Kingdom Hearts disney castle The lost world

During the development of Kingdom Hearts back in 2001's Entertainment Expo (E3) a trailer was released to show off Kingdom Hearts. This video was later leaked onto the internet and was labled 'Kingdom Hearts - BETA video'. Lots of differeances were found in this video, but it also outlined one key point. A lost world... Disney Castle. The world is still veiwable on the world select next to Traverse Town but was never acessable.
Speculation of the world did appear soon when people realised that you couldn't go to the world. There could have been many reasons why the world was dumped, lack of time caused them to ditch the most incomplete or least story connected world, or that Disney Castle's possitioning made it easily expendable. Either way, we lost a world when Kingdom Hearts was made. So, we did what anyone would do... Investigate, but investigate inside the game looking for Disney Castle... This is what we found.
Finding the Castle
Taken from the NTSC|U Kingdom Heart's game disc, it has 2.4GB+ of hidden information. (I.E. kh.img) I could only look through a smaller " SCES_509.67" file, at Hex Offset: 2CF258, I found some interesting files that SCES_509.67 makes the game load at one stage. These are:
dc08_a011.evm
dc08_a012.evm

interesting because around these have things like "ALXX_XXXX.evm" files for ALladin. Putting the simple peaces together we get DC = Disney Castle. Now, Disney Castle must have been removed later on in the game if we've seen a fully textured map(s) of Disney Castle from BETA videos, we have a world icon still in the final's world select and we have referances to Disney Castle still in the game coding. Which does push toward the 'cut for time restrictions' side of 'why it was cut'.
Further sightings of 'DC' also are scattered around the file. At one point the file vaugly gives us all the worlds in abreviations which may help us to locate files to them. We tracked them down to:
al....aw....dc....dh....di....ew....he....lm....nm....pc....pi....po....pp....tw....tz....zz

Here's a key to the worlds: (Many thanks to the good people of Kingdom Hearts Ultimania for helping with this list).
AL = Aladin or Agrahbah.
AW = (Alice in) Wonderland
DC = Disney Castle.
DH = Dive into the Heart AKA Awakening.
DI = Destiny Islands
EW = End of the World
HE = Hercules / Olympus Collusium
LM = Little Mermaid / Atlantica
NM = Nightmare Before Christmas / Halloween Town
PC = Now, this one confused us. We originally didn't know what it was, but since we have no HB for Hollow Bastion on the list, this must stand for something, we suspect it stands for 'Princess Castle' since Hollow Bastion is where they kept the pricesses of heart, later renamed to Hollow Bastion later.
PI = Pinnochio / Monstro
PO = Pooh / 100 Achre Woods
PP = Peter Pan / Neverland
TW = Traverse Town (TW is short for Town and since Traverse Town is the only one...)
TZ = Tarzan / Deep Jungle
ZZ = Came to the conclusion that this world must be the ending never ending pathway road at the end of the game, 'ZZ' supposing that it's the final world because Z is obviously the last letter of the alphabet.

So yes, the game still has Disney Castle and not only that an alternative name for Hollow Bastion, which holds high hopes for more of Disney Castle to remain in the final game.

Unfortunatly they are the only referances to Disney Castle we have found so far, however this does not mean descoveries of Disney Castle will not end. If you find something, get in touch with us!

Disney Castle Models
Thanks to the recent release of KHView the models extracted from it feature some from Disney Castle, unfortunatly however, these models are all used from cutscenes in the game, but unlike other models which are used around and about they are actually assoiated with Disney Castle themselfs... xa_dc_1029.mdls is Minnie Mouse, xa_dc_1039.mdls is Daisy Duck, xa_dc_1049.mdls & xa_dc_1059.mdls are Chip and Dale, xa_dc_1069.mdls are the Fantasia brooms, xa_dc_1079.mdls is Jiminy Cricket.

Disney media
Before the release of Kingdom Hearts in 2002, Disney Japan had placed up on their website artwork of Disney Castle's gardens along with other worlds which were playable in the game, whether this was for look or if Disney Castle still was meant to be playable by the site's launch is unknown.

information from: http://www.ssukstudios.co.uk/khax/kh.php?general_dc

 

We knew ages ago that DC isn't an accessable world. Anyways, a beta video is just to show off the potential of the game, it has no canon things. DC was put in the WM so that people don't think the world got devoured by darkness since we don't see it in the world map. All im saying is that the world was made visible so that people don't think the world was devoured by darkness.

 

Curious. I suspect the models were reused for KH2, perhaps slightly touched up.

 

The mudles were recycled and were cleaned a little, tahts what I think.
Also, forgot to post... Indeed.

 

Interesting...I never knew about any of that stuff xD.
The name "Hollow Bastion" is definitly better than "Princess Castle"

 

Or Castle Heart!

 

I don't think it matters that Disney Castle wasn't put in since we gained it in Kingdom Hearts II anyway. I'd rather this level wasn't included because otherwise it might have been forced into it. Kingdom Hearts is a solid game without this level.

Also I really like the name "Hollow Bastion".

 

WOW. I just say WOW:D:D
It's awesome
here u go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6e4pcmQ0jQ&eurl=http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Kingdom+Hearts+BETA+video&sitesearch=

I't all different, characters, places and fights:D:D

 

Clotes,commands,graphics...
Everything!
This game really changed a lot.

 

You're right. I wanted to have it

 

The scene with Riku hanging off big-ben is epic.

 

This is really cool.I aways knew that this world was not accesible.But I bet...

That they accidently left it sitting there.I mean,why else would it still be there?When I first played this game,I thought it could be unlocked at first.I bet it was taken from the game because of time restrictions for a reason.I bet the castle was too big to fit in the game's memory.Just a thought.

 

I don't think it was accidental.
They could've done this to show of from were Donald and Goofy came or to get your hopes up on going there,we will never know why.

 

Well it seems like it was just a bit that they forgot to remove.Face it,no developer is perfect at making games.I bet it was a world at first,but they scrapped the idea,but left the world on the map.

 

You got a point.
But i still think that they left it there for something.
And they didn't let you go in because the story would change drastically if you did.

 

This sentence leads me to something.

I bet that there used to be a whole different story to this game.The trailer seems to sport some very unique cutscenes,which look it make like Riku was gonna be fought pretty much throughout the entire game.If this was the case,then Riku was probably gonna fight Sora in this area too.

Just a theory.

 

It's amazing on what you can learn when you dig deep enough

 

I am guessing you like saying catchphrases.


Well,it is quite awesome that the world's image is still visible on the map,but it is just a piece they forgot to remove.