Kingdom Hearts Blog

2002-10-24T11:09:00.000-05:00

Wooohooo! I managed to secure the Kingdom Hearts promotional box! It's quite big, but smaller than other promotional boxes I've seen. It is an awesome exact replica of the real game cover on the DVD-size box, including the barcode. I wonder if that barcode will actually scan. Hehe! I've also managed to put on reserve two in-store posters that are of a different size than the official promotional poster, which hangs on my wall. So, soon, I'll have 3 posters. Woohoo! All I need now is to get the Japanese poster. I recently got myself a video cable to capture screenshots of the game. I just made a short movie of how I generally got Sora to win Riku's race around the island. Lately, I've been switching between trying to beat Riku in battle on the little island (I've read you can do it 99 times somewhere) and continuing the game. I found it is much easier to beat him if Sora levels up to around 7. Then those nasty back-kicks don't hurt so much. Anyway, as for the rest of the game, right now, Sora is trying to find Leon in some underground cavern.

2002-10-22T12:19:00.000-05:00

I'm glad to say that I've gotten through the Deep Jungle! YAY! Although I'm still not sure what to do with the black flowers in the jungle. They open with a thunder spell, but nothing happens when Sora opens them all. There is a scene later on with the flowers and the constantly re-generating Heartless that I finished, but I wonder if there is something to be done there before that scene... And what's in the tree tops? I feel like I forgot some things. Oops! The infamous vine scene wasn't too bad. I can swing from vine to vine perfectly fine. Now, staying on top of the trees is another story, though. Clumsy me, I keep on making Sora slip off and fall into the hippo pond. Jumping onto those mushroom-like trees in that pond seemed to be the bigger nightmare! I finally got to that one far off tree by slashing right before Sora was going miss the tree. The gorillas didn't seem too grateful for the assistance, especially Terk. Funny, I thought they would be a bit nicer. I must say, the tiger and Clayton were either wussy bosses or I had somehow leveled up and equipped my characters really well. No potions used! During all the battle scenes, I keep on screaming, "Hit me! Just stay away from the duck!" LOL! The way Donald screams when hit amuses me in a twisted way... >:-)

2002-10-21T18:34:00.000-05:00

Within the past couple weeks, a lot of Kingdom Hearts sites have popped up and submitted to my webrings. I've added a ton of them now, but some are still in processing. I'm trying to figure out how to install webrings onto Yahoo! Groups, and I have a working plan so far. For the past week or so, the CrickRock website seems to have died. I can't load it from my computer. Argh! If it doesn't come back up by mid-November, I'm removing that ring. In terms of the game, I finally made it through Wonderland and blasted the Gummi Ship into the Olympus Colloseum. I guess the Deep Jungle is further ahead. The team (Sora, Donald, and Goofy) almost got to the round with Cloud, who is one of the bosses of this world. But sadly, they all died in the round just before him. Second time's a charm, right? Phil is quite an odd character. I'm not sure how busting barrels in training is suppose to help. Then again, I think Phil isn't suppose to be that great of a trainer? I really need to see the Hercules movie.

2002-10-10T11:39:00.000-05:00

I've gotten through Traverse Town and am hopelessly lost in Wonderland's Lotus Forest trying to find what else to do. According to the strategy guide, at the point where I'm at, Sora is suppose to jump on some mushrooms near the forest entrance towards a door to a bizarre room. Well, I found the bizarre room, but I went through an opening in the foliage, not a door. And Sora is suppose to fall onto a big faucet. I didn't. Oy! Well, hopefully, I can find help elsewhere, especially since Alice is missing in action and the Queen of Hearts isn't well ... too helpful. And that ever cryptic Cheshire Cat! Urgh, just want to throw a boulder on him! Being the Kingdom Hearts Open Directory Editor, I get some of the most random messages like this one: "Sora your so cool are you friend with riku yet i havent gotten that far tho my cosin erased my file can you come visit some time and give me a free game and guide." Yes, Sora is cool and Riku's his friend. Whether or not Sora can drop by and fix that erased game file is another story, though.

