The PSP title, Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, seems most likely to resonate with fans of the series -- and not just because they tend to be PlayStation fans. Of the three games shown today, Birth seems to be most in keeping with the series standards. It's a single-player action RPG with plenty of combo-driven melee action... and the hero is a dead ringer for Zack, the leading man of Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core whose life Cloud Strife decided to imitate (in every category from clothing to girlfriends). It's hard to say if it really is Zack -- the name is never given, and characters by designer Tetsuya Nomura tend to look alike -- but he absolutely looks like a Kingdom Hearts-style rendition of the FFVII character. The spiky black hair, the bright blue eyes, the dark clothing with dark red suspenders, the armor over his left shoulder -- it's all Zack. There is one difference, though: The lead character in Birth is a Keyblade warrior, an honor never afforded to previous Final Fantasy-to-Kingdom Hearts transplants like Cloud and "Leon" (aka Squall). So who knows what it means? Very little gameplay was demonstrated, but plenty of in-game story was shown, with the unnamed hero speaking to a boy who appeared to be Kingdom Hearts II's Roxas. Much of the video presentation was dominated by an old man with eerie yellow eyes and a formal military jacket, who spoke in what appeared to be a somewhat stern (if not quite threatening) manner to maybe-Zack and maybe-Roxas in a dusty, windswept valley. At one point, a wicked-looking warrior in black and red armor and an opaque black helmet confronted the hero, only to be thwarted by the timely arrival of King Mickey. Equally tantalizing were flashes of what appeared to be young Tidus and Rikku playing on the beach. The little gameplay revealed appears to fall very much in the Kingdom Hearts mold. Is-it-Zack lays into foes with his Keyblade, leaping over obstacles like tree trunks as he battles through a dark forest setting and collecting various orbs as he fights his way up the steps of a pristine palace. Though the trailer says the game is set in "the distant past," Birth By Sleep probably won't be showing up at retail until the distant future -- no date was given for this prequel.