Disney's The Lion King Review

Hello everyone and welcome back to Hydra Gaming. Before we get started on reviewing The Lion King, I want to take a quick look back at Disney's and Nintendo's gaming past. For those of you who never played a classic Disney game, you are really missing out. The Nintendo Entertainment System brought some of the best Disney games that were ever seen to life such as Duck Tales and Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers. Countless other Disney games were also made with varying success such as Adventures in the Magic Kingdom, but the ones that in my books always played the best and felt the best were those that Capcom was involved in. Even The Little Mermaid on the NES I found to be a lot of fun. Sure some games were geared for younger crowds, but even those had their challenges. That's really something that I feel is lacking in Disney games of today, a challenge. Speaking of challenges, some of the most challenging Disney games I feel can be found on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Games such as Aladdin, The Magical Quest: Starring Mickey Mouse, and The Lion King all stand up today as great and often difficult games. Even Sega had a great exclusive Disney game in the form of Castle of Illusion: Starring Mickey Mouse. Out of all of those great games, one of them I find stands out as the most difficult and is certainly one of the best made, and that game ladies and gentlemen is The Lion King.

Before going any further, this review will be for the Super Nintendo version of the game. The game was also released on the Sega Genesis, Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, and Game Gear, but I will not be basing my review of the game off of those systems. So... The game was developed by Westwood Studios and published by Virgin Interactive. It was released on the SNES on December 8th, 1994. The game follows the same plot as the movie which goes by the same name.

You start out playing as Simba, a young lion cub destined to be king. You run around the pride lands, get tossed around by monkeys and rhinos to the tune of "I Just Can't Wait to be King", explore the elephant graveyard to the tune of "Be Prepared", experience the stampede that thanks to you're own personal mistrust in you're evil uncle, Scar, and a herd of wildebeest, killed your father and caused you to run into a massive thorn forest. Be rescued by Timon and Pumbaa, grow up in the jungle, and return to Pride Rock to defeat you're now king evil uncle, Scar. Sounds simple right? Well for a Disney game, this is anything and I mean anything but easy.

Now that we have the plot out of the way let's look at the gameplay! The game is largely a platformer with a couple levels that stray a bit from the classic platform formula. The controls are I would say okay for the most part. There are several areas in the game where you have to make literally a split second move or face an instant death. Speaking of death, Simba does have a health bar that will deplete as enemies hit him... Unless he falls into the water, or hit's a random object like a tree branch while riding an ostrich, then he's just dead. Not much else to say really, it's a classic style game that for the most part handles well.

Graphically though this game looks like a movie. In fact Walt Disney Animators actually had a hand in creating the sprites and backgrounds for the game. Added to the movie looks is the movie sounds. As I mentioned earlier, if you couldn't figure it out, the game's music is actually remade music from the movie. So fans of the movie can certainly say they know the tunes I'm referring to. If you've lived under a rock and never have seen The Lion King, then go watch it. I don't know what else to tell you!

  

As you can see from the screenshot above, the game really is a very pretty one. 

Now for the big deal here... This game is very difficult, even on the easiest setting. However, the boss fights, or mostly lack there of are nothing to write home about. Basically jump on the hyena or whatever a few times. Later in the game when you grow up you gain the ability to claw enemies and bosses as well with your massive lion claws. Another ability that Simba, both young and old has is his roar which affects a variety of enemies. 

The real difficulty comes in the platforming and scenarios where you can be killed in one hit. I can't stress enough that this adds a great deal of difficulty because you have to be literally 100% perfect with certain jumps or you are d e a d.  Through all the difficulties though, defeating Scar is not really that difficult, but to get to him you need to do some perfect swinging and platforming. I found that harder than the actual fight against Scar.

Overall I give The Lion King a pretty solid 8 out of 10. The game is pretty well put together, but the sometimes awkward controls and seemingly impossible to survive jumps (till you actually survive one) hurts the game a tad, but it doesn't take much away as far as overall enjoyment is concerned. Other issues are again minor such as the length of the game. In my opinion it's a bit short, but the challenge more or less makes up for that. I would have also liked to have seen some between level text or something so that people who have never seen The Lion King can figure out what's going on in the game. 

Final Verdict: 8 out of 10. The Lion King on the SNES is a real challenge, but an enjoyable one with a few minor flaws and nothing more. 

Thank's for reading as always! The next blog will be a return to the Kirby Series in the form of Kirby's Avalance!