Kingdom Hearts V CAST

[Shademp]

Copy-pasting a bit from my FFVII Mobile Game Initiative thread. Just learned that something epic happened in the Kingdom Hearts community last year.

***

Ever heard of Kingdom Hearts V CAST? I hadn't (or at least not placed it in memory) until today. It was released on Verizon's V CAST on February 4, 2005.

The game consisted of four downloadable parts, seemingly in this order from first to last:
- Swordman Island
- Wonderland
- Agrabah
- Maleficent's Fortress


On July 13 of 2016, the files for the first part emerged! User "Wedge" of 4chan contributed with this treasure after finding his old LG Chocolate phone in the basement, then using BitPim to rip the files. The game is not yet possible to emulate but extracting and opening the files reveal game manuscript, images, music and 3D models. The emergence of these files is quite a happy story!

- Music Playlist
- 3D Models
- Textures, Game Manuscript, etc


On the KHInsider forum, Wedge writes...

Once you've beaten a world, you're given the options of either restarting, or downloading the next episode. Choosing the latter option overwrites the files in the games mod folder with the appropriate assets for the next environmnet.

In order to rip the remaining parts of the game, we would need to find three people who stopped playing in Wonderland, Agrabah, and Maleficent's Castle respectively (assuming the Verizon servers needed to grab the game are down). The possibility of that actually being done is up in the air though, considering those people would need access to their old phones, as well as a willingness to pull the files out of the game's directory.

We do not know the extent of Wedge's research and how he can be confident that this is *exactly* how download packets worked but it sounds reasonable enough.

Spoiler: ......LOOKIT 'IM

 

[Kermitu Kleric Katie]

Ngl, for a second I thought this was gonna be a thread about the cast for Kingdom Hearts 5, which confused me because 3 ain't even out yet.

 

[Lex]

How hilarious is it that I once had an LG chocolate

 

[Shademp]

Oops, I wrote "2006" instead of "2016" in the opening post. *fixes* Yes, the files were only discovered last year.

From Siliconera's interview with Keiji Fujita:

Fujita also told us an interesting story about the Kingdom Hearts mobile game for Verizon phones which was made by Superscape. “Kingdom Hearts was developed by Disney, not Square Enix. That’s why Tetsuya Nomura was very unhappy about the quality of the graphics because Disney just did it without his supervision.”

Yup, that sure sounds like Nomura.


Have some ye olde gameplay recordings!

 

[Super Mario]

Good lord that mobile game looks unplayable. I wouldn't touch it because it's got no presence of my pals, Donald and Goofy.

 

[Shademp]

It is beyond ridiculous how deep I had to dive in the Wayback Machine to find these URLs, but I found references to this game on the Verizon store.

- Link 1
- Link 2
- Link 3

Kingdom Hearts 3D
Walt Disney Internet Group

Explore new worlds in this original adventure as Sora must overcome obstacles and fend off enemies to find a cure before he becomes one of the Heartless forever. Airtime is required for use.

*images from Gamespot*

     

How very amusing that the game was called "Kingdom Hearts 3D" in the store and nowadays we have a game with that title (plus obligatory ridiculous subtitle).


Kingdom Hearts actually makes a tiny appearance at the end of this commercial, as one of the thumbnails you are meant to drag across the phone for some kind of effect. Nothing happens when you drag the thumbnail. I assume this was either meant to take you to a product page or trigger some video previews of the game.

 

[Shademp]

Stumbled upon an italian forum thread that gives us quite the lengthy list of phones compatible with this game. The post is from 2009 and it is unknown if they got the information directly from the Verizon store or from a second-hand source.

Spoiler: Phone list

Verizon Wireless G'zOne Boulder
Verizon Wireless CDM8975
Verizon Wireless CDM8950
LG VX8000
LG VX8100
LG VX8300
LG VX8350
LG VX8360
LG Chocolate (VX8500)
LG Chocolate (VX8550)
LG Chocolate (VX8600)
LG VX8700
LG VX9400
LG Versa (VX9600)
LG Dare (VX9700)
LG The V (VX9800)
LG enV (VX9900)
LG Voyager (VX10000)
LG enV2 (VX9100)
Motorola E815
Nokia 6315i
Samsung SCH-a890
Samsung SCH-a930
Samsung SCH-a950
Samsung SCH-a970
Samsung SCH-u470
Samsung SCH-u540
Samsung SCH-u550
Samsung SCH-u740
Samsung SCH-u750
Samsung Gleam
Samsung Flipshot
Samsung Renown
Samsung Glyde
Audiovox CDM8940
RAZR V3m
Motorola KRZR K1m
Motorola RAZR maxx Ve
Motorola RAZR 2 V9m
Motorola Vazr 2 V9m
Motorola Krave ZN4
Motorola W755
Motrola Rapture
Motorola Adventure V750
Nokia 6205​

   

With the product page on the Verizon store not having been archived, this is our only currently known source that specify which phones were compatible.

