• Hello everybody! We have tons of new awards for the new year that can be requested through our Awards System thanks to Antifa Lockhart! Some are limited-time awards so go claim them before they are gone forever...

    CLICK HERE FOR AWARDS

Kingdom Hearts V-CAST Game Files Ripped



REGISTER TO REMOVE ADS
Tauxsin

Tauxsin

Member
Joined
Apr 9, 2014
Messages
15
Awards
4
Just posting to keep the thread alive! Anybody have anything V Cast or coded related going on? Or heck, anything on another lost game, like the coded Gummiship Studio? :)
 
Last edited:
Aid1043

Aid1043

New member
Joined
Sep 1, 2023
Messages
8
Awards
2
It's not anything major, but I did go through the files and make cropped versions of all of the V CAST character models (for part of my video documenting the game). So if anyone wants a clean image of the goofiest Darkball, the emblem-less Blue Rhapsody, or Goofy with his hair on fire, I've put them all here on the KHWiki. (Jafar and the Bandit can't be opened in the .m3g file viewer, so those are just cropped screenshots instead.)

1712506791363.png
 
Tauxsin

Tauxsin

Member
Joined
Apr 9, 2014
Messages
15
Awards
4
Aid1043 said:
It's not anything major, but I did go through the files and make cropped versions of all of the V CAST character models (for part of my video documenting the game). So if anyone wants a clean image of the goofiest Darkball, the emblem-less Blue Rhapsody, or Goofy with his hair on fire, I've put them all here on the KHWiki. (Jafar and the Bandit can't be opened in the .m3g file viewer, so those are just cropped screenshots instead.)

View attachment 16394
Click to expand...
Hey, that's something! I love it!

Also, what are the odds? I'm literally watching your Magical Puzzle Clash video right now 😂
 
Neo_

Neo_

Active member
Joined
Mar 15, 2015
Messages
696
Awards
3
Aid1043 said:
It's not anything major, but I did go through the files and make cropped versions of all of the V CAST character models (for part of my video documenting the game). So if anyone wants a clean image of the goofiest Darkball, the emblem-less Blue Rhapsody, or Goofy with his hair on fire, I've put them all here on the KHWiki. (Jafar and the Bandit can't be opened in the .m3g file viewer, so those are just cropped screenshots instead.)

View attachment 16394
Click to expand...
This is epic. I love how Donald's outfit is basically like they started going for it and just gave up midway through.

This is like our closest look to the hypothetical "PS1 Kingdom Hearts" that people sometimes like to pose, aesthetically, as well as just a lighthearted and basic approach.

I just love this game cause it feels like an alternate look at the series where Disney retains higher relevance (which started becoming lost by CoM). V CAST predates CoM by about a month in Japan.
 
Sven Cakemann

Sven Cakemann

New member
Joined
Apr 15, 2022
Messages
18
Awards
7
Has anyone ever been able to confirm that Vcast actually came out in 2004 for Japan? I can't find any actual proof, just wikis and videos claiming it was.

I keep trying to wrack my brain to think of places/times that someone would've posted any information about Wonderland. Any clips or pictures.
 
Aid1043

Aid1043

New member
Joined
Sep 1, 2023
Messages
8
Awards
2
Sven Cakemann said:
Has anyone ever been able to confirm that Vcast actually came out in 2004 for Japan? I can't find any actual proof, just wikis and videos claiming it was.

I keep trying to wrack my brain to think of places/times that someone would've posted any information about Wonderland. Any clips or pictures.
Click to expand...
Okay, I went searching for the Japanese release date and this is what I found:

The claim on the KHWiki dates back to the article's creation, which was copy-pasted from Wikipedia in June 2008.
The claim on Wikipedia comes from this edit in August 2007, which added two citations to IGN.
The second citation to IGN (which is not the one next to the release date in the article, mind you) leads to an article written in February 2005, which has this infobox:
1715575571837.png

So, the source for date is an IGN article from the time of release, but given that they list Square as a developer, the veracity of the information is indeterminable.

I've been trying to find when the V CAST service launched in Japan, but I've had no luck. My hunch is that the service launched on that date in 2004, but maybe not the Kingdom Hearts game, especially given this interview in the Chain of Memories Ultimania (translation by Mors):
"Interviewer: "We have heard that, in America, there is a KH being developed for the mobile phone."
Click to expand...
Tetsuya Nomura: "There are quite a few things concerning that...officially it has nothing to do with the original KH. It's completely different. The title is KH, Sora makes an appearance, but the story has nothing to do whatsoever with the KH, KHCOM, and KHII we're developing, because it is Disney who designed V-Cast.""
Click to expand...
So it's possible that KH V CAST was an America exclusive, and someone at IGN conflated the launch of the service with the launch of the game, assuming that an American launch title was also a launch title in Japan. But without further information, it's hard to say.

As an aside, this IGN article says that the North American release was on February 1, 2005, not February 4 like the KHWiki and Wikipedia currently list. This is corroborated elsewhere on IGN and seemingly by this Verizon press release, so I'm now curious as to where the NA release date came from, too.
 
