Zeebo Footage: Kingdom Hearts V CAST Longplay 2022

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Help me buy gear for my job in Ukraine:
https://fundrazr.com/f21lU1

[STORY]

Kingdom Hearts V-CAST was a Kingdom Hearts chapter, specially developed by Superscape to be run on Verizon’s feature phones and distributed through Verizon’s Get It Now mobile store for BREW applications. Due to platform constraints the game story was divided to four episodes, each was downloadable upon completion of the previous one.

The story of discovery is unveiled here:
https://www.khinsider.com/forums/index.php?threads/kingdom-hearts-v-cast-game-files-ripped.211584/

Released back in 2004-2005 this game was considered lost until in 2016 the user “Wedge” from the 4chan KH community uploaded a backup of the game with the Obstacle Course and the Swashbuckler’s Island episodes.

In 2018, the third, Agrabah, episode was backuped by KHinsider.com forum user “Cbajd5”. Shortly after, the second and forth episodes were claimed to be found, with the second episode later confirmed to be lost, and the fourth episode impossible to back up.

In 2022 a KHinsider.com forum user uploaded the full footage of Maleficent’s Castle episode to youtube. Later, Eriyu from KHinsider.com forum was finally able to get and upload the backup of her phone for research. And the fourth episode was restored. Thank you, Eriyu!

[GAMEPLAY DESCRIPTION]

This is the new playthrough of all the available levels on the Zeebo. Wonderland episode is missing as of time of making this video. No previous footage from this channel was used.

I am playing using version 1.1.1 of the game (this was the version from Eriyu’s and Wedge’s phones), including such fixes for the game on the Zeebo as:
– putting the game icon into the Zeebo’s main menu “Z-Wheel”;
– editing the Zeebo’s keyboard configuration file with mappings to mobile phone’s keys, so finally it is possible to access menus and use magic without hooking the Zeebo to the PC;
– change of the game font to the biggest one;
– fixes to the sound files for opening chests and actions.

[ACTION REQUIRED TO PRESERVE WONDERLAND EPISODE]

If you remember playing this game, and there is even the smallest of chances that you still have the phone with the Wonderland stage on it, please reach out to me on youtube or on KHInsider.com and I will walk you through the process of backing up the stage.

[CHAPTERS]

00:00:00 – 00:01:03 Zeebo and game loading
00:01:03 – 00:02:13 Main menu
00:02:13 – 00:10:20 EPISODE “Obstacle Course”
00:10:20 – 00:10:59 Interlude: Help me buy gear for my job in Ukraine
00:10:59 – 00:42:17 EPISODE “Swashbuckler’s Island”
00:42:17 – 00:42:55 Interlude: Wonderland Episode not found yet
00:42:55 – 02:12:40 EPISODE “Agrabah”
02:12:40 – 03:16:19 EPISODE “Maleficent’s Castle”
03:16:19 – Outro sequence

Twitter: @KrZ18623626

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9 thoughts on “Zeebo Footage: Kingdom Hearts V CAST Longplay 2022”

  2. [TECHNICAL DETAILS]

    The two backuped versions, 1.0.4 and 1.1.1., use Superscape's own 3D engine Swerve, which was later chosen as a basic 3D engine by Sun for their j2me's JSR184 extension.

    The issues with running the backups on the actual hardware were that the relevant engine's extension was not included in the backups (and there are known at least four different incompatible versions of the Swerve engine extension), and that in the 3.x version of BREW, on which the phones are based, the .mif files necessary to run the application were still encrypted. Luckily, I had at least four different Swerve engine extensions from my other backups, and could find the relevant ones. And the .mif files of the game could be rebuilt.

    Due to programmers' and engine's versatility, the game was coded so that it would stretch to whatever screen size.

    Unfortunately, the bitmap font used is too small for the Zeebo screen. So I had to find the font used by its class ID in the game's executable (.mod file) and replace it with a bigger font.

    The earlier version 1.0.4 included a function which allowed to receive a TXT message notification when the relevant episode would be available. The later 1.1.1. version did not have such a function.

    Version 1.0.4 crashes on the Zeebo when trying to shop items and when trying to quit the game.

    Zeebo's controllers are more convenient to play then the phone's keyboard, however, the Zeebo lacks numeric keys necessary to play the game, inter alia the key * which is used for "magic".

    I have edited the Zeebo's keyboard configuration file with mappings to mobile phone's keys, so finally it is possible to access menus and use magic.

    Another Zeebo's constraint that it would not play certain sounds, such as opening chests, picking coconuts and some others. I could restore the sound effects to be played on the Zeebo.

    I converted midi files (and more specifically: bad.mid, good.mid, keyblade.mid, magic_alert.mid) to .wav with Audacity.

    Then I used CMX Studio to import the .wav files into .pmd containers, akin to some other FX of the game. QCELP compression was used. Next, I modified the extension in the .mod file from .mid to .qcp. So now we have some more sound FX.

    Some glitches can be noticeable when Sora is running. It is a bug in the Zeebo firmware – sometimes the directional buttons do not get unpressed.

    Every time a crystal is placed in the ape's hands in the Genie's cave the game crashed on Zeebo, so phone footage was used.

    The game does not have background music, except for intro, death scene, and between the levels transitions. Music from youtube audio library was used.

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  9. I wanted to get a Zeebo. How do you put games on it? Where do you get Zeebo roms from?

    And where did you find the download of Kingdom Hearts Vcast, and how do you port that to the Zeebo?

    Do you have a / any tutorial? Could you make one?

    Reply

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