 

[Radigar]

It is beyond ridiculous how deep I had to dive in the Wayback Machine to find these URLs, but I found references to this game on the Verizon store.

- Link 1
- Link 2
- Link 3

Kingdom Hearts 3D
Walt Disney Internet Group

Explore new worlds in this original adventure as Sora must overcome obstacles and fend off enemies to find a cure before he becomes one of the Heartless forever. Airtime is required for use.

*images from Gamespot*

     

How very amusing that the game was called "Kingdom Hearts 3D" in the store and nowadays we have a game with that title (plus obligatory ridiculous subtitle).


Kingdom Hearts actually makes a tiny appearance at the end of this commercial, as one of the thumbnails you are meant to drag across the phone for some kind of effect. Nothing happens when you drag the thumbnail. I assume this was either meant to take you to a product page or trigger some video previews of the game.

I found some better quality screenshots for this game:

Kingdom Hearts V CAST

Spoiler

Also found two screenshot about
Kingdom Hearts Mobile other KH mobile game only released in Japan for the Docomo Prime Series-P-01A cell phones. It began on December 15, 2008 and ended on April 30, 2013.

Spoiler

Video information:
Little videos about the game, directs download links are actually broken

Spoiler

Kingdom Hearts Official Movie 1: Sora begins a new journey in this movie. (Filename: kinghts_mob01 Approx: 0m 18s | Low Res 3.6 MB)
Suppossed Streaming Link

Kingdom Hearts Official Movie 2: Sora claims a prize in this clip. (Filename: kinghts_mob02 Approx: 0m 17s | Low Res 3.4 MB)
Suppossed Streaming Link

Kingdom Hearts Official Movie 3: Sora goes on a wild ride in this movie. (Filename: kinghts_mob03 Approx: 0m 21s | Low Res 4.3 MB)
Suppossed Streaming Link

Kingdom Hearts Official Movie 4: Take a look at some tricky jumps in a cave filled with lava. (Filename: kinghts_mob04 Approx: 0m 14s | Low Res 2.9 MB)
Suppossed Streaming Link

Kingdom Hearts Official Movie 5: After dodging an obstacle, Sora opens a chest filled with munny. (Filename: kinghts_mob05 Approx: 0m 12s | Low Res 2.4 MB)
Suppossed Streaming Link

Kingdom Hearts Official Movie 6: Sora climbs to the top of a mountain in this movie. (Filename: kinghts_mob06 Approx: 0m 13s | Low Res 2.7 MB)
Suppossed Streaming Link

Kingdom Hearts Official Movie 7: Sora creates a makeshift bridge in this clip. (Filename: kinghts_mob07 Approx: 0m 17s | Low Res 3.5 MB)
Suppossed Streaming Link

Kingdom Hearts Official Movie 8: Sora wields some magic in this movie. (Filename: kinghts_mob08 Approx: Approx: 0m 8s | Low Res 1.7 MB)
Suppossed Streaming Link

Kingdom Hearts Official Movie 9: Sora battles the Heartless in this clip. (Filename: kinghts_mob09 Approx: 0m 16s | Low Res 3.3 MB)
Suppossed Streaming Link

Kingdom Hearts Official Movie 10: Sora sails away on a raft in this movie. (Filename: kinghts_mob10 Approx: 0m 20s | Low Res 4.1 MB)
Suppossed Streaming Link

Source:
GameSpot video gallery
Japanese forum with Stream Links

Image extracted from the commercial in Verizon page:

This part is very interesting, this zone was ready to see preview of the V-Cast Games, it is a pity that these files have not been cached.

Sources:

GameSpot Gallery
KH Gallery Backup full original images
Blog with HQ screenshot

 

[Shademp]

DaGuAr over at Assembler Games sent me the following extensive mail filled with tons of findings and research for KH V CAST. Here is their message.

