It's possible to use the Shinespark to deal devastating amounts of damage (often being enough to kill a boss in one hit) to several bosses in the game, with known bosses it can be performed on including Spoiler:the Central Units, the Chozo Robots in Ferenia and Ghavoran, Escue, Golzuna, Experiment No. Z-57, and the Red Chozo Soldier in Artaria.
If you can sequence break by acquiring the Grapple Beam and Bombs early, a quicker way to defeat Kraid can be performed during the second phase of its fight. Spoiler:By bombing the bottom left corner of the area once the second phase starts, a Morph Ball Launcher can be accessed which will shoot Samus into Kraid's stomach, where you can continually bomb him to death so long as Samus has enough health, which will gradually be drained the longer she is in Kraid's stomach.
Additionally, acquiring the Flash Shift through sequence breaking gives Samus an additional way of attacking Kraid. Spoiler:When the Spider Magnet platform raises back up to Kraid's face, Samus can Flash Shift into Kraid's mouth and hold onto it for a short period of time to get some shots in.
A Famitsu Column with game director Masahiro Sakurai revealed that Sora was able to get into the game because of a chance meeting that he had with a Disney executive at an unspecified awards ceremony where they expressed how cool it would be for the Kingdom Hearts protagonist to be a part of the Super Smash Bros. roster. This soon lead to negotiations between Nintendo, Square Enix, and Disney that eventually got the extremely highly requested character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Before then, Sakurai admitted he and Nintendo thought getting the Disney-owned character was a total impossibility.
The German rating board deemed the game's gore and violence excessive and refused to rate the game at all. Since this had the potential to place the game on Germany's "List of Media Harmful to Young People", banning shops from either advertising or selling the game to customers of 18 years or older, Tecmo censored the PAL version to obtain a rating. A year later, Tecmo managed to obtain an 18+ rating for the uncensored release of Ninja Gaiden Black.
According to a 2003 the Sega Meisaku series interview with the game's director/designer Noriyoshi Ohba, he was asked what kind of work directing the game specifically entailed. He responded that since he was the only planner/designer working on the game, he "basically had to be involved in everything" from the planning, to designing the gameplay system, to the art (including which backgrounds to use, among other things), etc.
According to a 2003 the Sega Meisaku series interview with the game's director/designer Noriyoshi Ohba, he was asked why the game wasn't a stealth game despite the name "Shinobi" implying the protagonist would be more stealthy. Ohba responded that this was probably due to the team wanting to show off "how cool and badass ninjas are" as they can jump higher than normal people and have stronger physiques.
According to an interview with the game's graphic designer Keisuke Tadakuma published in the game's Official Fanbook in 1996, he stated that some enemy designs were inspired by the experimental weapons created by the Germans during World War II.
When Kirby absorbs Sora and then uses his Magic, it is immediately clear that Kirby does not get a Keyblade of his own. Instead, Kirby uses an ethereal glowing weapon that resembles a keyblade but is entirely made out of light and sparkles that changes color depending on the spell. While this can be interpreted as being a restriction by Disney over the Keyblade's imagery, Masahiro Sakurai on Twitter chalked it up to being done for lore reasons as he said "...only Keyblade Wielders can use Keyblades..." implying that Kirby isn't "chosen" as barer of one and thus has to use the three spells differently.
In Chapter 2, if the player activates the Warp Door in Queen's mansion and uses it to revisit Cyber City, they will find one of the paths blocked off by an oversized toilet sprite. According to a tweet posted by Toby Fox during Chapter 2's development, the sprite was created at his request by the game's primary graphic designer Temmie Chang, only to end up absurdly large due to a miscommunication.
Furthermore, interacting with the toilet produces the message "(For some strange reason, a giant toilet-shaped toilet is blocking the way.)" This is a reference to the Iron Pencil statues in EarthBound, which produce the near-identical message "(For some weird reason, a pencil-shaped iron statue is blocking the path.)" when checked.
According to a 2001 developer interview published in V-Jump magazine, the game's character designer Tetsuya Nomura stated the main character's name, Tiida (Tidus in the international release), was the Okinawan word for "sun". After Final Fantasy VIII, the team wanted to give their next main character a brighter and more cheerful personality. Kazushige Nojima gave Tiida his name, and Nomura thought he had a "bright" motif for the character in mind considering his name's meaning.
According to a 1998 The Playstation magazine interview with the game's director Hideki Kamiya & writer Noboru Sugimura, they were asked about the chief of police character Brian Irons. Kamiya stated that he was originally going to be a normal police chief. His chubby exterior was still the same, but he would be seen properly wearing his uniform, talked like a normal officer, etc.
Sugimura credited himself as the one who made his deviant personality. Once they changed the police station building from a modern-day one to an old art museum, someone on the development team commented that it would be strange if there were medals just lying around in that place. Then Sugimura said "Well, we'll just have to make the police chief a weirdo then!", and Irons was what he came up with. He then created the character's hidden room, the idea that Chief Irons had been given bribes from Umbrella, and gave him "an insane grin on his face". Those who first saw the idea did not think it was very realistic, but Sugimura replied that "reality depends on persuasion and belief, so as long everything was consistent, it would appear real".
Kamiya stated that he was initially against turning Irons into a weirdo and protested it, but as the game's development progressed, the staff grew to like the idea and began coming up with "ridiculous details" to complement the personality shift. One example he cited are the hallway's torches leading to Irons' hidden room. The person who made it told him, "The Chief uses those to light a fire when he has his rituals!".
