And for every portable, a Kingdom Hearts. At today’s Tokyo Game Show, Square Enix showed a series of trailers in their Closed Mega Theater, culminating in a trilogy of side stories for the Kingdom Hearts series. The games will focus less on the Disneyland set-up of the previous titles, and delve more deeply into the dramatic entanglements of the Organization XIII. Two of the games feature Roxas as the main protagonist, making Sora and his Disney friends secondary figures of importance. However, seeing as all three games appear to be prequels, players will be allowed to face off against their favorite vanquished Disney villain (yet again).

The first game showed in the closed theater was for mobile phones and titled Kingdom Hearts: Coded. Jiminy Cricket is shown flipping through his notebook and comes upon a block of text reading “We must return to free them from their torment.” He rushes this news to King Mickey, who declares that only one person will do. So the cell phone entry will see Sora fighting without his friends. The trailer featured virtual reality simulations with eerie green lighting captioned “Debugging Mode.” The gameplay appeared somewhat puzzle game-oriented in nature, with time trials and customizable environments. All the familiar Heartless enemies were on display, as well as familiar locales such as Destiny Island and Traverse Town, though all appeared a tad more pixelated that usual.

The next game shown for the Nintendo DS came with the puzzling title Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. The trailer begins with Namine putting Sora into his hibernation chamber prior to the second title to forget the events of Chain of Memories. The story then follows Roxas and members of the Organization XIII, who fight cooperatively against the Heartless through the use of networked DS consoles. Most of the scenes showed Axel talking with Roxas, both wearing their hooded black robes. For anyone who might have preferred taking Axel and Xigbar along for the ride in place of Donald and Goofy, clearly this is your chance. Just how sympathetic a cohort of villains will turn out remains to be seen, but experimentation with the Organization’s special attacks should make for some interesting gameplay. The trailer ends dramatically with the revelation that a fourteenth member exists: a young girl who’s face is covered by her hood.

The last and most novel of the games shown was a PSP title called Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep. The trailer begins by showing clips from the series sped up and played backwards, ending with Sora’s first appearance in the original game. A caption reads “The Distant Past…” The game appears to feature some of the characters appearing in the special ending of Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix + and shown on the left wedge of the mural pictured below, opposite the Organization XIII. The guy shown between Sora and Mickey, who looks something like Nomura’s design of Zack in Crisis Core, appears to be the main playable character. He has his own keyblade and puts it to use fighting the Heartless outside familiar locales like Beast’s mansion and the Olympus Coliseum. There also appears to be a new helmeted antagonist, whose armor looks like that of Riku’s in Chain of Memories. Just what is the connection between these two timelines may have to wait for next year’s Tokyo Game Show.

New concepts, and three new Kingdom Hearts titles

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