Hi Shademp!
I love what you're doing looking for information about those lost Japanese Square Enix mobile games.

...*Piece of mail cut out for brevity*

There's some even better quality screenshots at this link (Wayback Machine backup of kh2.co.uk)

You can even tell the pixels apart on the first 3.

Imgur reuploads just in case:

Spoiler

=========================


Inside of the ripped data files by Wedge, I could find the credits of the game. I posted about it on assemblergames.


By Googling the name of the lead programmer, I could find his website, where he put information about the game and posted some "new" screenshots.

Imgur mirrors of the new screenshots:
Image 1
Image 2

He also uploaded a video with a little more quality than the other one:

One of the level scripters uploaded some short videos of what we already have.

And one of the 2d designers posted on his blog the same "Alice in Wonderland" artwork that can be found on Wedge's ripped files.


=======================================================


Also, there's a Spanish Kingdom Heart fan called Caith_Sith that contacted years ago with the people at Superscape while he was writing a book about the franchise, and "they told him cool stuff":
twitter.com/Caith_Sith/status/631131152758239232

On January of this year, he claimed to have 90 minutes of exclusive footage of the game, and that "maybe some day" he would release it.
twitter.com/Caith_Sith/status/824374891302502406

And right after that, he published a never before seen screenshot of the Wonderland stage as a proof.
twitter.com/Caith_Sith/status/824379486040891393
- Screenshot


He also said he doesn't have the game, and that the video is safe on his PC "among other places", so I infer he got the video because the devs sent it to him, and he backuped it several times privately.
twitter.com/Caith_Sith/status/824380282551812102

People asked him to release the video but he answered with things like "it's not going to happen, at the moment" and "the community doesn't give a $%#& about this game". Ten months later, he hasn't mentioned the game ever again. I don't know if he's not allowed to share the video or what are his plans about it.

Right after Caith_Sith talking about the 90 mins of footage, another Spanish fan called Keytotruth, said that emulating the game MIGHT be possible "because an emulator exists" (I assume he refers to the Brew SDK) and that he had the knowledge to make it work, but he'd try "contacting with the programmers to make it possible".
twitter.com/Keytotruth/status/824380161713963010

So if anybody is planning to contact the developers, maybe they should reach Keytotruth and 13th Vessel aka ligero_miguel (another fan interested on researching the game) first to see if they have done any progress (they are Spanish but speak English as well), instead of several groups of people asking the same stuff to the devs.

Thank you for your contributions DaGuAr!


That Caith_Sith doesn't sound trustworthy though and I'm not convinced that the Wonderland screenshot is legit.

 

[Kingdom Hearts530]

My Kingdom Hearts loving self is so interested in this. I really interested in this and maybe come Winter break I can try and help you out. *fingers crossed*

 

[DaGuAr]

Thank you Shademp for posting the message here!

And my apologies to the staff for any inconveniences caused by me trying to post so many urls! That was a stupid mistake of me and I'm really sorry. I'll totally abstain from posting links until having 10 posts!


About the game, if there was a way to somehow get those 90 minutes of footage (assuming is not fake) from either Caith_Sith or from the lead programmer, I'll be satisfied by that, even if a dump of the remaining files would be the most ideal. A video of such length most likely will cover most of the game (if not everything), and if somebody wanted to remake the game, at least they hopefully would have enough reference about how the stages were designed to remodel then in 3D. It's so frustrating not being able to know more about the missing stages!

The most detailed information about the rest of the game I think I've seen is on KHInsider forums. Can't link it for obvious reasons but there's a thread called "Does anyone NOT hate the NA version?", and on page 4, there was a little off-topic and a user called "Kingdom King 13" talked about his experiences with the game. He 100%'d the game and he talked about the controls and plot, and he describes some of the stages and bosses. He also talked about the ending of the game and, I'm not going to spoil it, but if it's true what he said, that's a scene I totally want to see lol.

 

[Shademp]

Welcome DaGuAr!

I'll link the thread for you.

- Page 4 of "Does anyone NOT hate the NA version?"

Okay...because people asked, I'll tell about V Cast. It was... not good. But it had some fairly decent moments. And to be fair, this was back in the day when cell phones were barely advanced enough to play games at all, so I suppose that in and of itself is fairly impressive.

