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I have been playing kh since it came out. Throughout the many years and many replays its hard to pinpoint a fond memory. If i had to it would be when kingdom hearts 2 came out. My mom got it for me as an Easter present and i knee she did so i begged her if i could play it early, just for a bit. She let me. I wound beating the game the day before easter. My mom not so pleased but she did rewrap the game and give it back to me. Also, I remember toting around my ps3 to play it at different houses. When the truth came out about roxas i was so sad for him. I went to softball practice and I remembered just standing on the field and just started crying over it. My team didnt get it, but it meant a lot to me. <3

my most precious memory is at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts 2, at the beginning with Roxas. I love that moment and I always come back to play those days.

What's your fondest Kingdom Hearts memory? In collaboration with former KH13 staff member and author @Ajexmi_Arts (@Ajexmi)we're running a giveaway for a free copy of Simple & Clean: Unlocking Kingdom Hearts. Entering the giveaway is simple - all you have to do is reply to this article with your fondest Kingdom Hearts memory. After a week at 9 PM EST all entries will go into a lucky draw and one person will be randomly selected as the winner. Prize Details If you're the winner you will be contacted by one of our staff members to sort out redeeming your prize, a paperback copy of Simple and Clean: Unlocking Kingdom Hearts. And that's everything! If you have any questions please ask below. Good luck! View full article

Kinda was, can't lie.

My most fondest memory from kingdom hearts, would have to be right after I did the final fight with Ansem in the first kingdom hearts, after a frustrating fight of dying over and over again which sent me back to the start again. Eventually the battle ended with me letting Donald and Goofy doing most of the damage and me waiting for an opening to finally finish the fight. After the fight I remember just having this massive wave of relieve over me and when I was watching the final cutscene, I just remembered crying at the scene in which Kairi was looking at the drawings of her and Sora with simple and clean playing in the background. Just such an amazing way the game was able to make you feel so tense a moment before and then emotional the next. Especially with the ending just playing simple and clean just shows how much Kairi and Sora want things to be in their lives.

My most precious memory from Kingdom Hearts is always the last level of Kingdom Hearts 2 in the World that Never Was. Just that big climatic race to Xemnas with all the reaction commands make it feel very epic. Always got me hyped.

I love the entire series of Kingdom Hearts as a whole and throughout the entire series there have been moments that make me feel overwhelmed with happiness, moments that would make my heart ache with sadness, and moments that would shock me and fill me with so much intrigue. Despite my desire to list off all of the different amazing moments of Kingdom Hearts I will say that my one most fond memory of Kingdom Hearts would be the very end of my 100% playthrough of Kingdom Hearts 1 when I was collecting synthesis items to make the ultimate weapon and defeating waves of heartless to hit level 100 while listening to a playlist of different Kingdom Hearts original tracks, remixes, and covers. When I had first started Kingdom Hearts 1 I didn't really hate it but I also didn't consider it to be my favorite game and by the time I had reached this moment I had absolutely fallen in love with the game a thousand times over. To this day Kingdom Hearts 1 is still my favorite game of all time and I honestly don't think anything will ever top it. I'm so happy that I had decided to play through this series because it brought me so much joy.

While I could write an essay on why I love the series and what it means to me, instead I'm gonna focus on a few specific memories that really stand out. My first experience with the series was watching my older cousin play kh1. I was completely enthralled by all the characters and flashy gameplay and so I begged my mom to buy me a copy. We weren't able to afford much at the time so I had to go to my faithful video rental store and rent a copy for myself. Of course I wasn't able to finish the game in a few days since I was 6 or 7 so I had to wait months until my birthday before I had my own copy. Once my birthday rolled around, I still wasn't able to get it but my cousin gave me his copy (we played the entire day trying to do everything). Whenever I think of kh1 it brings me back to those warm summer days spent with my cousin. After that point, I was hooked. We didn't have internet or anything like that at my home for years and so anytime I was around a computer l, I was watching kh videos. Whether it was the openings, soundtracks, or the classic "kh3 trailers with box art", I watched it all. I also remember the first time I went to the beach and decided to make it a tradition to stand in the waves listening to dearly beloved (which I still do to this day haha). Another tradition I had during my time in school was playing through the kh2 prologue 7 days before school starting. I would play each day in real life and the game up until my "summer vacation was over". As I was writing this, more and more memories kept resurfacing. Long story short, I love this series beyond explanation and it provides me with so much nostalgia of happier days when everything was simple and clean. Thanks for reading.

I think 1 of my many fondest memories of KH would be every year in high school, a week before school would start, I would replay a day of KH2's beginning. When Roxas' summer vacation ended, so did mine.

My fondest Kingdom Hearts memory is when Sora,Riku and Kairi are on Destiny's Islands hanging out and talking about traveling the world together

