Former Disney Interactive idea artist Ken Christiansen confirmed that Kingdom Hearts impressed a Smash Bros.-like crossover preventing recreation that by no means received off the bottom.
In 2013, Christiansen posted a slew of artworks to his online portfolio, a few of which confirmed tough sketches of assorted Disney characters going through off in battle. It sparked the concept that Disney had probably toyed with a crossover preventing recreation — one thing that Christiansen has now confirmed.
Talking with Time Extension in a September 1 interview, Christiansen opened up concerning the shocking means Kingdom Hearts helped convey the thought to life, although it finally by no means got here to fruition. The truth is, it was tough for Kingdom Hearts to get authorized within the first place, as Disney execs have been hesitant to mix a number of the model’s most iconic properties.
“One of many causes Kingdom Hearts was so tough to get began was as a result of Disney was so reluctant to have that risk of crossing over The Lion King into The Little Mermaid world,” he defined. “That was the principle hangup for Disney America. They could not recover from that. So, I believe there was possibly just a bit little bit of butting of heads, nevertheless it all labored out in the long run. The entire creatives, although — like me, the opposite artists, and the producers — all of us thought it was the best concept on the earth. Like, ‘Yeah, let’s cross over the whole lot.'”
“Since Kingdom Hearts already form of broke that mould, producers would say, ‘Hey, what if we are saying they’re motion figures, and we form of take the identical conceit as Toy Story, however have them struggle one another as an alternative?’ Then, we will have all these motion figures of Disney characters from Tarzan, The Lion King, and Treasure Planet, and it may be this Smash Brothers form of factor. The title of that idea was ‘Disney’s Motion Determine Face Off.”
Sadly, this recreation by no means got here to be; Time Extension experiences that the undertaking solely reached the prototype stage earlier than Disney ditched the thought in favor of film and TV tie-in video games.
With this in thoughts, the idea artwork shared to Christiansen’s portfolio makes us much more wistful for this recreation that by no means occurred. The paintings confirmed 1v1 battles between eight totally different characters: Captain Hook vs Beast, the Sheriff of Nottingham vs King Louie, Ursula vs John Silver, and the Queen of Hearts vs the Horned King. A few of these characters are severely deep cuts (we’d by no means anticipate to see the Horned King in any main Disney providing nowadays, not to mention the Sheriff of Nottingham), and it makes us marvel who’d get chosen if such a recreation have been to truly get made within the modern-day.
“Typically, after we have been pitching a recreation at Disney, what they needed from us was these gigantic presentation boards with artwork throughout it. So you’d get these large, six- or eight-foot-long boards that have been possibly 4 toes excessive, like one-inch-thick foam core, after which over it have been all these items of paintings printed out with large logos. So it was an enormous visible affect form of factor. This was all in order that you can stroll the executives by way of the sport. This led to issues that did come out, like Disney’s Excessive Skate Journey,” he continued.
“Over my 4 years at Disney, I labored on so many ideas that by no means occurred,” stated Christiansen. “I believe that if there was a film or a TV present, I in all probability carried it by way of, like Treasure Planet, Atlantis, Peter Pan 2, or Kim Attainable — these video games received cash — or Pixar stuff like Buzz Lightyear and Monsters, Inc. However there was a lot dialogue about, ‘What can we do with all these properties that we now have?’ So there’s a variety of idea stuff for issues that made it out.”
Talking of Disney and video games, an prolonged gameplay trailer for Kingdom Hearts IV was proven at D23 this 12 months, exhibiting off the Land of the Dead from Coco and a better have a look at the trendy metropolis of Quadratum. KHIV is expected to launch in late 2027, a launch window that director Tetsuya Nomura says Sq. Enix is firmly set on.
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s Information Editor. With ten years of expertise reporting on video games and leisure, she’s received a storied background within the preventing recreation group, influencer information, and viral on-line tendencies. Discover her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.