Kingdom Hearts Player Restores Cut Traverse Town Race

The first Kingdom Hearts is more than 24 years old, but that hasn't stopped players from discovering and restoring a brand-new piece of cut content in Traverse Town.

Although most Kingdom Hearts fans would point to the second game as being the true peak of the series, the one that started it all makes a very good case for itself. It's certainly the most unique mainline entry in the franchise, especially when it comes to the emphasis placed on exploration and secrets.

While Kingdom Hearts 2 and 3 are laser-focused on combat and the more complex story beats, the first game stands out for just how densely packed each world is, with all of them having a ton of secrets. Some of those secrets have taken years to find, and, somehow, a previously undiscovered piece of cut content has just been discovered after a whopping 24 years.

Kingdom Hearts Still Has Its Secrets, As A New Piece Of Cut Content Has Just Been Found

Traverse Town Almost Had A Race In Its Second District

Over on Twitter, professional speedrunner ViolinSpeedruns shared a very interesting discovery that's just been made in the original Kingdom Hearts. GICU found out that Traverse Town's second district was originally planned to have a race, where the player would have to jump on lamps around the perimeter without falling off.

Successfully completing the race would cause the fountain's effects to all go off at once in celebration, although we don't get to see that in ViolinSpeedruns' video. The minigame itself was clearly cut at some point in development, but has been restored by GICU and made accessible after they found its unused code.

The race might seem easy at first glance, but I imagine it's a massive pain with Shadows trying to hit you as you platform. Hopefully the developers would have despawned enemies while the race was active.

While a cut race isn't the biggest discovery that's been made in the original Kingdom Hearts, it is very interesting to see that a game that's nearly two and half decades old still has some surprises and things that haven't been found by a very dedicated community. I'd like to say that the game has been fully mined now, but who knows what other secrets are hiding in its code?