I have a soft spot for The Lion King 2, but even I think presenting an anthology game of both Lion Kings 1 and 2 as a Simba-centric story is kind of an odd choice.
For that matter, trying to make an action game out of The Lion King 2 is an odd choice. Maybe I'm just used to the decisions made in Virgin Interactive's Lion King games, so I think little of (for example) turning the morning report segment of the first movie into the game's intro level. But even so, it's shocking to see the entire first act of Lion King 2 skipped over. Like, I get that the movie is a lot slower and more ponderous than its predecessor, but it feels like the cornerstone element of the movie - the budding of Kiara and Kovu's relationship - is almost completely exorcised. Meanwhile, the fairly disposable scene of Kiara and Kovu being chased by Rhinos gets a whole level, because they're that desperate for things they can have Simba do. And Simba fights Zira to the death, which kinda misses the point of how that movie ended ("Welcome to the Pride, Kovu. Sorry I had to kill your mom."). Maybe this is why other tie-in games for Lion King 2 (Active Play, Gamebreak) were less literal and more loose in their adaptations?
Speaking of Virgin Interactive - while I'll be quick to admit that their work on The Lion Ling is flawed, there's simply no contest in a comparison between 16-bit Lion King and Simba's Mighty Adventure. The Lion King did as much as it could given its like 6 month dev cycle, and the fact that the characters look as much on-model as they could - still backed by Disney animators, no less - is a great visual treat and of a respectable length (even if it's artificially inflated by difficulty spikes). Simba's Mighty Adventure feels impossibly small and unambitious in comparison. Get to the ends of each linear obstacle course with X amount of collectables, and you're good. Maybe some extremely light combat. We're working with budget PS1 models, so no ambition whatsoever in terms of visual presence; the game's just trying to get over the line here. I guess the climactic fights are better in Mighty Adventure (the Virgin Scar vs the Chad Zira?), but it's still kinda weird that Scar/Zira's whole thing is to hop on a ledge where they can go neener neener while rocks and logs or whatever fall on Simba. I guess Scar has geomancy in this iteration?
If you're jonesing for a video game adaptation on The Lion King 2, I guess you're pretty starved for choice. But I'd still say go for minigame compilation Gamebreak over this.
For that matter, trying to make an action game out of The Lion King 2 is an odd choice. Maybe I'm just used to the decisions made in Virgin Interactive's Lion King games, so I think little of (for example) turning the morning report segment of the first movie into the game's intro level. But even so, it's shocking to see the entire first act of Lion King 2 skipped over. Like, I get that the movie is a lot slower and more ponderous than its predecessor, but it feels like the cornerstone element of the movie - the budding of Kiara and Kovu's relationship - is almost completely exorcised. Meanwhile, the fairly disposable scene of Kiara and Kovu being chased by Rhinos gets a whole level, because they're that desperate for things they can have Simba do. And Simba fights Zira to the death, which kinda misses the point of how that movie ended ("Welcome to the Pride, Kovu. Sorry I had to kill your mom."). Maybe this is why other tie-in games for Lion King 2 (Active Play, Gamebreak) were less literal and more loose in their adaptations?
Speaking of Virgin Interactive - while I'll be quick to admit that their work on The Lion Ling is flawed, there's simply no contest in a comparison between 16-bit Lion King and Simba's Mighty Adventure. The Lion King did as much as it could given its like 6 month dev cycle, and the fact that the characters look as much on-model as they could - still backed by Disney animators, no less - is a great visual treat and of a respectable length (even if it's artificially inflated by difficulty spikes). Simba's Mighty Adventure feels impossibly small and unambitious in comparison. Get to the ends of each linear obstacle course with X amount of collectables, and you're good. Maybe some extremely light combat. We're working with budget PS1 models, so no ambition whatsoever in terms of visual presence; the game's just trying to get over the line here. I guess the climactic fights are better in Mighty Adventure (the Virgin Scar vs the Chad Zira?), but it's still kinda weird that Scar/Zira's whole thing is to hop on a ledge where they can go neener neener while rocks and logs or whatever fall on Simba. I guess Scar has geomancy in this iteration?
If you're jonesing for a video game adaptation on The Lion King 2, I guess you're pretty starved for choice. But I'd still say go for minigame compilation Gamebreak over this.