After confirming that Brian Irons' name appeared as a signature on the player select screen ID card in the first Resident Evil game, Kamiya revealed that wanted to use an "-ian" sound for both the first name and surname when coming up with the name, and decided that "Brian Irons" worked perfectly. He didn't think it would be anything more than just a lighthearted signature.
Sugimura commented that he didn't know that, and that when Resident Evil 2's development started the police chief was actually named Gordon until someone pointed out he was already given the name Brian Irons and stuck with it to connect it to the first game.
Sora's Parents are only mentioned or appear very few times in the entire series despite what their son goes through. The first is in the cutscene "The Keyblade" during the first game where the storm of darkness hits Destiny Islands. Sora's mom can be heard shouting to her son to come down for dinner to no avail. Moments later, Riku tells Sora, when standing under the dark portal and tempting Sora to come with him, that they won't see their parents again if they willingly go. Another time is when Sora talks to Donald and Goofy about Namine's disappearance in Castle Oblivion in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and, influenced by a false memory, says that he thinks his parents knew about her disappearance. The last time is in Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep Spoiler:when Terra visits Destiny Islands and talks to a very young Riku who mentions that his friend's (Sora's) dad took them out on his boat.
The games' real-time action platforming aspect (in contrast to the turn-based combat of previous Square RPGs) came from a desire by series creator Tetsuya Nomura and others at Square of wanting to make a game extremely similar to and as thrilling as Super Mario 64 after they played that game and were enamored by it. However in order to make the concept stand on its own two feet, they decided to use Disney properties (which made Nomura in particular even more excited and obsessed with the project) as they believed Disney was the only thing that could compete with Nintendo and Mario.
When coming up with a name for the game and eventual series, the developers were attracted to the name "Kingdom" because, to Nomura and his team, the game's iconic premise of the different Disney movies' stories being rendered as "Worlds" for the player to visit reminded them of Disney's theme parks, such as the Magic Kingdom and Disney's Animal Kingdom, which are segmented into different "lands" or areas for visitors to explore. However, Square had difficulty in securing the name "Kingdom" alone, so they decided to add the word "Hearts" to it because such entities played an important role in the lore of the game and series.
As revealed in by an interview with a head of Disney Interactive Studios in 2017, the original characters of Kingdom Hearts, such as Sora, although created by Square Enix, are wholly and entirely owned by Disney and the company can do as they please with them.
Disney heavily restricted the use of Mickey Mouse in the game especially as the central character like Square initially wanted. This was because Disney was nervous about the success of the game and did not want its possible failure leaving a black mark on the company and its mascot. Tetsuya Nomura stated that these contractual restrictions went so far as to have Disney allow Mickey to only make a minor cameo appearance (such as "in the background of a crowd" as Nomura put it). Spoiler:Nomura and his team got around this by having Mickey have an extremely important but brief role at the end of the game in the form of Mickey helping Sora close the Door to Darkness so no more Darkness gets out of it, separating the two. King Mickey even appears mostly in silhouette in this scene. When the first Kingdom Hearts became a humongous success for both Disney and Square, the former allowed the game developers to feature their mascot in a much more prominent role in the franchise from then onward.
In the initial release of Chapter 2, interacting with Undyne's desk after goading her into breaking it generates the placeholder text "[NO TEXT] (obj_npc_room)"; a subsequent patch resolved the issue by making the desk impossible to interact with after it's broken.
If the player builds the duck version of the Thrash Machine in Chapter 1 and imports the resultant save file to Chapter 2, its attacks during the Spoiler:Rouxls Kaard fight become extremely easy to avoid; Spoiler:Rouxls and Ralsei will also have unique dialogue surrounding the machine's design.
Later, when the Thrash Machine is incorporated into the mech used to fight Spoiler:Giga Queen, the duck version replaces the standard punch sound effects with squeaking noises and features "DuckMode" as its offensive ACT, which reduces the move's strength in exchange for slightly draining additional health from Spoiler:Giga Queen between turns.
The series struggles to maintain a consistent art style after the first game. Though fans found this inconsistency is part of their charm, the series' creator, Yoshihisa Kishimoto, had always lamented that to be the case:
"Many different people worked on Double Dragon's graphics over the years, and Technos often outsourced the game design to external companies, so there was no consistency to the branding or the quality," he says. "I personally find it unfortunate, but that's the way Technos handled its titles."
According to an interview with the game's graphic designer Keisuke Tadakuma published in the game's Official Fanbook in 1996, he stated that some enemy designs were inspired by the experimental weapons created by the Germans during World War II.
When Kirby absorbs Sora and then uses his Magic, it is immediately clear that Kirby does not get a Keyblade of his own. Instead, Kirby uses an ethereal glowing weapon that resembles a keyblade but is entirely made out of light and sparkles that changes color depending on the spell. While this can be interpreted as being a restriction by Disney over the Keyblade's imagery, Masahiro Sakurai on Twitter chalked it up to being done for lore reasons as he said "...only Keyblade Wielders can use Keyblades..." implying that Kirby isn't "chosen" as barer of one and thus has to use the three spells differently.
In Chapter 2, if the player activates the Warp Door in Queen's mansion and uses it to revisit Cyber City, they will find one of the paths blocked off by an oversized toilet sprite. According to a tweet posted by Toby Fox during Chapter 2's development, the sprite was created at his request by the game's primary graphic designer Temmie Chang, only to end up absurdly large due to a miscommunication.
In the initial release of Chapter 2, interacting with Undyne's desk after goading her into breaking it generates the placeholder text "[NO TEXT] (obj_npc_room)"; a subsequent patch resolved the issue by making the desk impossible to interact with after it's broken.