Another fine case of a game beating me as a child and me harboring a deep, seething resentment for it straight through adulthood. I knew when I was building my Bucket List that I would need to take this game on again and finally put it to bed, and the nicest thing I have to say about it is that I can now safely never play it again. Hell, after today, I probably won't think about it another second for the rest of my miserable life.
How could I hate something based on one of my favorite Disney movies? The monkeys. It's the damn monkeys! It was always the monkeys!
The second level of the game is based around the I Can't Wait to be King song from the film. One of the best out of the whole soundtrack, which is filled with bangers. My favorite is Be Prepared, because I too am always hatching fiendish plots against my enemies and I like men. I digress. It's a bright and colorful level that does a respectable job of being representative of the musical number from the movie, but your progress is repeatedly interrupted by sequences of roaring at monkeys to change the direction in which they vault you ahead the level. You need to set up specific sequences to progress, and I swear this was designed with the intention of stopping young children from beating the game in a weekend. As an adult, I got it down, but solving the riddle so many years later didn't feel satisfying in the least bit, because the whole rest of the game - which had been waiting for me since 1994! - is just kinda... bleh.
There's just this all-around cheap feeling to it. Level layouts are very uninspired and do not facilitate fun platforming, Simba's jump has a weight to it that just feels off, and (similar to Disney's Aladdin for the Genesis) Simba's swipes lack a sense of impact, instead feeling like they're going through enemies rather than connecting with them. The only part of the game that feels like it has any real weight to it is the graphics, which is owed in large part to contributions from Walt Disney animators. It is then perhaps appropriate that The Lion King was rereleased only a few years ago with Aladdin, as I think the two share a lot of similar strengths and weaknesses.
Excluding the marketing costs, this game had a 12 million dollar budget. However, I don't know if that is a combined budget for every version of the game and how that pool would've been split up between them if it was, let alone what would be considered the average cost for developing a game in the mid-90s. I assume it's a lot, but that the game was rushed out to capitalize on the momentum of the movie rather than act as a compliment to it, because that's certainly how it feels.
How could I hate something based on one of my favorite Disney movies? The monkeys. It's the damn monkeys! It was always the monkeys!
The second level of the game is based around the I Can't Wait to be King song from the film. One of the best out of the whole soundtrack, which is filled with bangers. My favorite is Be Prepared, because I too am always hatching fiendish plots against my enemies and I like men. I digress. It's a bright and colorful level that does a respectable job of being representative of the musical number from the movie, but your progress is repeatedly interrupted by sequences of roaring at monkeys to change the direction in which they vault you ahead the level. You need to set up specific sequences to progress, and I swear this was designed with the intention of stopping young children from beating the game in a weekend. As an adult, I got it down, but solving the riddle so many years later didn't feel satisfying in the least bit, because the whole rest of the game - which had been waiting for me since 1994! - is just kinda... bleh.
There's just this all-around cheap feeling to it. Level layouts are very uninspired and do not facilitate fun platforming, Simba's jump has a weight to it that just feels off, and (similar to Disney's Aladdin for the Genesis) Simba's swipes lack a sense of impact, instead feeling like they're going through enemies rather than connecting with them. The only part of the game that feels like it has any real weight to it is the graphics, which is owed in large part to contributions from Walt Disney animators. It is then perhaps appropriate that The Lion King was rereleased only a few years ago with Aladdin, as I think the two share a lot of similar strengths and weaknesses.
Excluding the marketing costs, this game had a 12 million dollar budget. However, I don't know if that is a combined budget for every version of the game and how that pool would've been split up between them if it was, let alone what would be considered the average cost for developing a game in the mid-90s. I assume it's a lot, but that the game was rushed out to capitalize on the momentum of the movie rather than act as a compliment to it, because that's certainly how it feels.
4 Comments
I swear to god I like video games, just bear with me here while I rip the bandage off some of these. At least I can trust we'll all hate Valis together.
I never grew up with this game but I feel like I’ve grown up with every other Disney game of that and the following generation because this specific game is just a blind spot. I was too busy with timon and puumbas jungle games or whatever it was called, but were any of these games actually any good? Besides goof troop and select Mickey games, those are the only gems I ever made out
@Hilda I think so, especially the Mickey Mouse games, which I think were the most consistent. The SNES Aladdin is also good.
I had a paragraph in here that I cut out that kinda got into the rerelease and asked rhetorically who it was intended for. I'm sure there's kids today who love The Lion King, but do any of them like it enough to play a 1994 Sega Genesis game? Even kids who grew up with this I don't think are going to rush out and buy a copy on disc for their PS4. More broadly, how much of me thinking Disney games were pretty good during the 16-bit era is because I was like, six years old and the exact market for Disney shit? Maybe I wouldn't like any of this stuff as much if I were more removed from that era and had a different expectation for what games are. It's hard to say.
I had a paragraph in here that I cut out that kinda got into the rerelease and asked rhetorically who it was intended for. I'm sure there's kids today who love The Lion King, but do any of them like it enough to play a 1994 Sega Genesis game? Even kids who grew up with this I don't think are going to rush out and buy a copy on disc for their PS4. More broadly, how much of me thinking Disney games were pretty good during the 16-bit era is because I was like, six years old and the exact market for Disney shit? Maybe I wouldn't like any of this stuff as much if I were more removed from that era and had a different expectation for what games are. It's hard to say.
Yea I was never a Lion King kid, if any of them I was most into Hercules and I remember that game being alright. I remember really liking SNES Aladdin but I also remember really... Playing Genesis Aladdin. It's been so long that the 2 are intermingling in the back of my head, but maybe it'll end up on the list of "Childhood nightmare abomination reborn" or something. I feel like their big actual game output really wavered after like, the 2000s especially. Hope that new Mickey game is okay, pretty at least.
Weatherby
1 year ago