Screw Attack's Video Game Vault peeks back at the games we enjoyed as cubs. Most of the commentary on their video game recollections doesn't go beyond "This game was AWESOME!" or "This game sucked!" It's hard to fault them for it, since we all have a tendency to do the very same.
Their latest retrospective, which looks at the Lion King game for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, is another "omg this game was rad in ever-y way!!" moment. Maybe they're thinking of another game in a parallel dimension or something because I remember a gamethat was exceptionally well done in some areas and finger-breakingly frustrating in others.
For starters, I have a shaky history with The Lion King. I know chunks of the movie are lifted from Osamu Tezuka's Kimba the White Lion (The Simpsons acknowledges the very same in the episode "'Round Springfield," with the famous ghost-delivered line, "You must avenge my death, Kimba--dah, I mean, Simba.") and that Disney's subsequent denial of Osamu Tezuka's existance is the worst thing the company has ever done outside of Walt gassing Jewish children in Space Mountain (disclaimer: Walt probably never gassed children).
Still, I love The Lion King. It ranks as my favourite Disney movie. It looks gorgeous, the soundtrack is stunning and there are some valuable lessons about acting your goddamn age. On that note, I'm willing to bet the game wasn't really for me since I was a teen plus when I attempted it. Years later I'm left wondering exactly who the game was for, since it was an extremely frustrating side-scroller. Beautiful, yes. The graphics were done in the fluid cartoon style first perfected by Aladdin for the Genesis. The game also sounded fantastic with songs straight out of the movie, though the Super Nintendo version sounded far richer thanks in part to crammed-in voice samples.
But was the game fun? Not so much. It begins with little Simba romping around Pride Rock, mewing at hedgehogs and lizards, pouncing on power-ups. The first level serves as a disarming tutorial for the rest of the game, which, although integrated with the movie extremely well, is frustrating. The monkey puzzles in the second level come to mind specifically. When Simba sang about how "he just can't wait to be king" in the movie, his elephant and giraffe subjects didn't try to actively kill him. The game is another story, as they take every opportunity to commit regicide by throwing Simba down pits.
When you think about it though, why would zebras and antelope have a reason to romp with a "king" who stands to grow up and stomach them?
Related Links:
Darkwing Duck: Capcom's Secret Mega Man
OST: Ducktales
Capcom to Date: By The Numbers