The Lion King is a video game by Westwood Studios. It is a fondly remembered, if difficult, platform game recapping the events of the Disney animated film of the same name.
The most striking thing about the game is the art. Like Aladdin by Virgin Games, the art department had support from the artists at Walt Disney Feature Animation to ensure that the game captured the essence of the film. This resulted in beautiful backgrounds that highly resemble those in the film and amazing sprites that have highly detailed expressions and walk cycles.
Like the film, the game features Simba as a lion cub and as a full grown lion. In the early sections, cub Simba roars at his enemies with his tiny voice, which causes them to get stunned or flipped over allowing him to stomp on them. When he becomes an adult, the enemies get tougher and so does he. Simba can now slash his claws at enemies as well as pounce on them to enact a two-pawed slash fest.
The levels also get harder as they go on, but today's emulation-based compilations negate this aspect since it is now possible to rewind to before a failure occurred. The levels in the game take place at different parts of the film, from the early pride rock, safari and jungle areas, to the vegetation-deprived pride rock at the end. The levels are mostly straight forward, with easy to follow level layouts. The exception to this is a puzzle in the safari area where Simba needs to be thrown by monkeys in order to exit to the next level. He needs to roar at the right monkeys, so they will rotate in the correct order to have him be thrown in the order required for him to be thrown up and out of that location. This happens for several sections until the game returns to a standard platformer. This section of the "Just Can't Wait to Be King" area can be confusing and annoying, but if you keep an eye on the monkeys you can see the correct trajectory.
On the subject of the film's memorable musical numbers, the musicians at Westwood Studios did an excellent job making the music sound great in instrumental form on the Yamaha YM2612 FM synthesizer on the Sega Genesis aka Mega Drive and the Sony SPC700 sample-based audio chip on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The ports to Amiga, DOS, Game Boy, Game Gear, Master System, and Nintendo Entertainment System also do a good job translating the music to their respective sound chips. There are also sound clips on most versions which include spoken dialog as well as Simba's roars. The cub roar is just as cute here as it is in the film.
The Lion King is an amazing translation of a film to a 16-bit video game. The art is amazing as it was supervised by Disney animators, the gameplay is fun for the most part, although the puzzle section in the safari can get annoying as it goes on a bit too long. One of the best aspects of the film was its music, and the musical pieces are translated quite well. Unlike Virgin Game's Aladdin, there is no clear cut winner in the music department here. The Genesis and SNES both have their charm and each sounds great, so either version is worth playing. Luckily, the emulation-based compilations by Digital Eclipse include both versions, so it is now easy to play either, or both, versions.
Final Verdict:
4½ out of 5
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