Weekend News: Two Interviews, New Merchandise, SE at E3!

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Published on May 26, 2007 @ 01:57 pm

Written by monkeybutt

As we head into the weekend, Kingdom Hearts seems to be making a splash in many different areas. Let's take a look at what's been happening!

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Playstation Magazine Interviews Nomura:
The most recent issue of Playstation Magazine included an interview with Kingdom Hearts Series Director Tetsuya Nomura concerning the future of the series. Nomura once again confirmed three basic facts:

1) The next Kingdom Hearts game will NOT be called Kingdom Hearts III.
2) There is some sort of image that had never previously appeared in the Kingdom Hearts Series but was unveiled during the recent Square Enix Party (or TGS 06').
3) Nomura once again states that he cannot give away any new information on the future Kingdom Hearts Game, and restates that the first information will pop up at the Tokyo Game Show in the later half of this year.

Nomura has been restating the above facts in many interviews, the wait is not too far off!

New KH Merchandise: Limited Edition "Darkside" Mickey Keychain:
The Japanese Square Enix Online Store updated with a brand new item, a limited edition "Darkside" Mickey Keychain. The website states that the materials used give the item the weight and feel of an actual keyblade! It is the "keyblade from the darkside that Mickey wields". The blade retails at about $30, is 17.5 centimeters long, and comes in a nice box. A screenshot is provided below.

Not a bad deal at all, but a little small if you ask me!

Square Haven Interviews Amanda Katsurada:
Website Square Haven recently had an interview with the amazing Amanda Katsurada, a wonderful person involved in the localization of Kingdom Hearts in the United States. The interview delved mostly into her other works as well, especially within Square-Enix, but she did discuss Kingdom Hearts a bit. Below is an excerpt from the interview.

Square Haven: On Kingdom Hearts you were involved both in localization and acting as a sort of intermediary between Square and Disney in Japan and abroad. Can you tell us about that experience?

Amanda: I will be honest with you, that project was a challenge up until it came out. Having two strong companies with firm ideas on what they want to achieve trying to produce a product together could get quite complicated. And, this being the first attempt at a collaborative project on this scale, there were some difficulties. I believe Kingdom Hearts was the first Disney project written in Japanese first and later translated into English. The properties are all American, so up to this point everything was done in English, then localized for other languages. So you can imagine how challenging this project was for them, as well as for Square. Nevertheless, the coordinators both on Square and Disney's sides worked closely together to achieve the highest possible quality for the game. As for the localization staff, including myself, fellow translator Ryo Taketomi, and the super editor Jennifer Mukai, we spent much time reworking the translation and debugging text until the very last moment. Let's just say, we all slept for a few days straight after the project was finally completed!

I'm particularly interested in what it must be like to work on such a wonderful series! She seems like a really bright person! To view the rest of the interview, click here.

Square Enix at E3 2007!:
Lastly, the official schedule for this years E3 expo has been released. For those that do not know, E3 was previously the largest gaming expo with all of the biggest gaming related announcements of the year occurding there. It looks like something interesting came up with Square-Enix, it is one of the few companies that will not have a press conference. SE will still be at the event showing games. I really do hope we get our Final Mix announcement at E3! The full list is below:

Tuesday, July 10th
8:30 - 9:30 PM - Microsoft Corporation

Wednesday, July 11th
9:00 - 10:00 AM - Nintendo
11:30 AM - 12:30 PM - Sony
2:00 - 3:00 PM - EA
3:15 - 4:15 PM - Activision
4:30 - 5:30 PM - Midway
5:45 - 6:45 PM - Konami

Thursday July 12th
8:00 - 9:00 AM - Take Two Interactive
9:15 - 10:15 AM - THQ
10:30 - 11:30 AM - Ubisoft
1:00 - 2:00 PM - Namco Bandai
3:30 - 4:30 PM - Disney Interactive

E3 will be taking place July 10-12 and will be much smaller this year as compared to previous years. Here's to hoping for the best!

Few, I believe that's the largest batch of news I've done in awhile!

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Sources: Kotaku, Siliconera, Square Haven, Game Tactics, KHV's Xaldin, FFKH Blog, and FF7AC Reunion. (Few!)

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