I think for me it might have been finishing KH2 for the first time. It came at a time when I was just beginning to learn appreciation for story and emotional narrative in media, and looking back the series might have even been one of the first things I engaged with on that level. The transition between actively playing a video game (fighting Xemnas) and watching a story cutscene took its time 'getting to the point' enough that I was settled into the experience to actually experience it when the events of the ending really started to compile in emotional meaning - Sora and Riku burying their rivalry hatchet, Kairi's letter that bookended the beginning of the game (another early instance of learning a narrative tool to evoke meaning and emotion), finding their way back to light and the ocean, I guess - and then hearing Kairi call out to them. That moment. That moment where I realised where they were, and the cut to Destiny Islands as a new arrangement of the opening song started playing - instantly recognizable but completely different in tone - another, arguably the strongest bookend to an experience. As I'm typing this I'm getting emotional - after all these years, the emotional flow of the scene is baked into my mind not just because I love the story and the characters' happy ending, but because of how effectively it worked on me. It's difficult for media to "make" the audience think or feel anything at all, you need to structure it to guide and almost trick them into experiencing it 'right'. The comedy of Donald and Goofy's sprinting in is there but not only isn't funny enough to take you out of the heartwarming emotion - which the music helps immensely to keep with - but along with some other beats like Mickey and Riku's hug they let you acclimatise to the feeling of the reunion long enough that the Wayfinder moment - again, along with timing it to the song's segment transition - really drives and delivers it with compounded magnitude. It's a callback I'd almost forgotten about, a promise fulfilled after so much time and struggle. Roxas and Namine briefly appear to fulfill theirs. Sora and Kairi find that they're finally home and clasp hands as they cut to credits on the note the chorus kicks in. It's a scene that uses everything it has and needs with a timing and pacing that works with the emotional journey of the audience to guide it through the right ups and downs to feel something about it. I'm not saying it's the best (or most effective) scene ever put to screen, but it's important to me. I grew up to be an (amateur) playwright and actor and dissecting stories became what I do, and one of the first experiences I can remember being so affected and carried by the choices made in developing a piece of media is this ending sequence. It's something I genuinely keep thinking about when I consider emotional beats. It's really hard to get right because audiences - people - are too different and unreliably invested in journeys to cater an experience for. No matter what you do, you can't reach everyone with art and you can't make everyone feel the way you need them to feel to. That's why I feel so lucky and grateful that this scene did to me. I feel it every time. I cry about it every time, it's almost embarrassing. Kingdom Hearts isn't for everyone - but it's for me. This scene was for me. I love feeling things so much.

I actually got into KH by playing number 2 first. I remember, I got so frustrated by 1 boss fight, the constant calls of "Dance Water Dance" before I died that I stopped playing the game made me stop playing for about 5 months. After my 14th birthday, I picked it up again and beat that boss first try and it was probably my happiest moment so far. Then my memory card got corrupted and I had to save up, get a new card and play it all over again! I never took a break again though, I played that game all the way through and it was, and still is, my favorite game of all time

My favorite memory of kingdom hearts was back in the year 2005 when I was in the fifth grade. My best friend at the time who is still my best friend today introduced me to kingdom hearts and said that I resembled Kairi and that she was Sora. We would watch clips of the game during class on the computer and I fell in love with the opening cut scenes of kingdom hearts one. I remember being so entranced with what I was watching and I absolutely adored Destiny Islands and the friendship that that Sora, Riku and Kairi shared. Eventually everyone in our class wanted to be a character from the game. We would role-play as the characters during recess and even during class we would write our character names on our assigned papers. Our teacher didn’t really care. She probably thought we were just very imaginative kids haha. Still to this day we still call each other by our kingdom hearts nicknames and have a strong passion for the franchise.

Not exactly a memory of the games themselves, but Kingdom Hearts was the one big thing my mom and I had in common. After i got the first game for Christmas in 2002, my mom started her own file and we were quickly sharing theories and discussing our favourite moments. As I got older, we drifted apart. I won't go into detail on that here, but even though she wasn't interested in any of the games that came after it, the original entry in the series was always our big connection. She passed away a few years ago, but ever since then I have played through the first game around her birthday in honour of her memory and that bond we shared.

Kingdom hearts itself is a memory for me. I played it during some hard times in my life and the idea of getting to play the game always made the struggles worth it. My favorite memory is using "Simple and Clean" to help ease my anxiety. Anytime I had an anxiety attack I just sang "regardless of warning the future doesn't scare me at all" and it helped ease my nerves.

I remember when I was a kid, I played Kingdom Hearts on the PS2 (the TV commercial for the game was the main reason I even wanted a PS2!). I loved the intro so much, but you could only watch it of you were starting a new game. So sometimes before playing the game, just for fun, I'd pull out the memory card and start it up just so I could watch the intro and listen to Simple and Clean. Then I'd play the game. I wouldn't give up that memory for the world.

Kingdom Hearts has been a constant comfort in my life; my twin and I have been playing together since we were little. One of my fondest memories was finally completing the first game with her, and seeing Sora and Riku work together to close the door was an emotional moment for us, and then again when Sora made his promise to Kairi to come back. As the years went on, and Sora kept his promise to come back, my sister became more connected to Riku and I to Sora, so their development throughout the series as friends is something that resonates within us, and that moment has a special place in my heart with every replay. ♥

There are so mamy fond memories all across the board. The one that sticks out the most is involving KH2. I remember being the 'responsible' teenager I was, I preordered it and failed to inform my mother that we needed to go pick it up [as in, she had no idea I had done so in the first place]. I was adamant to go get it, and she refused to bring me, [understandable since I did not communicate this]. My grandmother somehow got roped into making the drive so I could go finish paying for it at Gamestop and bring it home. Fast forward to later that year, I moved out of my mother's home temporarily since we were not getting along [things were rough at the time when I came out] and I moved in with my grandmother for a while. I remember playing the game a lot to cope with everything happening, and I was living there when I had finally beaten the game. She is no longer alive, but every time I play it, I have special memories of her during a rough time in my life.

my fondest kh related memory has to be the first time i beat kh2! it was the summer back when i was 10 and older my brother was watching me play [and playing as riku during the final fight] and cheering me on. i watched the final cutscene for the first time, and we talked about how we'd play kh3 together when it came out. kh means so so much to me, it's always been a game that my older brother and i have bonded and connected over!