2002-10-05T18:23:00.000-05:00

I couldn't believe Wal-Mart didn't have a poster frame for this size! They had tons for 20 x 30 inches, but not for 22 x 28 inches. Argh! So after going to two home craft and garden stores, I finally secured a poster frame for $7.25. Woohoo! The side of the poster that matches the gamebox cover now hangs on the wall of my computer room. Maybe in a few months, I'll turn the poster over and show the other side with Sora and his keyblade standing in between Donald and Goofy. The background seems to be a washed out collage of game screenshots, some I haven't seen yet. Now, back to the game and hopefully to the Deep Jungle before I die!

2002-10-04T00:54:00.000-05:00

Gee, what a slow week it has been at work. Hardly any customers are at the mall, and even fewer actually buy something at the store. Unfortunately, our area coordinator doesn't understand the idea that there are no customers coming in to help boost profit and sales, and is making insane demands. Fortunately, before I left work, I managed to sell a cellphone at the last minute! I think it is the first phone sold at the store in over a week now. Cellphones bring in a lot of revenue, so hopefully, that will appease the area coordinator for a while. Riding off the high of selling a cellphone, I stopped by a gaming store on my way out of the mall, and just casually asked if the store sold any game posters. The guy said no but asked me which game poster I was looking for. I said that I was looking for a Kingdom Hearts poster. The guy reached below the counter, pulled out a huge poster, rolled it up and gave it to me! It is the large double-sided (28 x 22 inches) promo poster, too! I was stunned, since this poster is selling on Ebay for $13-$20, and that doesn't even include shipping fees!

2002-09-27T17:04:00.000-05:00

I'm glad to say I've beaten Riku at fighting and at the race. For the life of me, I just couldn't stay on top of the palm trees on my way back to Kairi. It seems that if Sora is to run below the palm trees, have him jump onto the elevated sandy ledge and jump back onto the bridge platforms. I was trying to have him swim around that ledge and make a mad dash across the sand! Oy! Wasn't working! The storm finally hits the islands, and dang, do those Heartless beings come in by the swarms! Just a tip to those who are about to reach this point: Sora's little beating stick is ineffective, so don't bother trying to battle them until he gets something better! I got Sora to level up a bunch of times before heading off to Traverse Town. The big Heartless is a big wimp! But then again, maybe that's a good thing since Sora's not too strong just yet. I'm right now lost and confused in Traverse Town. I managed to find 2 cute Moogles and Cid! I just wish I can find Cid's Accessories Shop again because he has a save pad. Apparently, 99 Dalmations are missing, and Donald's nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie run a shop in Traverse Town, too! I've always wondered who their father (Donad's brother) is. You never see this mysterious duck...

2002-09-23T11:04:00.000-05:00

I'm so glad I don't live in Greece right now. I feel terrible for any gamers who are living there. If you want to know what I'm refering to, read this news article from GameSpot about it. On happier news, I FINALLY GOT KINGDOM HEARTS on Thursday!!!! I had hoped that on Tuesday, the store would have gotten a game shipment in, but alas, just music. Apparently, the gaming stores in the mall had a game shipment in, but weren't allowed to sell Kingdom Hearts until Wednesday, unless I was willing to put down a reserve fee or something. They were selling it for $54.00?!?! Geez! Well, Thursday rolled around, which is the massive shipping day for my store. At 5:00 PM, still no sign of the game. I was getting a bit frustrated at this point, so I started prying open box after box, until finally, I found a box with 4 Kingdom Hearts games in it! Woohoo! I bought a copy and went to the Electronics Boutique to get a copy of the super cool strategy guide. So far, I'm still on Destiny Island trying to beat Riku at fighting and at the race. I saw a glimpse of Donald and Goofy. So cool!