Spoiler: CONTROL

Sora has tank controls. Tank. Controls. What this means, is that Sora can only run forward. If you want to run in a different direction, you must stop, turn in place, then run straight ahead in the new direction. This makes dodging incoming attacks borderline, if not completely, impossible. You can jump, swing your Keyblade, and cast spells, when you get them. Very very simple. Items also exist, Potions and Ethers, and they are used automatically when your HP or MP get low. This means that, if you smack around a bunch of Heartless and buy a crapton of Potions, you're basically immortal. Good thing too given the lack of dodging capability.
New to this game, and I believe the only game that shares this trait is the ORIGINAL Coded, is the ability to die by falling off a cliff. There actually are platforming and balancing sections in this game, particularly in the final world, where you can die, several times, by falling. This was a trait that I actually didn't mind, for reasons I'll disclose further down.

Spoiler: PLOT

Okay, so as near as I can tell, this game takes place smack dab in the middle of KHI, after Agrabah but before Hollow Bastion. Maleficent schemes to trap Sora in a nightmare, and if he can't wake before midnight, he will turn into a Heartless. She casts her spell, and Sora conks out right on the Gummi Ship in the middle of space while Donald's flying them to the next world. Sora "wakes" in his dream on Swashbucklers' Island, the first of four worlds in the game. Needless to say, he's a little disoriented, but a character simply called the Swordsman's Parrot guides him into building a raft. It's here that the first boss is met, Anti Sora. He mimics your every move, and if you try to attack him, he will attack as well and will always win the clash, damaging you. At the start of the battle, there is a hole in the ground behind Anti Sora. To win this fight, as soon as the battle starts: Take three steps back. Boom. You've won. Anti Sora will back up to mimic you and plummet into the hole to its death. Lamest. Fight. In. A. Video. Game. Ever.

Sora somehow uses his raft to sail to Wonderland. Wonderland is cool in a way, because you don't just fight the Heartless: Some of the native creatures attack you too. I don't remember too much of this, but I do seem to recall those bird glasses from the movie attacking you. If I recall correctly, Sora learns how to wake from his nightmare here: He meets the Caterpillar, also from the movie, and the Caterpillar reveals that if he wants to escape Maleficent's curse, he must concoct a potion: easy enough, save for the three main ingredients. The tooth of a Crocodile, a Serpent, and a Dragon. All throughout this, Donald and Goofy are looking for Sora as well. The boss of Wonderland is, conveniently enough, a giant floating ghost crocodile head. It will open its mouth to bite you. When it does, shoot it with magic. Eventually the croc will "die," and leave behind a tooth, the first of three that you need.

Agrabah is pretty straight forward. Jafar has taken over, yadda yadda. Interestingly, Sora becomes the Master of the Genie, and uses his wishes to get to Jafar. It is here that we come to my favorite part of the game: a Cobra Jafar fight. HELL. YES. I was always disappointed Cobra Jafar never made it into the main KH series, and even though this game is just a pitiful shadow of a proper KH game, it was still cool to see, even if he did only have one attack: lunge and bite. Anyway, beat the snot out of Cobra Jafar, and you now have yourself a snake tooth. Only one tooth to go.

Now we come to the final world: Maleficent's Fortress. Yes, BBS wasn't the first game to take us there. Not only that, but in addition to the Heartless, you also fight Maleficent's piggy minions from the movie and BBS as well! It's also here that Donald and Goofy catch up to you. You fight through the castle, then come to the final tower. It's here that death by falling is kinda cool, because the climb up to Maleficent for the final battle is NERVE WRACKING. See, you have to climb along the outside of the tower, and those tank controls make it dang difficult. Granted I'm no fan of Tank Sora, but still, that harrowing climb was a guilty pleasure. You get to the top, Maleficent stupidly changes into her Dragon form (I'm sorry, but are you an idiot? You do know a dragon tooth is needed to BREAK YOUR OWN SPELL, RIGHT?), you beat the snot out of her, and you get your last tooth. This fight is also one of the only fair boss fights in the game, because even though you still can't dodge, you can at least smack her fireballs out of the way with the Keyblade.

