What it was
Westwood Studios made this one, and Virgin Interactive published it, for the Super NES and Sega Genesis in 1994. You play Simba through the film's story: a cub for the first half, an adult for the second. As a cub you mostly jump on things and use a roar, which drains a meter, to stun enemies or solve puzzles. As an adult you gain scratching, mauling and throws.
Bugs restore health or stretch your health and roar meters. Hidden bugs send you into bonus stages as Timon and Pumbaa, where Pumbaa catches falling bugs and Timon hunts them against the clock. Lose all your lives and you're on the continue count, and run out of those and it's back to the title screen.
Where it sits in history
Disney animators at Walt Disney Feature Animation drew the sprites and backgrounds, and the music is adapted from the film's soundtrack. Development ran from January to July 1994. Two levels, Hakuna Matata and Be Prepared, came from scenes cut from the final movie.
Louis Castle, the designer, revealed in 2014 why it's so hard. Disney pushed for a game nobody could finish before it was due back at Blockbuster. Time ran out for new levels, so the monkey puzzle in 'Can't Wait to be King' was made longer and harder instead. He has since apologised. The SNES version sold 1.27 million copies in the United States, and Castle remarked in 2002 that roughly 4.5 million sold in total across versions.
How it plays today
It looks and sounds wonderful, and GamePro said so while also calling the gameplay repetitive, the controls imprecise and the difficulty uneven. Both things are true. Level two is the one that makes people hand the controller back.
Next Generation said it was never unfair or frustrating. We'd argue they didn't get stuck on the monkeys.
Compared with
- Aladdin: Capcom's Disney game from the year before. Next Generation called The Lion King much harder, and it is.
- The Jungle Book: Another Disney platformer on the SNES.
- Donkey Kong Country: Another big 1994 platformer on the SNES.
Why it matters
Juul's The Art of Failure describes a paradox: we avoid failing in life but chase it in games, because failure makes us rethink and get better. The Lion King shows the sour version. This failure was added at Disney's request to make a rental unfinishable, not to teach you anything.
That's worth noticing. Plenty of us remember being stuck on level two and thinking we were the problem. We weren't. The game was built to beat a Friday-night rental, and that tells you something about who a difficulty curve is really for.
Read: One must imagine Mario happy →
- Juul, J. (2013). The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games. MIT Press.
What you're levelling up
You have been training these without noticing. Here is how to do it on purpose, and where it pays off away from the couch. All the skills games teach →
Bouncing back
In the game. Level two's monkey puzzle was lengthened and made harder near the end of development, and it stops plenty of players for hours.
Do it on purpose. Die on the monkeys, then restart straight away. Count how many tries it takes and beat that number next time.
Off the couch. Knocked back at work, dumped, dropped from a team. The ones who bounce back are the ones who restart the next attempt quickly.
Problem solving
In the game. The roar meter drains when you use it, so you pick when to stun enemies or solve a puzzle, and when to save it.
Do it on purpose. Try a level using the roar only for puzzles, never for enemies. See what changes.
Off the couch. Budgets, rosters, a flat pack with missing screws. It's all about spending a limited resource well.
Timing and rhythm
In the game. Rolling boulders and falling stalactites take a whole life, not a bit of health, so you move on the beat or you cop it.
Do it on purpose. Run the boulder section three times, trying a different start point each time to find the best one.
Off the couch. Getting a pass in on a footy field, merging onto a freeway, knowing when to ask for the raise.
Verdict · 7/10
Beautiful and brutal, for a reason that has nothing to do with fun. Worth it for how it looks.