2002-09-14T20:52:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a heartfelt day of remembrance this past Wednesday. I had to work at the mall that day and, gee, it was so empty. There were a few customers, but not many. The release date is just 3 days away, so get your Kingdom Hearts copies soon! I really hope we get a shipment in, but I guess I'll find out since I have to work that day. I finally got the October 2002 issue of the Official PlayStation Magazine. The in-depth view on the game is incredibly long. I was quite impressed! It covers the worlds in a bit more detail and gives some insight into the development of the game. It also has a new preview of the game. I couldn't find any playable demo, though. I was a bit disappointed there. Although the Spyro the Dragon demo was very cute. If you hadn't heard already, Final Fantasy VII's Sephiroth will appear for the US release of the game. Woohoo! >:-) An interesting side note ... if Sephiroth ever appeared in a movie, the magazine says that Orlando Bloom -- the blonde, long-haired, elf archer Legolas Greenleaf from Lord of the Rings -- would make a good candidate. Just by comparing physical appearance, I thought it was an excellent match.

2002-09-08T01:44:00.000-05:00

On my way to depositing my first paycheck of my new job, I stopped by a local grocery store. The new October 2002 issue of the Official PlayStation Magazine is out! You cannot miss it since the magazine's cover has the Kingdom Hearts image on it. From what I could see on the cover, the CD includes a playable demo of the game!!!! Everyone, go out to your local bookstore or any store with a good magazine section and pick up a copy! I haven't picked one up myself since I was outta cash at the moment, but once my check goes into my account, I'm off to buy a copy. Woohoo! :-D

2002-09-05T13:44:00.000-05:00

I've been absent from this blog for almost a month now, and what a month it has been! I was spending most of August trying to find a job to help pay bills. After filling out all kinds of applications, I finally got accepted to a music store in a local mall. Yay! :-D Besides music, the store also sells movies and video games. In less than 2 weeks, Kingdom Hearts should be released. Hopefully, I'll get me an employee discount on it. Speaking of games, the used PlayStation is now stuck with me since the lousy seller has decided to ignore all proposals for a refund. I haven't heard from this seller in almost a month, and unfortunately, Ebay is not helpful. Don't be fooled by Ebay's so-called buyer/fraud protection policies. It takes months to get through the process, and you might get a little refund at the end, but not guaranteed. In my case, the most Ebay would give me for compensation would be $10 -- not worth it. Oh well, the system hasn't busted yet, and the demo CDs from the last two issues of the Offical PlayStation Magazine were awesome! July had the official site preview, and August had the first part of a behind-the-scenes preview. Get them if you can!

2002-08-07T17:00:00.000-05:00

Amazing the irony of life! I finally got my Sony PlayStation 2 in the mail today. I was so excited! It finally came after a month and a half! Then to my dismay, after 3-minutes of inspection, I discovered that the unit was a used one. The auction said it was to be brand new. Oooh, the fire blazing within me! >:-( I sent some emails to the seller about this already, gotten a few replies in which the seller claims ignorance and was shocked as I am at it being used, especially since the seller also said that he/she inspected it. Nice inspection ... didn't see the dust on the fan or the smudges or the fact that it came with an RFU adaptor and not the default AV cable. Anyway, sending this thing back would be a nightmare, so I'm hoping to get a partial refund to reflect the fact that this is a falsely advertised used unit. Maybe in the end, it would only cost me $100 even, which is very good for even a used PS2. Hehe! In more happy news, if you live in or near the Los Angeles, California area and have some free time near the end of August, check out Disney's Ebay Auction to attend a Kingdom Hearts pre-launch party. It is very exclusive and sounds like lots of fun! Too bad I can't make it.

2002-08-06T17:02:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, my family and I went to a nearby waterpark for the day and had lots of fun. We rode several waterslides and rides a zillion times it seems. I cannot imagine being outside at an amusement park that wasn't a waterpark in the intense heat that we had yesterday. It was blazing hot! Getting out of the pool and standing on land for 10 minutes -- you start burning up already! Geez! Good thing the place had Dippin' Dots Ice Cream! Yum! In the spirit of me being away when these things happen, there was a big Kingdom Hearts event yesterday. SquareSoft announced the official release date for Kingdom Hearts. For the longest time, the only release date the public had was Fall 2002. Some sites said the game should be released October 3rd or 14th, thinking that would put it smack dab in the middle of the "Fall 2002" time period. Well, to the delight of fans, the game is to be released officially in the USA on 17 September 2002! Woohoo! A month earlier than expected. That is a rather rare occurence in the world of video game releases. Usually, games are delayed. Anyway, expect to see it hit the shelves in a little more than a month at a retail price of $49.95.