Anyway, for the grand finale, Sora races to one of Maleficent's cauldrons, create the potion with Donald's help, dump the Teeth in the potion, lights Goofy's head on fire because he got in the way of your Fire spell trying to cook the potion, THEN you light the cauldron, and jump inside the Cauldron into the brew. Sora immediately wakes up in the Gummi Ship once more. He tells Donald about his dream and is thankful that it turned out to be just that: a dream. Goofy asks if Sora is sure that it was just a dream... Sora turns back, and Goofy's head is still on fire.

...The end.

Let the confusion flow through you.

...

By the way, the game took less than a day to 100% complete. The max level Sora could get to was seven.

...

And whomever asked if this was on a flip phone, I'm pretty dang sure it was. I played this game roughly ten years ago, give or take. Memory isn't perfect, heh.

Love that ending and how you beat Anti-Sora

I would make more posts at KHInsider about the stuff we share here, but every new post needs to be approved by a moderator (perhaps because I'm a newb), one post I made hasn't been re-approved since I made an edit to it, and the staff have not replied to my queries. So I'm staying out of that forum.


The sources keep mentioning a Japanese version of this mobile game, but there doesn't seem to be any footage or screenshots, plus the story behind the making of this game make it sound like it was a US-exclusive. If somebody could look into the matter that would be great. Myself I'm already too busy (and invested) on the FFVII side of things to check out whether or not this JP version is just a myth.

 

[Ryuman]

Tried scanning this thread again quickly to see if this was already here, but I just want to say that someone on the Kingdom Hearts Reddit found a video from 2008 of the game showing a lot of stuff I have never seen before. Funny how this video has been sitting around until now.

 

[JechtShotMK9]

Not gonna lie...I read this as "Kingdom Hearts 5 Cast," and thought "Haley Joel Osment is gonna be playing Sora until he's in his 50s."

 

[Im-Rises]

Hello, everyone

I've posted the soundtrack of Kingdom Hearts VCAST yesterday.
Here the link of the playlist : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...GKnk6sw4hCs281
I've eight differents musics some are differents version of the same world like Maleficent's Castle V02 or V03 one of these two version were use but I don't know which.

 

[Im-Rises]

There's a problem with the first link i repost sorry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXxHwut9DVQ&index=6&list=PLFtE0lnsptz1ko_1DnyGKnk6sw4hCs281

 

[Shademp]

You got in contact with Ian Livingstone, the person responsible for sound design in KH V CAST, and got him to send music from the game to you? THAT'S AWESOME! Thanks for sharing!

 

[Im-Rises]

Yes exactly he sends me the musics and gives me the authorization to post them for the wikis of the game Currently i'm trying to contact the other developpers, some of them answer me but they don't have anything. If i have another things to share i'll post it in this forum

 

[DaGuAr]

Thank you for sharing this!

They are really good themes, way better than what I expected. It's a shame that they couldn't be longer because of the technical limitations, just 15 seconds of looping leave you wanting more. If it wasn't such an obscure title, perhaps on the future we could see fan recreations expanding the musics adding some variations, I'd like to hear that.

I find it interesting that there's a new Swashbuckler's Island theme that wasn't on the ripped files, the one called v03, I wonder how it would have been used. That and the fact that there aren't any v01 tracks. It seems that each world could've had one additional theme at some point, and that there were two previous attempts at the game over music.

Also, bad.mid, good.mid, keyblade.mid and magic_alert.mid are missing, but it's understandable as they were two-second jingles.

Now, something that I'm wondering is if it could be possible to upload the raw audio files as well, if Mr. Livingstone allows it. Youtube compression might lower the quality a bit, so it would be nice to preserve the music at the highest quality available if possible.

I'm looking forward to see what you can discover.

 

[Im-Rises]

Hello, sorry for the delay of my answer.

For the differents versions of the same world, Mr Livingstone tells me that he don’t know which one was used for the game. Also the bad.mid, good.mid, keyblade.mid were with the other musics that sent me Mr Livingstone but they are the same as the musics of the ripped files so I didn’t post them (except magic_alert.mid that I don’t have). Yes I’ll ask him if I can post the musics in a download link.

 

[Shademp]

Boy am I late to the party but here it is: On October 13 a user called Cbajd5 uploaded the "Agrabah" chapter of Kingdom Hearts V CAST! This is a huge victory.

See this post and this post for some screenshots of the Agrabah chapter's resources.

 

[ultima espio]

Bit of a bump, the ost for this game has been released: