Kingdom Hearts almost led to Disney making its own version of Super Smash Bros, former dev says

Kingdom Hearts bashing together a bunch of Disney’s best toys (and being quite successful in the process) led the Mouse House to briefly begin work on a crossover fighting game in the style of Super Smash Bros.

That’s according to Ken Christiansen, a former Disney Interactive concept artist who also had credits on the very first Kingdom Hearts game. In an interview with Time Extension, the developer said Kingdom Hearts’ world-hopping shenanigans opened Disney’s eyes to a whole universe of potential crossover projects.

The development of the original Kingdom Hearts game was apparently a little difficult “because Disney was so reluctant to have that possibility of crossing over The Lion King into The Little Mermaid world,” Christiansen recalled.

Disney supposedly “couldn’t get over” seeing its most popular characters run into each other constantly, and the company’s hesitance meant there was “just a little bit of butting heads” during production, even if most of the developers “thought it was the greatest idea in the world.”

Regardless of how unexcited certain Disney executives were about Square Enix‘s still-whacky series, it was a pretty major success. The first Kingdom Hearts became one of the PlayStation 2’s best-selling games and, as you can imagine, put dollar signs in the eyes of company higher ups.

With the company then more receptive to crossover games, a project with the early working title of Disney’s Action Figure Face Off began pre-production. Producers supposedly came up with the idea to “take the same conceit as Toy Story, but have [the toys] fight each other instead,” Christiansen remembered.

“Then, we can have all these action figures of Disney characters from Tarzan, The Lion King, and Treasure Planet, and it can be this Smash Brothers type of thing,” he added. Funnily enough, Super Smash Bros 64 also had a toys-come-to-life framing.

Disney’s Smash Br- I mean, Disney’s Action Figure Face Off never got past prototypes since the company apparently wanted to focus on safer film tie-ins, but similar projects didn’t suffer the same fate. Toys-to-life sandbox Disney Infinity, kart racer Disney Speedstorm, and life sim romp Disney Dreamlight Valley eventually glued together countless franchises under Mickey’s reign.

Of course, the one that started it all is still going strong, too. Kingdom Hearts 4 launches late next year, and a Disney Plus anime series is also in production.