Kingdom Hearts II

(PS3)
March 9, 2017⁵ (PS4) | usa=
March 28, 2006⁶ (PS2)
December 2, 2014⁷ (PS3)
March 28, 2017⁸ (PS4) | europe=
September 29, 2006⁹ (PS2)
December 5, 2014 (PS3)
March 31, 2017 (PS4) | aus=
September 29, 2006 (PS2)
December 4, 2014 (PS3) | world=
February 18, 2020¹⁰ (Xbox One)
March 30, 2021¹¹ (Epic Games Store)
March 30, 2024¹² (Steam) | animations= y | areas= y | graphics= y | music= y | models= y | enemy= y | items= y | region= y | revision= y | text= y }}

Prerelease Info Notes Unused GraphicsWhy did they make all those titles for cutscene-only rooms?

Unused Items#

Placeholders#

There are many items with this placeholder icon that are unused. Items 12-20, 22-32, 38-42, 79, 91, 109-112, 117, 122, 127, 132, 141-148, 175-176, 178, 180, 240, 245-265, 269 and 271 all use this icon internally. These were later removed in Final Mix, which added more items to the game, but instead of replacing the unused ones they added more instead.

Use Items#

An early icon for the Megalixir, and an icon for what is most likely meant to be a Hi-Ether.

Unused Key Items#

This might look like a regular map icon, but it's actually meant for a debug item! Note that both images are unused/early versions of the map icon. An HD version of the item's icon is present in the remastered versions.

There are also inventory versions of the Posters used during the Poster Duty minigame, as well as the Letters from the Mail Delivery minigame. In addition to these, there are also inventory versions of the Struggle Tournament posters seen in the final game. All of these use unique descriptions, shown below:

• Poster: "An everyday poster. Used for advertisement by the folk of Twilight Town"
• Tournament Poster: "Poster for the Struggle Tournament. It reads, 'Get ready for rip-roaring excitement!'"
• Letter: "A letter from one of the part-time jobs. Make sure it gets delivered!"

The Promise Charm can be found among the other items Sora receives from Riku after the second visit to Hollow Bastion. It's description reads "A charm from Kiari. It represents her wish to meet Sora again, no matter how far apart they are." It is listed as a synthesis recipe.

Additionally, items 1C5-1DA (21 items) are unused dummy synthesis recipes. Their descriptions read "Synthesis Recipe" followed by a number.

Unused Weapons#

There are a couple of unused Keyblades in the game, called Detection Saber and Edge of Ultima. Interestingly, they have models and are functional, but their item icons appear as the icon used for maps. Both are modeled after the Ultima Weapon from the first game, only without textures, as well as Detection Saber being longer. They use the effects and sounds from the Oblivion Keyblade. There is also the Antiform Dummy and FAKE weapons which crash the game when equipped.

Additionally, there are equivalents for both Donald and Goofy, named the Staff of Detection and Detection Shield. They are usable and use a map image as their icon.

Goofy also has an unused shield named "Test the King", it is the "Save the King" shield from the first game only with a different name.

Stats

• Detection Saber: 0 Strength, 0 Magic, No Ability
• Edge of Ultima: 3 Strength, 1 Magic, No Ability
• Staff of Detection: 0 Strength, 0 Magic, No Ability
• Detection Shield: 0 Strength, 0 Magic, No Ability
• Test the King: 10 Strength, 0 Magic, No Ability

Descriptions

• Detection Saber: "The longest keyblade available. Detect motion and movement with this weapon."
• Edge of Ultima: "A familiar keyblade to Sora called the Ultima Weapon. It can used for checking movement."
• Staff of Detection: "A powerless staff, it's only use is to detect movement."
• Detection Shield: "A shield crafted from all shields used for detecting motion."
• Test the King: "A powerful and familiar shield!"

Though the descriptions mention being able to detect movement nothing seems to change when using any of these weapons.

Edge of Ultima is called Frontier of Ultima in the HD re-releases.

Unused Events#

An unused event in the Armoured Controller fight room (eh23) would spawn model B_EX340, which is unused and untextured, near the centre of the arena. During this unused event Xemnas, Sora, and Riku would spawn outside of the arena, presumably for a battle.

An event tied to room zz0 (an unused version of The Usual Spot), an event was set to give the player the Cure element.

Two unused events tied to room hb33 in which you fight Vexen in his absent silhouette and data forms respectively. This is the same room as the Lexaeus and Larxene data encounters, implying Vexen's encounter room may have been changed late in development.

An unused event which spawns multiple NPCs from Land of the Dragons. This event is prefixed with z, meaning it is likely for debugging.

An unused event which spawns Beast alongside Donald and Goofy. Notably, this Beast model is a party member model, and Sora does not spawn using this script, meaning it would have to be called alongside another script. This map does have solo Sora spawn data which could be paired with it.

Unused Abilities#

Among Tron's abilities, abilities called Slow 2 and Slow 3 can be found. Their descriptions read "{Delete}".

Unused Models#

To do: Add images of the weapon models. Add unused models listed here

Unused Character Models#

There are some unused models that go by H_CM or N_CM, with CM standing for Chain of Memories because the models were used in pre-rendered cutscenes in the game. They consist of Sora, Riku, and several other characters that appeared in the first Kingdom Hearts game.

All of the Chain of Memories Organization members have unused weapon models. Additionally, an unused model of Ansem with his Guardian Heartless is present.

Watch on YouTubeThe Sora model contains unused animations from the the first game. Animations include standing, walking, attacking, jumping and grabbing ledges.

Unused Summons#

There are untextured models for Woody and Buzz from Toy Story, found alongside the other summons in the game. Their model IDs being the first ones on the summon list (P_EX300 and P_EX310, with Peter Pan, the first used entry, being P_EX330) suggests that these two were cut very early into development. Presumably thought to be excluded due to being a part of Pixar's trademarks, and therefore requiring a license from Pixar, they, along with others from Toy Story, would later be included within Kingdom Hearts III.

Unused Enemies#

A Mushroom XIII model exists in all versions of the game. It has one test animation. In Final Mix, this model is the first in the list of Mushroom XIII models, but still remains untextured and unused. The Behemoth and Wyvern models are located in obj/M_EX310_NPC and obh/M_EX320_NPC respectively. These enemies were shown in pre-release footage and have some of the lowest enemy IDs, however their models are suffixed with _NPC, meaning that these versions of the models were not intended to be fightable. These models contain animations with only one frame, which snaps them to the positions pictured above.

There is an unused, untextured Roxas model found at obj/N_EX380_BTL.mdlx. It is next to Roxas' cutscene models and labelled the same way as minor bosses (Hayner, Setzer, Vivi).

There is an untextured version of the main arena used in the Armoured Controller phase of the ending sequence found in obj/B_EX340.mdlx.

Oddities#

• There is an unused Tron world variant of the Surveillance Robot which is just a duplicate of the original model. It's worth noting that the Surveillance Robot does have a Tron world variant that is used.
• There is an unused duplicate of the Die transformation with broken test animations.

• There is an unused & untextured model in the game for Stitch's ship that he used in the original Lilo & Stitch movie. The model comes with an animation named "test" that does nothing. It would eventually be used in Birth By Sleep.
• There is an unused Model of the Grid Bug from the movie Tron. The model is untextured.
• Briefly, Sora's model & textures from prerelease footage of Kingdom Hearts I shows up in a cutscene in 100 Acre Wood.

Unused Animations#

Unused Areas#

Castle Oblivion#

Castle Oblivion exists in the Hollow Bastion room list (ID: hb14) in all releases of the game. The ground has collision, and while the Castle itself is very detailed, it does not have any collision. It is likely this world was intended to be used in a cutscene of some kind in Hollow Bastion

Deleted Maps#

To do: Check if any of the spawn scripts listed below can be imported into an existing map.

These 3 .ard files in the game's data that have no associated map, suggesting that they were planned but never worked on or were deleted from the game at some point.

• al08.ard: This map would have been an additional room in the Cave of Wonders in Agrabah. It contains 4 map states, likely for different enemy and NPC placements like most other maps, though they could be for anything. There are no cutscenes or story battles in the ard file for this map.
• po10.ard: Most likely an additional torn page/area in 100 Acre Wood. Likely used for the cut fruit-themed minigame, along with the unused fruit models.
• dc07.ard: This map would have been in Disney Castle. In the Final Mix version of the game, this map file exists as the Keyblade Graveyard battle arena for the Lingering Will secret boss, suggesting that the boss may have been planned for the vanilla game but scrapped due to time constraints or some other reason. This ard file is mostly blank, containing no scripts or spawn data for anything other than the non-existent map.

In addition to this, the following unused .ard files are only found within the Final Mix version.

• hb28.ard - hb30.ard: These .ard files are placed directly after the new explorable locations added in Final Mix, but before the Data boss battles. These files are dummied out
• hb31.ard: Contains spawn scripts for Sora, Donald, and Goofy at specific coordinates and a few objects. It is possible that this script would work when placed into the correct map.
• hb35.ard - hb37.ard: Placed after the Zexion fight room and before the Marluxia fight room.

World ZZ#

In place.bin, a list of every room in the game from a certain point in development can be found when properly decoded. A guide can be found here. 00place.bin contains every room in the game, but only their numerical IDs and not names. Attempting to load any of these crashes the game.

The player is placed in rooms zz47-zz49 during pre-rendered cutscenes in the final game, and as such these are not included in the table.

Additionally, World_ZZ contains leftover debug/testing data:

Note that the ZZ36 in the flag names likely refers to room ID zz36, which is called Test Map (テストマップ). These flags are all found in dbg/localset-zz.bin. Another file, dbg/mission-zz.bin, has many of the same flags, and two additional ones, "TEST_SKATEBOARD" and "TEST_YASUI". Yasui is the last name of one of the lead programmers of Kingdom Hearts I and II.

A third file, dbg/progress-zz.dbg (used as a way to label save file information for debugging), contains the following save flags:

Note that generic flags used in every world are not included in this table. While all of these are initialized when creating a save file, none of them are used.

World FA#

There are several files in the /dbg/ directory, as well as a text string related to a world not used in the final game, with the 2-letter code "FA". The code "FA" was later used for the Fantasia-based Symphony of Sorcery world in Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, suggesting that a Fantasia world may have been originally planned for Kingdom Hearts II. It has also been speculated that the Mysterious Tower world may have originally been planned as a separate world instead of part of Twilight Town, and that this folder is a remnant of when it used to be separate. A file for story flags also exists for this world, but the flags are just copied over from the World Map or blanked in the remasters.

Unused Collision#

The Secret Cave cutscene map contains collision data for the entire main area of Destiny Islands from Kingdom Hearts. This collision data has the used Secret Cave collision data placed directly on top of it, possibly indicating that the Destiny Islands main area was planned to be used in a cutscene at some point and was later replaced with the Secret Cave.

The Destiny Islands mainland cutscene map has collision for the entire map, despite not being accessible outside of cutscenes. In addition to this, the collision seems to be for an earlier version of the map, as the elevation is different at several points, most notably at the hill in the back.

Unused Music#

"Melodies of Life" from Final Fantasy IX#

There is a music track in the data of Kingdom Hearts II that seems to be based on "Melodies of Life" from Final Fantasy IX. The song has no instruments, so it can't be heard in-game. This upload here uses custom instruments to allow the tune to be heard.

Tracks reused from Kingdom Hearts#

There are tracks present only in the PS2 release that are from the original Kingdom Hearts. The tracks are "Villains of a Sort", "Squirming Evil", "Under the Sea", "An Adventure in Atlantica", "Neverland Sky", and "Guardando nel buio". The Atlantica themes having separate field and battle instruments like in the original Kingdom Hearts suggests it may have been cut as a properly playable world earlier in development, as field & battle songs in a world use the same instruments in Kingdom Hearts II to save RAM, compared to the original Kingdom Hearts, where each field and battle theme had its own unique instruments. With the exception of the notable examples below, these tracks are identical to the ones found in Kingdom Hearts, even coming with the same instrument files.

Guardando nel buio#

"Guardando nel buio", interestingly, is adjusted slightly to have a longer buildup to the main melody.

Oopsy-Daisy#

"Oopsy-Daisy" from Kingdom Hearts is also present, but, like with "Melodies of Life" has no instruments, so it is unable to be heard in game. It's been given it's instruments from the original Kingdom Hearts in order to hear it.

Unused Voice Clips#

In "/voice/us/battle" there are some unused voice clips in various character's battle voice banks.
Note: These audio files were ripped from the PC version.

Roxas#

Leave it to me.

I'm on it.

Man...

Roxas has 3 unused voice clips, that only seem to play in-game when he's performing the "Call Over" reaction command. In the PC release, these voice clips are located at the very end of his voice bank.

Mickey#

I'll always look out for ya.

Fellas!

Fight together, pals!

Donald!

Goofy!

There are two voice banks in the game for Mickey, one when functioning as a playable character, and the other when functioning as an ally. Mickey has 5 unused voice clips in his second voice bank, where he has some short quotes of dialogue and calls out Donald and Goofy's names.

Minnie#

(screams)

Oh dear.

Sora, help!

Thank you!

Stay back!

Minnie has some unused damage clips for her escort mission. It's possible some of them may have played if you failed the mission. She also has an unused clip thanking someone, presumably Sora.

Scar#

Flames! Attack!

Scar has one unused voice file, for an unused attack.

Hades#

Ho-hum.

Are you looking for me?

Did ya lose me?

Oh, was that supposed to hurt?

Hades has various unused voice lines, stored in both of his voice banks (one for Hades Escape, one as a Boss). These voice lines consist of him taunting the party.

Xemnas#

Anger. Hatred. Envy. See how the Hearts' greatest virtues sustain me!

Is that all? Is that the breadth of your hearts?

I shall devour all, the light and the darkness.

Xemnas has various unused voice lines during the final battle, when he's sitting on the throne and facing both Sora & Riku. It's possible some voice lines could've been intended to be used for a cut boss phase known as "King."

Unused Text#

wm.bar#

Found in "msg\us\wm.bar" is text for landing in places from the Gummi Ship on the World Map that can't normally be landed in.

gumi.bar#

"msg\us\gumi.bar" has some unused text pertaining to the Gummi Ship menu.

Revisional Differences#

To do: Should a separate section be made to cover differences between vanilla and Final Mix? There's a lot more that isn't listed here. Get images, models, everything...

Changes From the Original Japanese to International Versions#

The international versions received numerous cuts in order to fit the then newly-introduced ESRB Everyone 10+ rating.

• Any references to guns or violence were removed from the international versions. This is especially notable in the Pirates of the Caribbean world Port Royal where some of the scenes were removed to tone down the violence, such as Will Turner threatening to commit suicide by pointing a gun to his neck, or Jack Sparrow being stabbed in the chest by Barbossa's sword when turning undead. However, alcoholic references were not removed.
• The undead pirate enemies have muskets in the Japanese version, whereas the international ones have them using crossbows. Despite this, the crossbows still have an audible gunshot sound effect and Sora's command to dodge an arrow is still called Dodge Fire. Furthermore, the international versions remove the effect of them catching fire if you cast fire magic.
• During the Hydra boss fight in Olympus Coliseum, in the Japanese version, it spits green blood when attacked in a cutscene, and fades away bleeding green blood when defeated; the international versions changed this to have it drool and fade away in purple smoke.
• In the Japanese versions of the game, the boss Xigbar combines his guns to create a rifle. In the international versions, Xigbar instead just keeps the two handguns separate. Additionally, the crosshair design was even changed.

Changes From International to Final Mix#

• A new difficulty mode, Critical, was added, becoming the new standard for the hardest difficulty in the series.
• Limit Form was added as a new Drive form, as well as all of its abilities.
• Filling the Drive Gauge has been made easier, and the maximum Gauge number has been increased from 7 to 9.
• Puzzle pieces have been added to every world, as part of a new sidequest contained within Jiminy's Journal. The puzzles all unlock exclusive rewards when completed.
• 24 new abilities were added, both as part of Limit Form and learned naturally through levelling up. Certain Keyblades have also had their attached abilities altered (exampleː Kingdom Key now has Damage Control instead of Defender).
• 2 new Keyblades, 8 new staves for Donald, and 8 shields for Goofy were added, as well as 3 pieces of armor and 5 new accessories.
• Multiple new cutscenes were added to further expand upon the story and set up for Birth by Sleep and 358/2 Days, including an extended secret ending. All of these new cutscenes are in Japanese by default, and when set to English audio in theater mode, are completely voiceless.
• Roxas was added as a new boss fight, fought when reaching Memory's Skyscraper for the first time in The World That Never Was.
• The Organization XIII members killed during Chain of Memories were added as new optional bosses, fought as Absent Silhouettes found throughout the game.
• An entirely new area, along with new enemies, was added, the Cavern of Remembrance, first accessible after completing the first visit to Space Paranoids. All Organization XIII members can be refought here as data battles, more difficult variations of their original boss fights.
• 13 Heartless, the "Mushroom XIII", have been added as an optional challenge minigame spread throughout the worlds.
• Clear Data can now be saved after completing the game, unlocking new content when loaded.
• A new boss, the Lingering Will, appears at Disney Castle after completing the game and saving your clear data.
• Theater Mode was added, allowing players to freely watch any cutscene in the game once viewed.
• Having ReːChain of Memories clear data on your Memory Card unlocks a Japanese voice track for the theater mode.
• Three crowns were added as recognition of the player's achievements, unlocked by completing all of the Mushroom XIII challenges, defeating all of the data Organization fights, and defeating the Lingering Will, in any order.

2.5 HD Version#

• Most of the censorship from the international PS2 version was retained in all versions of 2.5 HD, with the exception of the Xigbar weapon change.
• In the PlayStation 2 versions, maneuvering the camera underneath Kairi's skirt reveals she wears a pair of white panties with a red ribbon. These are removed in the HD version, meaning her legs no longer connect to her torso.
• Japanese audio for cutscenes are now enabled by default in the Japanese version of the game. All of the new cutscenes have been dubbed in English.
• Roxas' voice clips and grunts while playable have been changed to recycle audio from 358/2 Days and Ventus' audio from Birth by Sleep.
• The soundtrack has been re-recorded with live instrumentation.
• The Organization XIII members featured as Absent Silhouette fights now recycle English audio from their appearances in Re:Chain of Memories and 358/2 Days.
• On the PS3 only, in The Land of Dragons, The Emperor is missing his mouth animation textures for cutscene dialogue.

References#