Summary
The Steam Deck is my favorite piece of hardware that I never use. Working in this industry has led me to collecting a massive pile of useless video game machines. I’ve got an Xbox Series S that I’ve never turned on and regret buying every day. I’ve got an Evercade collecting dust on a shelf also full of custom DualShock controllers.
An entire wall of my office has been overtaken by replica arcade cabinets that haven’t been turned on in years. I look around at all this neglected tech and I’m mostly filled with regret, but when it comes to the Steam Deck - which gets about as much use as the Thrustmaster T.Flight I picked up to play Star Wars Squadrons four years ago - I’ve never regretted buying it for a second.
Though I rarely have use for it, the novelty of a handheld PC still delights me, even years after I first picked it up. I think about using the Steam Deck far more than I actually do, and I find myself browsing new releases and thinking about how much fun they would be to play on the Steam Deck. With the imminent (and long overdue) release of Kingdom Hearts on Steam, I think it’s finally time to dust the ol’ Deck off and put it to work. There are a lot of great games to look forward to this year, but somehow the thing I’m most excited about is playing a 20 year old game on a handheld that’s been sitting on my shelf for so long that I don’t even know where the charger is anymore.
Kingdom Hearts is perfect to play on a handheld. Before you ask - no, I don’t really know what that means. People, including me, always talk about games that are perfect for the Switch or made for the Steam Deck, but it’s unclear what qualities make something a Steam Deck game. It could be games that are meant to be played in short bursts that compliment the Deck’s short battery life and on-the-go useability, or they could be long games that you want to play all cozied up in bed. A Steam Deck game can be any game you want to play on the Steam Deck, and I desperately want to play Kingdom Hearts on the Steam Deck.
Part of my yearning for handheld keyblade action comes from how badly the Switch version of the game burned me. Technically you may play the entire Kingdom Hearts series on Switch, but only via the cloud. I’m TheGamer’s biggest cloud gaming defender by a mile, and you still couldn’t pay me to play theslow, laggy, impermanent Switch version of Kingdom Hearts. That version of the game is an insult to fans and a black mark on the Switch’s incredible library, so there’s a sense that the upcoming Steam (Deck) version will heal old wounds.
As a lifelong Kingdom Hearts fan, I also have a lot of nostalgia for the handheld entries. I played every single one of them, from Chain of Memories on the Game Boy Advance (still goated) to 358/2 Days on the DS (still overrated) to Dream Drop Distance on the 3DS (still hate the fake Pokemon) and everything in between. I bought a PSP in college with money I made selling blood just to play Birth By Sleep, and that’s still the best financial decision I’ve ever made.
I make a lot of bad financial decisions.
Handheld games used to be an important part of the Kingdom Hearts series, butwe don’t get those smaller, unnumbered entries anymore. The last game you could even play on a handheld was the 2020 rhythm game Melody of Memory, of which I have little interest. It feels like something essential has been missing for a long time, and the Steam Deck is finally bringing it back, like a heart reunited with its vessel.
I’ve played the Kingdom Hearts games a lot, probably more than any other game. I’ve played them on PS2, PS3, PS4, and PS5, and while Final Mix rereleases and updated collections added new content and visual upgrades, the experience never really changed. What excites me the most about playing the series on the Switch is just being able to experience the console games on a handheld for the first time.
It’s a rare opportunity to enjoy something I’m intimately familiar with in a new way. Sure I’ve played Kingdom Hearts 2 more than ten times, but I’ve never played it in the car! I’ve never played on the toilet! I’ve never played it on a beach during an eternal night while a man in a black robe asks me to remember my true name! We may be years away from Kingdom Hearts 4, but the wait won’t be so hard now that I can hang out with my boys Donald Duck and Goofy G. Goof anytime, anywhere. And believe me, I will.
