A hundred-plus licensed games, mostly Japan-only
Hello Kitty and her castmates have appeared in video games for 35 years, across nearly every console Nintendo and Sony shipped. The exact count is uncertain and the quality is uneven. What follows is a representative selection, all of it licensed.
The count
Counting the catalog
No single authoritative source states a clean round number, but "100+" is comfortable.
IGDB lists 103 titles in its "Sanrio" franchise, the cleanest machine-readable count. Read it as "roughly 100+": IGDB blocks direct page fetches, so the figure comes from its search index, not a confirmed page read.
Sanrio Wiki keeps a "Hello Kitty video games" category with around 170 entries. It is a fan wiki, so treat it as breadth evidence, not an authority.
Wikipedia says only that there are "numerous" Hello Kitty games starting with the first Famicom title in 1992, and that most were never released outside Japan. No total is given.
Two first-game dates
There are two defensible "first game" dates, so we give both. Sanrio Carnival (Famicom, 22 November 1990) was the first title from Sanrio’s in-house publisher Character Soft and already featured the ensemble cast. Hello Kitty World (Famicom, 27 March 1992) was the first game built specifically around Hello Kitty, and is the one Wikipedia points to. So 1990 is the first Sanrio-branded game; 1992 is the first Hello Kitty game.
Representative catalog
Thirty-five years of releases
A cross-section, not the full library. The long tail of Japan-only edutainment and minor mobile titles is left out. A star marks the entry covered below.
| Title | Year | Platform(s) | Developer | Publisher | Region |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sanrio Carnival First game from Sanrio’s in-house label, Character Soft. | 1990 (FC); 1991 (GB) | Famicom, Game Boy | Scitron & Art (per source) | Character Soft (Sanrio) | Japan only |
| Kero Kero Keroppi no Daibōken | 1991 | Famicom | Character Soft / APE (ASCII-linked) | Character Soft / ASCII | Japan only |
| Hello Kitty World Licensed reskin of Nintendo’s Balloon Kid. See below. | 1992 | Famicom | Character Soft / Mario Co. | Character Soft (Sanrio) | Japan only |
| Hello Kitty no Hanabatake A Mappy-like maze game. | 1992 | Famicom | Character Soft (Shimada Kikaku) | Character Soft (Sanrio) | Japan only |
| Sanrio World Smash Ball! A paddle/tennis sports game; Hello Kitty referees. | 1993 | Super Famicom | Tomcat System | Character Soft (Sanrio) | Japan only |
| Kero Kero Keroppi no Daibōken 2 | 1993 | Famicom | Character Soft (ASCII-linked) | Character Soft | Japan only |
| Sanrio Timenet (Kako-Hen / Mirai-Hen) A Pokémon-style creature collector. | 1999 | Game Boy Color | Imagineer | Imagineer | Japan only |
| Hello Kitty’s Cube Frenzy (Cube de Cute) A Tetris-like falling-block puzzler; a rare Western release. | 1998 (PS JP); 1999 (NA) | PlayStation, Game Boy Color | Culture Publishers (PS); Torus Games (GBC) | Culture Publishers (JP); NewKidCo (NA); Ubi Soft (EU) | JP / NA / EU |
| Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue Gets its own page below. | 2005 | PS2, GameCube, Xbox, Windows | XPEC Entertainment | Namco (NA); Hamster (JP); Empire / Xplosiv (EU) | JP / NA / EU |
| Hello Kitty: Happy Party Pals The 2005 GBA title. It is NOT a Roller Rescue port. | 2005 | Game Boy Advance | Webfoot Technologies | THQ | NA (+ others) |
| Onegai My Melody: Yume no Kuni no Daibōken Built around the DS microphone; antagonist Kuromi. | ~2005 | Nintendo DS | TDK Core | TDK Core | Japan only |
| Hello Kitty: Big City Dreams Developer attribution varies between sources. | 2008 | Nintendo DS | Sanrio Digital / Human Soft | Empire Interactive (EU) | NA / EU |
| Hello Kitty Online Gets its own page below. | betas 2008; launches 2009–10; offline ~2017 | PC (MMORPG) | Sanrio Digital + Typhoon Games | Sanrio Digital | Global (F2P) |
| Hello Kitty Seasons | 2010 (NA); 2011 (EU) | Wii | Sanrio Digital | Zoo Games (NA); Bandai Namco (EU) | NA / EU |
| Hello Kitty Kruisers Both developers now defunct; later delisted. | 2014 (iOS/Wii U); 2018 (Switch) | iOS, Wii U, Switch, PS4, Xbox One, Android | Maestro Interactive / Scarab Entertainment | Rising Star Games | Global |
| Hello Kitty and Sanrio Friends 3D Racing Developer attribution flagged in sources. | 2014 (NA); 2015 (EU); 2016 (JP) | Nintendo 3DS | Most Wanted Entertainment (or Scarab) | Majesco (NA); pQube (EU); Bergsala-Lightweight (JP) | NA / EU / JP |
| Aggretsuko: The Short Timer Strikes Back A match-3; clearing levels unlocks the anime shorts. | 2020 | iOS, Android | ACT Games | Hive Co., Ltd. (Sanrio license) | Global |
| Hello Kitty and Friends: Happiness Parade | 2023 | Nintendo Switch | Dabadu | Rogue Games | Global |
| Hello Kitty Island Adventure The modern critical and commercial high point. | 2023 (Apple Arcade); 2025 (Switch/PS/PC) | Apple Arcade, Switch, PS4/5, PC, tvOS | Sunblink Entertainment | Sunblink / Sanrio | Global |
A genuine gap, not an omission: no notable licensed Hello Kitty title surfaced for the Dreamcast, PSP, or PS3.
Hello Kitty World
“Hello Kitty World” is a reskin of Nintendo’s Balloon Kid
The strongest single fact in the catalog. Hello Kitty World (Famicom, 27 March 1992) is not an original game. It is a licensed reskin of Balloon Kid, the 1990 Game Boy sequel to Nintendo’s Balloon Fight that never got a Japanese release.
Sanrio’s Character Soft, with Mario Co. Ltd., reprogrammed the game: the Vs. and Balloon Trip modes were cut, and a two-player co-op mode was added. Released Japan only. So one of the best-known early "Hello Kitty games" is, under the hood, a Nintendo Balloon Fight descendant.
Source for the character mapping: The Cutting Room Floor’s teardown of the ROM, cross-checked against Wikipedia’s Balloon Kid article.
Character mapping
- Alice
- became Hello Kitty
- Samm
- became Mimmy
- Jim the bird
- became Tippy the bear
Elsewhere in this file
The unlicensed categories
This catalog is the authorized library. Two other categories carry the Hello Kitty name without permission, and each has its own dossier.
The Game Boy bootleg era
The unlicensed Hello Kitty ROM-hack of Dig Dug, the Chinese Y2K multicarts, and the meme to ignore.
Open the file Fan-madeFan mods
Fans inserting Sanrio into Minecraft, Stardew Valley, GTA V, and Counter-Strike, against Sanrio’s rules.
Open the fileSources of record
- IGDB — Sanrio franchise (103 titles; via search index)
- Wikipedia — Hello Kitty (games overview)
- Sanrio Wiki — Sanrio Carnival (1990 origin)
- Wikipedia — Balloon Kid (the Hello Kitty World source game)
- TCRF — Hello Kitty World (character mapping)
- superfamicom.org — Sanrio World Smash Ball!
- Wikipedia — Hello Kitty’s Cube Frenzy
- Wikipedia — Hello Kitty Island Adventure
- Delisted Games — Hello Kitty Kruisers