And The Fandom Rejoiced / Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]

Sora's "Wow, awesome!" suggests he's happy to be in the TRON: Legacy world just as much as we are.

Gabe: Did you grab the Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop [sic] demo? It brangs the heat!
Tycho: I never really understood what was going on in these games. You've played them all, right?
Gabe: Yeah.
Tycho: What is the dealio?
Gabe: Well, Mickey Mouse is a king and a wizard, and Sephiroth is there, and sometimes Cloud, and you can ride a Light Cycle with Jack Skellington and I don't know what the fuck else you want!

Penny Arcade, "Melange"^note (Gabe later provided further commentary regarding the game, as follows: "I’ve put a good 13 hours into Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance now and so I feel comfortable telling you that it’s awesome. With that said, If you’re going to play it you need to put up with the wonky camera, the ridiculous story, the complicated nested menus, and systems piled on top of systems. Trust me though, buried under all that crap is a lot of gold. The combat system is fast and fun, the Pokemon style monster collection is great, the Flick Rush card battle game could be sold all by itself, and visually the entire game is just gorgeous. Kingdom Hearts is a strange series. I find that people either love it or hate it. On some level I realize that I’m being manipulated. It’s fanservice and if you don’t love Disney you probably just look at the KH series and shake your head. I can’t really explain why getting to jump into all these Disney worlds is such a thrill for me. Think about it this way though: What if it wasn’t Disney, what if it was Nintendo? What if Sora’s Keyblade let him fight alongside Link and Samus in their worlds? What if he battled Bowser and collected actual Pokemon? What if Donkey Kongklajhsd Sorry, I just blacked out there for a second. I need to go lay down. -Gabe out-")

Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], by now, can be considered the biggest hype machine ever seen in the franchise, so much that this trope's entry in the YMMV tab was twice as long as the rest of the page combined; in other words, it's only natural that now we have a separate subpage for this trope alone (It was the first one for a single work in the entire wiki). Suffice to say, nuke-like cleanups do not apply here.

