Kingdom Hearts Marathon; Kingdom Hearts 2: What happened to the rails?

One critique often made against Tetsuya Nomura is that while he's great (most of the time) at self-contained stories, he struggles to follow them up with sequels and a continuous narrative. The biggest offender of this? This very franchise, because while the individual stories are relatively strong (provided you like the story structure), trying to piece them together becomes a nightmare worse than figuring out what is and isn't canon in a comic. Allow me to give you a taste of this as we tackle the sequel to Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts 2...

Kingdom Hearts Marathon; Kingdom Hearts: Time for a trip into absolute madness

My apologies for the sparatic content last month. Work, Christmas, and what happened to my grandfather took their toll on the sites and basically killed DCember 2018. The lesson of the day kids? Make a backlog, something that I will try and commit to this year. In the meantime, with Kingdom Hearts 3 on the horizon, let's begin to tackle a game series that, against all odds, somehow exists. Welcome to the Kingdom Hearts marathon.

Disney, Final Fantasy. Two things that most sane people would not think to put into the same sentence, let alone go the distance and make a game on it, and then to go even further with at least thirteen (oh Arceus I just thought of something about that... more on that next week) games, a card game, manga and novels. along with countless other bits of merchandise. It's honestly quite baffling that this exists, especially when you consider that all of this started cause one guy happened to be in the right place at the right time, yet here we are, with one of the biggest releases of the month being the Third game, while also being the thirteenth game, so long before I get to Kingdom Hearts 3 (as I still don't have the console to play it), let's look at the first game, that's also the fifth game? I think that's right at least... or maybe it's the forth because one of those is just cutscenes based on a mobile game...Kingdom Hearts.

Nostalga, feeling older then you actually are.

Unless you were born in the new millennium (and even then that's pushing it), I'm pretty sure everyone has had a moment when you suddenly feel older then you actually are, normally if you witness a anniversary of something you saw at the beginning if its life. While I'm sure it feels worse the older you get, for me at least, as someone who's 18 years old, it's a weird feeling knowing that the games you played, the shows and movies you watched are being classified as retro. I have very fond, memories of playing Nintendo 64's at restaurants and even my Primary School's before school care service when I was younger, playing Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Star Wars Pod Racer and Pokémon Stadium 1 and 2. Playing Crash Bandicoot 1, Spyro the Dragon 1, The amazing Spiderman, Atlantis the lost empire and Tomb Raider on my family's (specifically my father's) PlayStation 1, having to swap Memory cards when needed just to find my save files, along with the Need for Speed Underground games, Burnout 3 and the early LEGO games on the PlayStation 2. These are memories ingrained into my head, memories that are so strong that I can pick them up again 20+ years latter and still play it like the last time I played it was yesterday. It is because of those games that I remember the consoles controller's layout off by heart, to me, all the buttons on them are exactly where they need to be. I still remember the original Beyblades (I went to a Beyblade Tournament myself, when it was almost impossible to learn how to play Yu-Gi-Oh because the first season barely resembled the card game (I know this from experience). When Tamagotchi's were physical things and not apps, Scannerz were around and you had kids in shops scanning everything with a barcode (I might have been one of them...) when rumours were spreading about the mythical E-Reader, the theories of how to get Deoxys and or Jirachi, Mirage Island and more. I know this might be pathetic for readers who are older then me and even for people my age, I don't know what it is, but I always do like reminiscing on those days...

Please let me know if there is anything you like to reminisce about your younger days, what makes you feel older then you actually do when you realise how long its been.

On a non related note, my blog for Super Smash Brothers, Fan Disagreement has had over 100 views, so again, thankyou to all who have actually read the blog and this one as well.