.jpg?q=50&fit=contain&w=1140&h=&dpr=1.5)
Kingdom Hearts has been uniquely spread across platforms. The series started with a PS2 game, then began releasing installments on handhelds immediately after - games that were too relevant to the ongoing plot to be dismissed as spin-offs. Thus began Kingdom Hearts' bizarre history of releasing one or two games on a platform and then moving on to a different one. The handheld games have finally become widely available thanks to the release of Kingdom Hearts collections on console and PC, but for a while it was hard to approach any game in the franchise.
Kingdom Hearts has done its best to hold some presence in every console generation since the PS2. Seeing as how most modern handhelds are made by Nintendo, Kingdom Hearts has spent a fair amount of its history on Nintendo hardware like the 3DS. Recently, cloud versions of the entire Kingdom Hearts franchise were released on Switch under the title Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece. Even if these aren't the ideal versions of the games, it still feels right to have Kingdom Hearts be collected on the latest Nintendo handheld.
Kingdom Hearts' History With Nintendo Consoles
Kingdom Hearts 1 started its life on the PS2 in 2002, and in 2004 Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories was released on the Game Boy Advance. Kingdom Hearts 2 returned to the PS2 in 2005, and Re:Chain of Memories would finish the series' tenure on PS2 in 2007. The next five years would contain the bulk of Kingdom Hearts handheld games. Things started weakly with Kingdom Hearts Coded, an episodic phone game only released in Japan. Then 2009 would pick things up with the release of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, a Nintendo DS exclusive where players got to control the members of Organization 13. This was quickly followed up in 2010 by Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep on the PlayStation Portable, as well as Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded on the DS.
Things came to an end after Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance on the Nintendo 3DS in 2012. The seven years between it and 2019’s Kingdom Hearts 3 were filled with collections that ported every major Kingdom Hearts title to PlayStation, and later Xbox, platforms - alongside the release of the mobile Kingdom Hearts Cross series. It took until Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory in 2020 for the franchise to return to a Nintendo system, and by that point Kingdom Hearts games were finally all available on multiple platforms.
Kingdom Hearts Is Finally Available Everywhere
The trend of Nintendo consoles receiving exclusive Kingdom Hearts titles does not need to continue, especially now that the series is entering a new era. It's better for games furthering the plot to come to all consoles. Square Enix seemingly reached that same conclusion after Dream Drop Distance, which is why there was a five-year push to get the entire Kingdom Hearts series remastered on PS3 and PS4. With the three collections further grouped into one complete collection, Xbox consoles and PC finally got the games as well. Amid all of this, it seemed strange that the Switch was not being prioritized despite several games having originally released on Nintendo hardware.
Now the cloud versions of all remastered Kingdom Hearts games and Kingdom Hearts 3 have come to Nintendo Switch. These cloud ports are far from ideal, as fans have been reporting a litany of issues with them. Still, this means that the full Kingdom Hearts franchise is available on every platform for the first time in its life. This level of parity is something that fans likely never thought possible from the disjointed releases of the series. Hopefully the next Kingdom Hearts title will also be available on multiple consoles at launch, and either the Switch or the next Nintendo system will have better ports by then.
Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece is available now for Nintendo Switch.