Aid1043

Aid1043

New member
Joined
Sep 1, 2023
Messages
8
Awards
2
Actually, do we have any proof that the V CAST service even released in Japan?

We can be pretty certain that February 1 was the release date of the service in America (and thus also the release date of KH V CAST), thanks to several Verizon News Archive articles (here, here, and here). But I've been unable to find many Japanese resources talking about it. There's this news article covering the announcement of V CAST Mobile TV in 2007, which heavily implies that it's an American thing, and this Verizon-Square Enix press release, which also makes explicit references to "mobile phones in the United States".

It's now my belief that Kingdom Hearts V CAST never released in Japan – certainly not in 2004, before the American service launched – and maybe the entire Verizon V CAST service was also limited to the US. If anyone finds any more evidence, please do share.

Also, some fun notes from my research:
  • This Verizon article refers to the game as "Disney's Kingdom Hearts 3D Mobile", which is quite the title
  • This other Verizon article makes a big deal about the amazing frame rate of V CAST: "Video clips on V CAST are consistently streamed at 15 frames per second, capturing the graceful pass of a tiny football among a myriad of players, or a weatherman showing storm cloud movements on a geographical map"
 
Aid1043

Aid1043

New member
Joined
Sep 1, 2023
Messages
8
Awards
2
Okay, I'm pretty confident now that the Japanese release of KH V CAST is completely bogus.
Combined with everything from my last message, I found this listing of V CAST on Unifrance (an organization managed by part of the French Ministry of Culture), which lists the country of V CAST as "United States", which at the very least clarifies that a Japanese release could not have predated an American one.

Plus, and I can't believe I didn't check this sooner, the Japanese Kingdom Hearts wiki basically says it outright.
A game for mobile phones compatible with the mobile service "V CAST" released in the United States... Of course, it's all in English
Click to expand...

I'm really curious as to why that 2005 IGN article listed a release date of October 1, 2004 for Japan – the most likely answer is that it was a simple copy/paste error from a previous article or infobox template, but I guess we'll never know.
 
Sven Cakemann

Sven Cakemann

New member
Joined
Apr 15, 2022
Messages
18
Awards
7
Aid1043 said:
Okay, I'm pretty confident now that the Japanese release of KH V CAST is completely bogus.
Combined with everything from my last message, I found this listing of V CAST on Unifrance (an organization managed by part of the French Ministry of Culture), which lists the country of V CAST as "United States", which at the very least clarifies that a Japanese release could not have predated an American one.

Plus, and I can't believe I didn't check this sooner, the Japanese Kingdom Hearts wiki basically says it outright.


I'm really curious as to why that 2005 IGN article listed a release date of October 1, 2004 for Japan – the most likely answer is that it was a simple copy/paste error from a previous article or infobox template, but I guess we'll never know.
Click to expand...
Kudos to you for doing all that research. If I had to guess, someone 20 years ago made an assumption and it got caught up in the citation-blackhole as a matter of fact. I'm a bit disappointed since, if that's the case, it makes the possible pool of phones Wonderland could still be on "smaller", but it's good having more accurate information out there. (Assuming it's not just, reallllllly hidden in the Japanese web).
 
Aid1043

Aid1043

New member
Joined
Sep 1, 2023
Messages
8
Awards
2
I've been going through the KH Mobile mini-games myself this past week, it's been pretty interesting. I'm in the process of documenting and archiving everything; just yesterday, I finished extracting and recording the full soundtrack (38 songs!), which you can see along with a preliminary music analysis here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1mSUa3v-g5Ef5b5oSmL6FPdhJfYYWqRUB
 
Tauxsin

Tauxsin

Member
Joined
Apr 9, 2014
Messages
15
Awards
4
Aid1043 said:
I've been going through the KH Mobile mini-games myself this past week, it's been pretty interesting. I'm in the process of documenting and archiving everything; just yesterday, I finished extracting and recording the full soundtrack (38 songs!), which you can see along with a preliminary music analysis here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1mSUa3v-g5Ef5b5oSmL6FPdhJfYYWqRUB
Click to expand...
Wow, that's awesome! That's quite a detailed analysis! Have you been able to play them at all? Or just extract the files so far?
 
Aid1043

Aid1043

New member
Joined
Sep 1, 2023
Messages
8
Awards
2
Tauxsin said:
Wow, that's awesome! That's quite a detailed analysis! Have you been able to play them at all? Or just extract the files so far?
Click to expand...
Yep, almost everything is up and running. There are still some issues (the rhythm game has tons of lag, one of the card games crashes every time you finish a level since it's trying to contact a server that was shut down a decade ago), but it's basically all there.

For anyone that wants to see it for themselves, go to the #resources section of the keitai game preservation discord (invite link). The files are in "Preserved commercial/preloaded i-mode games", and it runs on the DoJa 5.1 SDK emulator, which they have a guide for setting up (since it's a lot of steps).

Once I've finished going through the games, I'll be putting as much info as I can on the KHWiki, and I'll also be making videos about the mini-games to try to share them with the larger community.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top