My fondness for this stems from nostalgia for the game and my everlasting love for the film it is based on. I loved playing it as a kid, but revisiting Disney’s Animated Storybook: The Lion King as an adult it becomes clear that the game is not as good as it could have been, even considering little kids as the target audience. The gameplay isn’t much - you can interact with the screen by pointing at the environment and triggering little animations with musical cues and sound effects. But not every scene can be interacted with and the narration wraps up too fast in the second half, making it an unsatisfying retelling of the story. The three mini games are simple.
A genuinely positive aspect of this game is the way the film’s soundtrack is used and translated into its limited sound engine.
The animation of the hyena playing xylophone with bones on a ribcage might be making it worth 5 stars after all.