes up for the rest of it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This is bad tactics because: This is not a good recommendation. A copy of a program doesn't cost the publisher anything, and does act as free advertising.
This is bad strategy because: If you support the illegal copying of disks, then you are providing ammunition that will be used against you in the legislature.
Avoid and disparage the evil ones. Do not do anything that will benefit them in any way. This means do not advertise their wares as well as do not purchase their products.
Support the good companies. Purchase software from them, and advertise their wares. Use the "Powered by red hat" sticker that came inside your CD box. If at all acceptable, use the bumpersticker. Or Mandrake (I presume that they have a similar sticker). Or, if you like SuSE, support them. (I dislike their proprietary installer, but compared to most companies they count as good guys.) If Debian is your distribution, perhaps you should buy and wear a Debian tee-shirt, or whatever they have available.
And join and support the EFF. And the ACLU. They seem to be relatively quiet on this front, from what I've noticed), still, if their attention can be caught they could be a powerful friend, and their goals are generally compatible.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.