358/2 Days

In a surprise move, Disney and Square-Enix today have released the soundtracks of 358/2 Days, Re:coded, Birth by Sleep, and Dream Drop Distance to streaming services (Amazon Music, Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music), giving fans the chance to stream many great tracks from these games, many of which haven't been included in the HD 1.5 and 2.5 OSTs!
The tracks for Days, Re:coded, and BBS are compiled under the same album, while the tracks from DDD are in a separate album. Be sure to check it out if you have any of the above listed subscription services!

Hey gang, got something special for you today! Definitely a game-changer for video editors.

We've updated the Cutscene Archive with new versions of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded scenes. They're direct rips from 1.5/2.5, which means no subtitles. But cooler than that, these scenes have multiple audio tracks: one normal, and one that has sound effects and voices, but no background music! This is a first for us, and I'm sure editors will love it. It's definitely extra work muting the sound in-game then re-adding it manually in Premiere. But I really like the end result.

If you just plan on watching them, I recommend VLC Player since it always defaults to the standard track, whereas other players will sometimes default to the music-less version (though if that happens you can always go to the Audio section of your video player and manually switch it). Unfortunately YouTube doesn't appear to have multi-track audio support (at least for normal users), so these will probably stay download-only for the time being. Here they are, by the way:

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (No Subtitles)(Music Toggle)
Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded (No Subtitles)(Music Toggle)

Quick note, Re:Coded still has quite a few scenes with baked-in music that I couldn't remove (all ones from the old DS game, and a handful that are new to 2.5). 358/2 Days thankfully only has one scene with this issue (the Xion fight that was absent from the original PS3 release).

In the future I'd like to give this BGM treatment to all the games (perhaps in 4k *hmm*), but that'll take a little while.

It's been announced today that Dark Horse Books will publish the first ever Ultimania Kingdom Hearts book in the west, titled 'Kingdom Hearts Ultimania: The Story Before Kingdom Hearts III'. This Ultimania book is based on the 'Kingdom Hearts Series Memorial Ultimania' book released in Japan back in 2014 around the time of the release of 'Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMix'. The book can be pre-ordered from Amazon for $44.99.

Hey everyone, exciting news! As a surprise treat, Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMix received an add-on with Patch 1.03 that adds an extra scene to the 358/2 Days movie. The final fight with Xion is now fully animated!

You can check out the new scene in this video:

And the scene has also been updated in our 358/2 Days Cutscene Archive. Download the file "Day 356 - Day 357" to get the new scene.

What are your thoughts on this sequence?

More updates coming very soon. Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 are fully recorded, and editing is well underway. In the meantime, you can download all the other games' cinematics in 1080p from our Cutscene Archive. Until next time!

Playstation Japan has recently posted some screenshots of 'Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMix', which for the most part weren't really new. However, one of the screenshots did provide a first look at the collection's title selection menu:

'Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMix' will be released March 28th in North America and March 31st in Europe.