How Kingdom Hearts' creator Tetsuya Nomura had to start from scratch for HD remake

When Tetsuya Nomura decided to remix the original Kingdom Hearts for Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix, he decided it would be useful to look for the original data and assets for the game. Unfortunately, they were lost forever.

"Kingdom Hearts was created a long, long time ago," he said in a video interview with publisher Square Enix's own E3 channel. "The original data was missing already. It was lost so we had to research, to dig out the original game and recreate everything for HD. It was not that easy."

Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix is launching in the U.S., Europe and Australia in early September. It features Kingdom Hearts Final Mix and Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories as well as a cinematic scenes from Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. It was released in Japan in March.

During the interview, Nomura spoke nostalgically about the Kingdom Hearts series, which began with the launch of the original Disney collaboration for PlayStation 2, in 2002. "It's been good," he said, referring to the development team's relationship with Disney. "We've been working together for ten years and still have the same counterpart at Disney. Sometimes we have heated discussions, but it's been good."

At E3 earlier this month, Nomura and Square Enix confirmed that the next game in the series, Kingdom Hearts 3, is in development for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.