We could hear her flip-flops slapping on the concrete steps leading down to the basement before we saw her. “Shh!” We hissed at each other, both assuming relaxed postures on the worn couch to exude an air of relaxation and calm. However, my sister’s breathing gave us away – her chest was rising and falling in great bursts as she tried to catch her breath.
“I know you two are stupid down here,” our mother snapped from the landing. “Stop it or I’ll take the PlayStation away from you.” She turned on her heel and walked up the stairs, her flip-flops beating a rhythm like the beginnings of a boss fight score.
As soon as we heard the creaking of the floorboards upstairs, we resumed our activities. I paused Kingdom Hearts and my sister picked up her giant stuffed bear from the floor, started singing, and threw it in the air. That was our ritual – at the ages of 11 and 8, Kingdom Hearts was the first video game that challenged us: me, the player, and my sister, the viewer. I had problems with the tutorial. I found it difficult to use the systems. I found it difficult to fly the rubber ship between places. I struggled with every boss fight.
Kingdom HeartsSquare Enix’s Disney role-playing game, which also benefited from his site Final Fantasy Games was released 22 years ago on March 28, 2002. It was the first game I almost gave up on, and it almost drove my parents crazy too.
Kingdom Hearts was my first big gaming challenge
Remember, this was 2002, before I had access to the Internet, before I knew about printed guidebooks. My parents bought me Kingdom Hearts because of the Disney connections and because it looked pretty harmless in a sea of guns, boobs and petty crime. But I had trouble with Square Enix’s RPG, as I wasn’t familiar with its systems, its combat, and was still a bit clumsy with a controller.
Read more: 5 years later I still haven’t recovered from it Kingdom Hearts 3
Faced with these difficulties, my sister, who was normally a passive spectator of my gaming endeavors, had resorted to bizarre dances while I played to appease the gaming gods. When a fight went badly, I would beg her to “grab the bear!” and she would start spinning and jumping with as much grace as you would expect from a slightly lanky third grader. The bear would frequently crash into the ceiling in the basement, knock over cups of water, or bounce off my dog’s head, sending us all into hysterics that would summon my mother Elden Ring‘S Spirit Calling Bell.
For months, this routine kept us busy: we’d come home from school on the same bus at the same time, leave our bags at the door, and rush downstairs to fire up the PlayStation and try to make some progress Kingdom Hearts. At first I thought I would quit after struggling through Wonderland, but I finally did Alice in Wonderland‘s world. Then I thought Hercules’ The planet wanted to stonewall me, but the dancing bear ritual kept me going. It was Clayton in the deep jungle of TarzanHowever, the world didn’t just threaten to make me give up Kingdom Hearts forever, but ground me and my sister for life.
You know, everything in the deep jungle was just fodder for misbehavior for me and my sister. For two elementary school children, Tarzan’s lecture was the funniest thing in the world. And Kingdom Hearts didn’t allow you to skip cutscenes, so the final boss fight in the deep jungle sent us to the start of one 30 second scene between Sora, Tarzan and Clayton several times a day. The dialogue is burned into our soft little brains. We screamed “not Clayton” from the school bus windows, moaned “no” in Sora’s exact intonation when something bad happened, or walked around the pew like gorillas during Sunday service. We were Tarzan-pills, and it drove our parents crazy.
The difficulty of this boss fight meant that the Dancing Bear ritual was used frequently, constantly increasing its intensity until we reached a point where the dance would dislodge several ceiling tiles in the basement or someone would be injured when they collided with the other person in full sprint. When my mother came down the stairs to scream at us, clapping loudly, she would be frightened every time she saw a black void where a tile used to be, my sister grinning sheepishly beneath the empty abyss, or one of us, who sat on the floor. rubbing against a growing lump on our head. The disheartening failure of another attempt at the Clayton boss fight was only matched by the punishment we had to endure for acting like two children raised in the wild: 100 lines written in our spiral notebooks, or a playdate canceled, or, worst of all : a PlayStation ban.
Eventually (I can’t remember when or how) I defeated Clayton and moved on AladdinThis is Agrabah. Although I had fewer problems in this part of the game and the bear ritual was no longer necessary, my sister and I still found ways to loudly chant nonsense to match the score in the game while belly dancing on our shirts as we spun up and contracted to expose our abs. When I finally hit Kingdom HeartsI don’t know who was more relieved: me or my parents.