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• A playable Riku without a card system, an entire game divided into about ninety missions or a few seconds deadline, and the fact that all of the Disney-based worlds will be entirely new. Also, there's rejoicing about Sora being Sora himself and not Ventus, Terra, Aqua, a Data replica, Roxas, or an unlockable character.
• The first confirmed Disney world? Notre Dame.
  • Two words: Frollo confirmed.
  • PHOEBUS!!
• The mere fact it's gonna be a brand new Square-Enix title in glasses-less 3D should qualify.
• Release date March 2012: which is an amazingly quick development cycle for a mainline KH game; both KH2 and BBS took 3 years from announcement to release. The game has gotten an official US and UK release confirmation, and if Square Enix France (and their leaky website) are to be believed, it's very likely we'll see this game in English by late July or early August. That's a localisation turnaround of 5 months, which is very quick for a Kingdom Hearts title.
  • That's quick for Square Enix, period.
• There will be a Reapers' Game in Traverse Town,◊ complete with Neku.
  • Alright, Joshua and Beat fans. You can all die happy now.◊
  • Then there's the CAT graffiti◊ in Traverse Town. Many TWEWY fanboys/girls rejoiced that day.
  • Although most of us already knew it, it still wasn't confirmed and as such someone feared there would be The Other Darrin, but now we know that Jesse David Corti, Neku Sakuraba's original voice actor in The World Ends with You, basically confirmed that he's gonna reprise his role as Neku in KH 3 D.
    • An update about that announcement, seen in the same link, has Corti not only confirming his role, but also that he already recorded his lines as Neku. That, coupled with the similar announcements from Richard Epcar and James Patrick Steward above as well as this one from Vincent Corazza, altogether seem to imply that voice acting for the English-speaking versions of the game has already been completed. Never (almost) we've seen Square Enix rushing like that for localization - and given how games such as the first Dissidia took one year before getting fully localised, that's saying a lot!
• The second confirmed Disney world? PINOCCHIO!!!
• The Three Musketeers World? HELL. YES.
• And then there's the TRON: Legacy world. TWEWY characters include Shiki and Rhyme as well. Lea is in, too. There's so much to rejoice about, it's not even funny!
• Jump Festa 2012 proudly presents: Dream Eater Plushies! First up: Wandanyan!◊ Cue the countless squeeing.
• Here,◊ just◊ take◊ a◊ damn◊ look◊ by◊ yourself◊ and◊ wet◊ your◊ pants◊ accordingly.◊
  • Ditch the pants. You're gonna need another outfit by the end of this.
  • The same trailer shows that, for the first time, Riku has a world-centric outfit: Data Form, originally seen in Kingdom Hearts II, is back for the TRON: Legacy world in KH 3 D, and this time, even Riku gets to wear◊ Tron Lines!
  • The CG sequence that will presumably serve as the game's opening recaps the entire series to date very nicely indeed, even giving Xion a look in, and giving the barest of hints towards the eventual final battle with Xehanort.
• Then this summed alot of it up, and...
  • ... after that trailer summed up most of the rejoicing on this page, now comes word that Fantasia is one of the new worlds, with the first character being Mickey in his Sorcerer's Apprentice Costume. And not as a D-Link summon, no, as Mickey Mouse himself.
• Braig/Xigbar's and Xehanort's respective voice actors both stated that they've started voice acting, thus essentially confirming that English voice acting has already begun. For those not thrilled about this, bear in mind that it means the quick-localisation-within-2012 we've been promised has begun as well!
• The English site has opened, with a Japanese trailer. It lasts for about four minutes, so how is it gonna top the latest one— what, did you say it has new footage? And that there are the best bits of all the previous trailers in it? Awesome! Wait, what does that footnote below the video player say... HOLY SMOKES THERE'S GOING TO BE AN ENGLISH VERSION OF THIS VERY SOON.
  • The above trailer, as part of its aforementioned new footage, shows there are such iconic scenes as, say, Frollo holding Esmeralda's arm. Sora arrives shortly after, strongly implying there's going to be a lot of Catharsis Factor. YES.
  • Actually, the trailer they used was just the short version from Jump Festa, which was released more than a month ago. Not that it detracts from any of the rejoicing though.
• And now we have already the Boxart for the game, thus meaning that - Awesome Art aside - the quick development cycle is really nearing its end as we've been promised! Score another one for Squeenix.
• There's another new trailer out, and it's even ^longer (almost ten minutes) than the Jump Festa one!
• During the Feburary rejoice fest, some in game footage is shown, and to play as Riku, all you have to do is go to the main menu! Yep, you don't have to beat the game and start a new file, or choose whose story you want to follow, you get both Heroes in one playthru!!
• Also, the series averting its infamous case of Continuity Lockout for once, thanks to the "Memoirs" feature, is already as awesome as it sounds by itself; however, if you add to that the speculation about the Ursula boss battle seen in the trailer allegedly being a boss battle "from the past" accessible through that feature, thus implying it allows players to live past classic moments from the series in 3D, well... that definitely makes up for the relatively small number of playable worlds.
• SUMMER 2012 can't come quick enough...
  • The US release is July 31.
    • The European release? July 20!
• Although that was a given, Sora and Riku's voice actors confirmed they'll reprise their role. However, there's a new spoilery detail: David Gallagher said he'll also voice the BbS/3D Unknown, AKA the "Mysterious Figure" (see also the proper article).
  • As of May 15, 2012, it seems more like Ben Diskin is voicing him.
• Remember that premiere event? Square put up videos of what it looks like in great quality. If you're a fan, you have to see it.
• Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand now we have word that, as expected, some retailers sold the game two-days-earlier than the official release date. Newsposts on KH fansite KH 13 are divided on a daily basis: expect a lot of updates below.
  • Was watching the first livestream. And Riku starts his way into Traverse Town. And then Joshua appears and starts talking. AND THE BACKGROUND MUSIC IS "CALLING".
    • True. See at around the ten-minute mark of the first part of the live-streaming of the game, or simply see this video. Nice to see the best track from The World Ends with You makes a reappearance!
    • CALLING -KINGDOM MIX-, TWISTER -KINGDOM MIX-, SOMEDAY -KINGDOM MIX-! My god, this soundtrack.
• Although it's not much, we now have new English footage from the game!!
• Getting Dark Aura as an easily selectable command! Sweet sweet vindication!
• Here, have an English version of the nine-minute trailer.
  • While nothing's confirmed yet, it seems that Joshua's voice actor reprised the role, if his voice is anything to go by.
  • After months of rumors to the contrary, Leonard Nimoy is confirmed to return as Master Xehanort!
• Cue the E3 2012 trailer.
• And now comes word that the game will join the ranks, alongside New Super Mario Bros. 2, of the games that will be available as digital downloads. To clarify, the fact the same has yet to happen for important Square Enix titles such as Crisis Core and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep - or at least that is the situation in Europe - has been a huge letdown for PSP Go users; the opposite happening for a KH title on a Nintendo console, on the other hand, made many fans rejoice.
• For an example more faithful to the trope's original description, the announcement that Spain and Italy wouldn't see the game translated in their respective languages had fans crying "Ruined Forever"^note (Keep in mind that, with the exception of Re: Chain Of Memories, all previous KH games had Spanish and Italian text.) until Ben Bateman of Square Enix NA made it clear that there are people inside Squeenix NOT wanting Spain and Italy to get the middle finger.◊
  • And now it looks like Nintendo will handle the game's release in Europe and Australia. That may help, considering that, without counting the Mother series and similar few instances of No Export for You, they're not exactly known for Flipping the Bird to their fans. Maybe this will mean localized text for the remaining countries.
• And now the demo is available on the eShop! Hooray!
• 4 years later, the game has received one hell of a Polished Port to the PlayStation 4 as part of the "HD 2.8: Final Chapter Prologue" collection. Aside from modifying various aspects of the gameplay such as Reality Shifts and the Dream Eater mini games to compensate for the PS4's lack of a second screen, the default speed of the Drop Gauge was decreased and outside of cinematic cutscenes, the game now runs at a solid, silky smooth 60 frames per second!