Development
358/2 Days was developed by h.a.n.d. with Square Enix employees overseeing the process. The game was directed by Tetsuya Nomura and co-directed by Tomohiro Hasegawa. In 2007, Nomura mentioned he wanted to do a spin-off Kingdom Hearts game on a mobile platform and wanted the game to play slightly different than the other titles already in the series. 358/2 Days was announced alongside Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep and Kingdom Hearts coded at the Tokyo Game Show on September 20, 2007, where a trailer was shown in a photo-prohibited theater. New trailers were shown and a playable demo was available at the 2008 Jump Festa in December 2007 and the DKΣ3713 Private party in August 2008. Both single player and multiplayer demos were featured. Xion was also shown in the new trailer and in the multiplayer demo.
The Nintendo DS was chosen as the system before plans were decided. Roxas was chosen as the game's protagonist as the staff thought that having a main character besides Sora would help to introduce gamers to the series' first Nintendo DS title. The staff thought that Roxas' role as a member of Organization XIII would be a suitable theme for the plot. This was thought during Kingdom Hearts II where the staff wanted to add an influence to make Roxas leave the Organization. This resulted in the creation of Xion's character who was connected with Roxas' origins. The development team wanted to have gameplay similar to previous Kingdom Hearts titles, but stated the number of buttons on the Nintendo DS was a problem. Some of the DS's functions, like the stylus, are not used in order to retain the similar gameplay from previous titles. Roxas seeing Sora's memories is incorporated throughout the game and has different types of gameplay for each world. The game's logo uses warm colors as a reference to the sunset in Twilight Town. The title, "358/2 Days", is a code that Nomura has stated the player will understand the meaning of at the very end of the game, though hinted in a recent trailer, and the word "day" is attached to the title as a reference to the daily life of Organization XIII.
Though Birth by Sleep was the first of the three new games to begin development, 358/2 Days was released before it. The game was slated for a release at the end of 2008, but Square Enix pushed the date to February 2009. Once again the game was delayed for Japanese release until May 30, 2009. A release in North American territories was announced on December 2, 2008. The official English trailer for the title was shown at Nintendo's press conference at E3 2009, confirming a release date of September 29, 2009 for North America and October 9, 2009 for Europe.
The idea of a full remake, like Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories, was considered for Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, to be included in the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix. However, it was later scrapped in favor of a, almost 3 hour long, cinematic retelling of the game
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