2002-08-01T15:39:00.000-05:00

My wonderful sister went driving on her first main city road (where cars actually move and aren't parked) yesterday evening and I dunno what happened ... she hit a curb making a right turn down our neigbhorhood street to go home. In a panic, she ... sat there frozen. Good thing no other cars were wanting to make right turns. Needless to say, she hates driving. LOL!. In another (and safer) world, an awesome thing has happened this week. I got accepted to be the open directory editor for Kingdom Hearts. The open directory categorizes sites based on topic into appropriate categories, and are reviewed by actual people and not webots or spiders. The open directory used by some of the major search engines like AOL Search, Netscape, Altavista, Google when they do a routine search crawl to add sites to their search listings. Basically, if you manage to get your site approved and listed in the open directory, it will very likely be listed in the major search engines as well. There are so many guidelines that editors have to follow. I hope I can learn them all, and find good Kingdom Hearts sites on Internet for submission. I've also downloaded a couple of movies from GameSpot, so awesome! The I just viewed the English scene with Minnie, Daisy, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy Cricket in the Disney Castle. I finally understand what they were saying in Japanese now since I have the Japanese version of that scene, too. I'm still amazed that some people can pull of Donald's distinctive voice. Keyblade is more than just a weapon...

2002-07-30T13:36:00.000-05:00

I got me a huge package in the mail yesterday with lots of German goodies. YAY! As I was busy admiring all the new items, a huge event just whizzed by. Yesterday, the 29th of July, was a big Kingdom Hearts day on many gaming sites such as GameSpot and IGN. Apparently, SquareSoft released some media from the US version of the game. The subtitles are now in English (with bigger letters than the original Japanese characters), and there are a bunch of new movies. You can hear Haley Joel Osment as Sora as well as a clip of the new English version of "Hikari" by Utada Hikaru. The English version is a remake of the PlanitB remix, and the melody doesn't sound totally the same nor are the lyrics translation exact (they hardly ever are). I like the little variation in it myself. Anyway, I'm going to be downloading lots of stuff today and tomorrow. Yeah! I'm also going to terrorize my sister's website to see what horrors she's put up last night.

2002-07-24T17:07:00.000-05:00

For the past week or so, I've been hanging around the new Kingdom Hearts forum at IGN. It's only about two weeks old as of this post, so there aren't that many people there yet, but I'm sure it will grow soon. Some visitors are trying to get Kingdom Hearts icons into the IGN icon database, so we can use them as avatars. If you have an IGN Insider's subscription, definitely stop by! Yeah, most of the really popular gaming sites require a paid subscription. I have paid annual ones for IGN and GameSpot to check out Kingdom Hearts among other games. GameSpot has more information, screenshots, movies, etc. for Kingdom Hearts, but IGN has a forum for it. The good thing about IGN is that you can test out the the Insider sections and forums for a week free. In another part of the Internet galaxy, I found the Kingdom Hearts NeoPet. He's an Eyrie and he was born in May 2002. He's not my NeoPet and his owner is unknown to me. I have NeoPet, but it is a Kacheek, and he'll be turning 1 in October. If you don't know what Neopets are, they are virtual pets. Neopia is the largest community of virtual pets on the internet with over 20 million owners and pets. There are shops, hotels, ski lodges, cafes, auction booths, trading posts, stockmarkets, academies, battledomes, guilds, and tons of games to play to earn neopoints, which is the currency. You can find Neopets merchandise at the Limited, Too stores in local US malls.

2002-07-21T17:47:00.000-05:00

One of my friends paid me a surprise visit Friday night, and we went apartment hunting yesterday. After looking at 15 apartment complexes or so, we finally decided that the first complex with a 2 bed 2 bath that we saw was the best. The key factor was that all the water and electrical bills would be paid for by the apartment and not us. Unfortunately, certain authority figures and immediate situations held me back, so I won't be rooming with my friend in any apartment for at least 3 months. My friend has to first get a small one-bedroom for a while. In other news, it seems really strange that I got a new battery for my laptop from Ebay 5 days after the auctio ended, while my PlayStation and Final Fantasy IX are still missing in action. I did fix the graphics on this page since they disappeared and made three more webrings for Kingdom Hearts using various services.

