One, not so long ago, nobody could fathom that a crossover of Disney’s various animated characters and settings could be blended together with the franchises of Japanese game developer Square (now Square-Enix) in a serious crossover title. Any reservations faded in 2002 with the release of the first Kingdom Hearts.
The concept of traversing through various worlds based on Disney and Square works in a videogame was a major hit, enough to spawn a sprawling franchise of its own. Let’s start from the very beginning and list down the places visited by the player in the original Kingdom Hearts title.
Four locations are original creations of Square; the other ten are based on works of Disney.
- Destiny Islands – home of original main characters Sora, Riku and Kairi; destroyed at the beginning of the game and swallowed into the End of the World; restored (partly) at the end of the first game
- Traverse Town – the game’s “hub locationâ€, made of fragments of destroyed worlds; from here, Sora and his companions travel to the other worlds
- Hollow Bastion – a massive castle that is all that remains of the Radiant Garden world; former home of Ansem the Wise and used as a base by Maleficent for a time
- End of the World – realm created by the destruction wrought by the Heartless, where the Destiny Islands were sent to; final boss area of the first game
- 100 Acre Wood – setting of Winnie the Pooh
- Agrabah – setting of Aladdin
- Atlantica – setting of The Little Mermaid
- Deep Jungle – setting of Tarzan
- Disney Castle – original world based on Walt Disney’s animated shorts; home of King Mickey, Queen Minnie, Donald and Goofy, among numerous other classic Disney characters; traversable in the beta but not in the finished game, only seen in cut-scenes
- Halloween Town – setting of The Nightmare Before Christmas
- Monstro – character/location in Pinocchio
- Neverland – setting of Peter Pan
- Olympus Coliseum – setting of Hercules
- Wonderland – setting of Alice in Wonderland