9 years of KH13.com in the Kingdom Hearts community

Today marks the 9th birthday of KH13.com! We are publishing this special feature to celebrate almost a decade of the impact KH13.com has had in the Kingdom Hearts community since its creation on October 9, 2008! KH13.com is now one of the best Kingdom Hearts fansites for news and media.

KH13.com originally started in 2008 by KH13 Webmaster DChiuch, with the help of Co-Webmaster Aaron. The website started out as a simple project between friends, however, soon became a full-fledged website for Kingdom Hearts news, media and discussion. At the time, high quality videos and media were hard to come by, so KH13 initially established itself by providing high quality trailer and cutscene downloads.

The name "KH13" was eventually settled on in a brainstorming session, after it was discovered that KH1.com through KH12.com were all taken – it seemed fitting that the first available domain would match up with Organization XIII. Around this time, KH13.com began to report Kingdom Hearts news, with the first article on Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days.

In January, 2009, KH13 decided to do the first major redesign, which was then released on January 14th, 2009. You can check out the design below.

(Does this bring back any memories?)

Since then we have updated the website designs a couple of times; the current design is the 3rd update!

Skipping ahead to 2011, KH13 had become more well known, allowing us to start sending representatives to E3 as part of the press. sqexgal (now from SQEX.INFO) was our first representative, and former KH13 News Team member Oishii, Kingdom Hearts community veteran Churro, KH13 staff member (and former News Team Leader) Toominator, and Kingdom Hearts χ Team and News Team member Raxaimus have all been part of the experience since.

One important feature that has been prominent throughout KH13 is our gallery & video archives. Former KH13 Archives Team Leader and News Team member Sora96 has brought the video archives and gallery to what it is today, featuring over 29,000 images and hundreds of videos from the Kingdom Hearts series. Thanks also goes to Everglow, our partner, for recording thousands of cutscenes and playthrough videos for KH13's archives. Our wide selection of videos and images has brought in many visitors for KH13.

This past year has saw much excitement in the Kingdom Hearts Community. In November of 2016, the opening cinematics of Kingdom Hearts 0.2 -A fragmentary passage- was revealed at Paris Game Week. In January 2017, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue was released in Japan on the 12th and worldwide on the 24th. In March, the first performance of the Kingdom Hearts Orchestra - World Tour - began in Tokyo, Japan.

The tour had many stops around the world, which included London, Singapore, Los Angeles, and New York. During the tour, KH13 held three successful fan meetups. Social Media Team Leader Andrew Hankinson and News Team Leader Aquaberry hosted the first #KH13MeetUp in London in March 2017. The second one in Los Angeles was hosted by the dedicated Raxaimus. The third one was in New York, hosted by Toominator and Kingdom Hearts χ Team member Exilra. We gave out exclusive KH13 stickers to the lucky attendees, and had a card in each location for Yoko Shimomura, which fans at the meetup decorated with heartfelt thank you messages for the series composer.

We've made a montage for of each meetup with the help of our team members and Project Destati. You can watch them below!

In June 2017, during the World Tour concerts in Los Angeles, Tetsuya Nomura made a guest appearance where he revealed a new Kingdom Hearts III trailer. This trailer included gameplay of Olympus Coliseum and a cutscene from Twilight Town. At the end of the trailer, an announcement of an extended trailer was shown, giving the date of its release as July 15, 2017, at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, California.

As promised, this new extended Kingdom Hearts III trailer was revealed during the Level Up! segment of D23. This trailer revealed a new KH3 world: the world of Toy Story. The trailer showed off some gameplay along with a long cutscene of Sora, Donald, and Goofy meeting Woody, Buzz, and a few other toys in Andy’s room. At the end of the trailer was the most awaited news by the Kingdom Hearts community for more than a decade: a release year for Kingdom Hearts III, set for 2018!

All throughout this time, there have been exciting developments in KHUχ; in March 2017, the update from Kingdom Hearts Unchained χ to Kingdom Hearts Union χ was announced. The story has developed greatly to include a new (and old?) set of characters and plot twists that are but making players and non-players alike excited for how they will play out in the upcoming Kingdom Hearts III! For the sake of avoiding spoilers, we won't say any more, but you can check out the videos of KHUχ gameplay and story updates on Everglow's channel, the most recent being the product of hard work of KH13 translators Mio-chan and Lady Aleister.

The KH13.com community has also been growing on social media. Our Twitter (@KH13.com) has almost 25,000 followers. Our Facebook page (KH13.com, for Kingdom Hearts) has hit the 20,000 likes mark. We also have a new Playstation community page!

As we enter our 9th year, we would like to thank our current leaders of our various teams, which includes Aquaberry, WakelessDream, faemarch, and Andrew Hankinson; our vice leaders Leamax, Exilra and Wan_Pisu; and our LoL (Leader of Leaders): HarLea Quinn. We would also like to thank Toominator, Jake, and the current and past members of our various teams for their contributions to the page.

We'd like to also give the most important thanks of all to you, our readers, and the Kingdom Hearts community. Thanks to everyone here on KH13 for sticking with us for these 9 years. We hope to be around for many more, and to continue to provide the latest Kingdom Hearts news and media!

What has your favorite moment been in the KH13 community in the past 9 years? Let us know in the comments below!