2002-07-18T19:14:00.000-05:00

Got and watched Harry Potter and my laptop is fixed again. Woohoo! Today, I went to see Men in Black II. Very awesome movie! I'm not sure if it is as good as the first one, but very close and very hilarious! Especially the Agent J scene with the big plastic tubes. That's all I'm gonna say. Too bad I accidentally spilled Sprite upon myself. Good thing it was clear and not Coca Cola or Dr. Pepper. Eeek! There was this nice poster for the Chamber of Secrets with little Dobby and his pillowcase attire, though. After the movie ended and being blinded by the sun for a few minutes, I went to a nearby electronics store. Despite being reared on PCs, those new Mac G4s with the really wide screens are awesome! *wishes for money to fall from the sky* One day, man, I'm gonna get one for my web design projects. I also got an August 2002 issue of the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine (or OPM) from a nearby electronics store. If you are into Kingdom Hearts (yeah, this blog is suppose to be about it, right?), you should definitely go get a copy because it has 2 little snippets on the game but the big thing is the DVD-ROM has a 190 MB video. What is the video showing? Good question because you need to play it on a Sony PlayStation 2, and as you probably know ... mine is not here ... still.

2002-07-17T15:42:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking of going today to Wal-Mart to get a copy of the Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone DVD. Lord of the Rings was way better, I know, but it is not out yet and I still like Harry and his books. I'm not a huge fanatic caught in the neverending craze or a fire-wielding anti-HP protestor. Both sides scare me actually. Especially all that merchandise at Wal-Mart in the toy section. Not just tyos: toiletries, school supplies, furniture, food, make-up, etc. and of course video games. I can see it now, next to the Harry Potter video rack are the glass video game shelves with the corresponding GameBoy Advance or Playstation version of the book. And a few games over is a copy of Final Fantasy IX -- the Greatest Hits Version no doubt. But still, it is there and not in my possession because it just won't get to my freaking doorstep from Ebay! Apparently, the seller realized 3 days after sending me the Final Fantasy games that Final Fantasy IX was still lying on the couch and sent it out last Friday, which would have been July 5th. It's been well over a week now. Hmm. I know it was sent via UPS ground, but geez, it seems the trucks are slow-moving tractors. Not that I can play if I ever do get it since the PlayStation 2 seller in another part of the country had some delays as well. A new baby. Okay, so that seller is excused up to a certain limit. I'll give it another week.

2002-07-15T17:36:00.000-05:00

My old Pentium 166 Mhz laptop died, so I'm having to figure out how to get it up and running Windows 95 again after a total hard drive wipeout courtesy of format c: Er ... yippee. Today was my sister's first day at Driver's Education at the same driving school I went to years ago. Apparently, the teacher is just as dumb as has been, although I'm sure she has a different teacher than I do. The reason being is that my old teacher was supposedly fired for being so bad. I must confess that I learned nothing during my driver's education session. But then again, who does, really? While she was at her first Driver's Education class, I was busy trying to get a comment forms for this lovely blog (which amazingly hasn't combusted in the past 48 hours) among other things. It seems that Enetation is the only free commenting service left available for blogs. I also joined Blog Snob to increase exposure to this blog via a form of blog description rotations. The ads are at the bottom of the blog, and I will say this: The blog sites appear randomly, and I have no control over which site shows up when this blog is loaded. Some of them might be a bit on the "iffy" side, so be forewarned. *evil grin* Anyway, that's why I put it at the bottom.

2002-07-13T16:14:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I've had this blog for about a week now. I finally figured out the workings of it as well as the bugs that BlogSpot seems to have. What has been irritating me all week was the messed up archive feature because I think I was messing with the archive options when the servers went beserk and did who knows what. Technical support says won't reply, and for some reason, none of my plea-for-help posts on the BlogSpot discussion forums show up. So finally, after testing an idea in a scrap blog, I deleted the Kingdom Hearts Blog and re-created it. Hopefully now that archive feature will stay put. I first created this blog on 6 June 2002, so all entries before this post were reposted from the past week. I just hope that the my template stays. It's been reset a few times because the template server has been screwing up as well. I have a feeling I'll be ranting more about the Blog service than the game. *mumbles* On the more plus side, I got around to making a kick-butt Kingdom Hearts Webring navigation panel, which can be seen at the bottom of this page. Booyah!

