I’ve been having these weird thoughts lately… like, should I go back and replay the Kingdom Hearts series or not? Fortunately, Square Enix has made this decision trivial with the announcement that it’s releasing the series on Steam on June 13th. To celebrate, and perhaps destabilize an entire generation of adults for whom the first Kingdom Hearts trailer was a transformative experience (aka, me), a trailer was released with a brand-new recording of Hikaru Utada’s “Simple and Clean.”
Those who purchase Kingdom Hearts III + Re Mind DLC will also get a special keyblade, “Dead of Night,” which looks pretty slick in Steam Logo blue and grey. Each of the three games is itself a bundle of a bunch of KH games spanning platforms and console generations. You can find a full breakdown of which game is in what bundle here or on each game’s Steam page.
There’s also the fact that these games are releasing a week before Summer Game Fest with Geoff Keighley posting about the game possibly suggesting Kingdom Hearts IV might make an appearance. Getting a new crop of players into the series right before sharing more info on the next entry seems like a shrewd idea.
It is exceedingly hilarious that even though this Steam trailer lists the games in chronological order, the games themselves are not bundled that way. If you want to play the way the trailer lays it all out, you’ll have to start by watching (because it’s a movie, not a game) Back Cover on Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8, then jump to Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 to play Birth By Sleep before jumping back to KH2.8 to play Birth by Sleep – A Fragmentary Passage. Simple right?
Speaking of simple, Hikaru Utada’s new version of “Simple and Clean” moved me to tears. I was one of those teenagers who wasn’t the biggest Disney fan but was into Japanese pop, visual kei (think of a Japanese version of glam metal), and Japanese rock. Hearing that new take on such a beloved song made me feel both 16 years old and 36 years old but in a good way. This thing that I have loved, which has inspired the kinds of emotions that led me to my job today, has grown up with me, but not so much that it is unrecognizable to my younger self. And when I go back and play these simple and clean games — some of them again and some of them for the first time — I hope I can face my fears from previous disappointment and be reminded of the sanctuary I loved so much.