Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is an action RPG developed by Square Enix and Japanese studio Jupiter and released in 2004 for the Game Boy Advance. The idea for an intermediary title was developed after director Tetsuya Nomura and his team had already begun to develop ideas for the second Kingdom Hearts game, which he had intended to be set a year after the original. Originally titled Kingdom Hearts: Lost Memories, Nomura changed the name to match the overall outline of the story, while still reflecting the theme of memories. [Info from Wikipedia]
Thanks to Umiyuri Papaeyra, we can notice various beta differences in the screenshots below:
First screenshot: Axel VS Sora
- No boss fight takes place in the Unknown Rooms (the vestibule that appears before a world door).
- Axel’s on the wrong side of the screen as well.
- The pillars in the room are square while in the final game they are thick, round, and widely spaced.
- There’s also a door visible in the wall that doesn’t exist in any of the Unknown Rooms in the final game.
Second screenshot: Sora in the Guarded Trove room in Wonderland
- The door is less adorned than it is in the final game.
Third screenshot: Axel meeting with an Organisation member
- The room with the χ-shaped table never appears in the final game.
- Axel’s sprite looks kinda odd here, but I don’t know if it’s different, since the resolution of the scan is bad.
Fifth screenshot: Sora and Vexen
- The marble ‘plant pot pillar’ here shows a leafy plant; in the final game they’re finely-crafted marble roses in large square pots.
- The pillars from the first screen are finally visible as short ones; in the final game they reach to the ceiling.
- The Unknown Rooms in the final game are a lot longer than shown here, and start with a set of steps coming up that don’t appear in this screen.
- The door is much more visible here. Once again, the only door in the Unknown Room leads into the next world.
Sixth screenshot: Sora running around Olympus Coliseum
- The world’s graphics are very different from the real game, showing a different ‘skirting board’ and ‘ledge’ pattern.
- White Mushrooms only appear in a room when a special Map Card is used, and they’ll be the only enemies there.
Seventh screenshot: Cloud’s summon
- Cloud’s cards in this screen are coloured grey; in the final game all the Summon Cards are classed as Magic Cards and are blue.
- The Enemy Cards in the final game show the enemy’s faces.
Eighth screenshot: Fighting Darkside
- Same as the previous screenshot, the Enemy Cards here don’t show Darkside’s face, when they should be.
- The graphics on the Thunder and Fire cards are different to the final graphics.
Thanks a lot to Umiyuri Papaeyra for the contribution!
Images:
[Images from: www.kh2.co.uk]