2002-07-13T16:03:00.001-05:00

Now for the first rant of the great blog! In mid-June I had won an auction on Ebay for Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy IX, and Final Fantasy X for a total of around $70 (including shipping/handling fees). Considering how Final Fantasy X retails for close to $40-50, that seemed to be an incredible deal! Those first three games were also the original versions, too, and not the cheap, green-bordered "Greatest Hits" version either. Well, I got the games, except for Final Fantasy IX -- the one that several of my friends say is the best of the PSX games -- because the seller seemed to have forgotten to include it in the box. Argh! I've emailed this seller back several times over the past 2 weeks, and not one response! Double Argh! It seems this person's disappeared. Someone shall answer to my wrath! >:-)

2002-07-13T16:03:00.000-05:00

It is rather sad ... Kingdom Hearts is the newest game by SquareSoft and will be released in the USA before Final Fantasy XI does. Yet, there are tons of sites about Final Fantasy XI, but hardly any about Kingdom Hearts itself. Yeah, I've seen Final Fantasy or SquareSoft fansites mention Kingdom Hearts and maybe have a section or two dedicated to it, but not one dedicated to just this game. The best all Kingdom Hearts site so far that I found is a French site. I can read French pretty well, but still, I'm talking about an English Kingdom Hearts only fansite. So, I'm in the process of spreading the good word of the big key! My sister talked about how some of her friends use the expage service to make quick webpages. I decided, what the heck, make a quick easy page to throw out there. If you've used expage before, you know it is geared toward the newest beginners, and therefore what you get is very limited. Even I was kind of shocked to see the how few of features it has, especialy since GeoCities and other free web hosts offer much better template services. No image uploading, just some strange photo service. Heck, the amount of text on a page is limited, too! My sister hates expages, but none the less, it was sufficient for a basic Quick Sheet on Kingdom Hearts that I whipped up in an hour.

2002-07-13T16:01:00.000-05:00

As hard as it may seem to believe, especially since I seem to be so fanatical about Kingdom Hearts ... I don't own any Sony PlayStation console. In fact, I've never played on a PlayStation either. I played some of the older Final Fantasy games on my roommate's Super Nintendo a few months ago, and that was actually my introduction to console games. That's right. I never played a console game until this year. Such an isolated child I was ... Anyway, I finally gave in and got me a new grape-colored Nintendo 64 for $70 because I got hooked onto Zelda: Link to the Past on that Super Nintendo. Despite knowing that most people think the Nintendo 64 sucks because it just didn't have many good games, I thought Ocarina of Time was just awesome, so now I'm hooked. I have that and Majora's Mask, Super Smash Brothers, Paper Mario (which I'm playing right now), Harvest Moon, and Donkey Kong 64. I might get one or two more games, but that's plenty for me for one console. Right now, I'm waiting for my new Sony Playstation 2 to come in the mail. I got it for $175 including shipping. Hehe! Take that Wal-Mart! $199 plus tax = around $216 ... I can add an 8 MB memory card and a PS2 remote for that price! Sheez! And to think, a few months ago, it was $299 for a PlayStation 2. I envy those who got one as a free gift.

2002-07-13T16:00:00.000-05:00

After days of drawing lines, cropping, resizing, mixing colors, writing HTML, and so on, the new blog layout (minus archives page) is up! I had started out with one of the preset templates called "Rounded Stretchy Corners". I kind of liked it, especially since I was introduced to this whole blog thing by my sister, whose friend had a huge blog with that template. Unfortunately, after designing many webpages by hand via HTML and doing my own web graphics, I just had to customize it and add more spunk to the design. Funny, I wanted to use that original template as my starting block since it was a simple design, and that was what I wanted ... guessed I jumped really far because it looks almost nothing like the original template anymore! This layout will be tweaked later on since I have some ideas to add more stuff to it. Hopefully, the servers won't go boom as they did yesterday.