Gameplay Journal 6

For this week, I will be focusing on another game glitch found in one of my favorite video game franchises, Kingdom Hearts. More specifically speaking this glitch occurs within the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 title. It takes place inside of Aladdin's house where you as the main character Sora, along with Donald and Goofy perform a series of actions that simultaneously cause you to interact with the non-player character inside the house and activate a dodge roll command. This is accomplished by pressing multiple buttons at the same time drawing the dialogue box to appear as you shoot out of the room and into a new area of the game that is impossible to access otherwise. This new location that is normally blocked off for the player allows the player to walk and jump on air and move about over-looking the entire city of Agrabah.

According to digital media scholar Iman Moradi glitches or glitch art is a sort of “unexpected result of a malfunction” (Moradi, p.113). This is also true of the Agrabah room glitch in Kingdom Hearts 1.5. Glitches are not commonly found in the Kingdom Hearts franchise to begin with so finding one such as this is very unusual and fall in line with Moradi’s definition of the unexpected. At the same time, this glitch produces a new and wonderful aesthetic that greatly impacts the players experience in a brand new environment. Here the player is able to walk and jump as high or far as they want and see the entirety of the surrounding sky, city, and landscape. It is a very fun glitch to perform and experience as it will change your perception of the gaming world and sense of play.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG-094TC1lM

Reference: Ferreira, Pedro, and Luísa Ribas. “Post-Digital Aesthetics in Contemporary Audiovisual Art.”