So, I very nearly called it. 1UP confirms three new Kingdom Hearts games, coming at you straight from old Nippon. The biggest one is Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep for PSP, a prequel to the first game in the series starring someone who is reported to look strangely like Zack from FFVII. In a separate preview, 1UP describes it as an action-RPG that remains true to the standards set in KHI and KHII, which is pretty good in my book, and while there's no firm plot details, it's described as "the distant past." The Zack-a-like talks to a Roxas-a-like and apparently King Mickey makes an appearance. There is speculation that this is the game that will contain a story about the three knights shown at the end of KHII's secret movie.

The one that I'm most curious about is the second game, Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days for DS. As was guessed, it's a sidestory, but it's not KH2.5 like I predicted, but actually occurs cocurrent with KH: Chain of Memories for GBA. It stars Roxas and has four-player multiplayer with Organization XIII members. Also, it'll be in full 3D, which leaves the similar-in-art-style game Subarashiki to fulfill your dreams of a 2D KH game on DS. It's also described as "time of the other side."

The last game is not the rumored KHIII for PS3 but instead a mobile game called Kingdom Hearts: Coded which will star King Mickey and other familiar characters from KHI and KHII. Other than saying "time has gone by," there's only some speculation as to where it falls (supposedly between KHI and KHII, which means that part of the story is getting a little crowded).

Overall, I guess this was 2/3 of a good announcement. I'm interested to see more of the DS game, and the PSP game sounds promising, but the mobile game...meh. I was really hoping for a PS3 announcement to make me want to buy the system.

See the games' logos in the attached files, courtesy of Wikipedia.

(And yes, that's an old picture, because I'm lazy enough to use a funny caption twice.)