The Lion King Review (SNES) (Retro WedNESday Review #14)

The Lion King Review (SNES via PS4) (Retro WedNESday #12) (Also on NES, Game Boy, SEGA Genesis, and others)
Developer: Westwood Studios
Publisher: Virgin Interactive
Released: November 4, 1994

Last week, I tackled one of my all-time favorite Sega Genesis games in Aladdin. It was fantastic as a child, and it still holds up today. At the end of that review, I said you could pick the game up on modern consoles as part of a Disney classics bundle with The Lion King. And I took my own advice.

I liked The Lion King movie as a kid, but while watching it I never once thought, “Yeah, this needs a video game.” But back then, everything got a video game adaptation. And so The Lion King released on Sega and SNES, among others, published by Virgin Games, who made the fantastic Aladdin game a year earlier.

Because I didn’t think The Lion King needed a video game, I never played it as a kid. Never once saw it, not even in Movie Gallery, and thought that it was something I’d want to play. So, my first-ever experience with The Lion King came within the past week as part of this classic bundle.

Classic my ass.

Let’s cosplay as Jen Psaki for a minute and circle back to something I said in the Aladdin review: “Floaty jumping leads to frustration, leads to getting in trouble for potty mouth, leads to broken cartridge, leads to grounded from playing for a day or two.”

Well, yeah, had I played this bastard as a kid, I would’ve been frustrated and probably gotten into some trouble. What a giant turd of a game.

It starts off easy enough. The first level seems rather appropriate for what you would assume is a kid’s game based on a movie. The first level is easy. Then you get to the second level, and it seems like it’s going to be easy… and then the developers are revealed to be Satan, and the whole thing goes to hell.

The level is “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” and the music for that song is playing throughout the level. There’s so much bullshit in this level that is completely absurd. It took me a few minutes to figure out that you should growl at the pink monkeys to change their direction, but I like that. Today, there would have been an arrow and prompt telling you to do that. So points for not handholding, but then there’s the ostrich-riding section and a shitty part that needs you to double jump at the exact time, otherwise you’re dead. And I didn’t pay it any attention before, but apparently the second level also tells you ‘Roar at Monkeys’ before it says ‘I Just Can’t Wait to Be King.’ Had I been paying attention, that would’ve been useful information. Had I been paying attention, that would’ve been useful information.

Once you finally get past that (the ostrich jumping), which by that point I’d burned all my lives anyway, there’s grabbing the hippos by the tail… again requiring exact precision. When you’re done platforming on the hippos’ asses, there’s more ostrich riding. And now they’ve taken away the arrows telling you to jump, crouch or double jump. Then there’s a big ass puzzle involving the monkey’s flinging you around like the turd this game is.

Screw this game, man. I don’t have the patience to suffer through bullshit at 40 with an endless supply of games to play. I would’ve gotten past it as a kid. Had I rented it, I would’ve stuck with it, because it had a time limit and I would’ve wanted to beat it. But now? Hell no.

I can handle shitty games, and I can handle hard games. I draw the line at shitty games that are hard because of terrible design.

Can I score a game that I didn’t make it past the second level of? Well, of course I can; it’s my site. Plus, it’s like 30-something-years-old at this point. I can see the rest on YouTube and save my sanity. Actually, there’s an option in the modern version to watch the game be played. I believe you can even jump into to play from watching it, so could in theory, skip level two. But no. I’ll quit a game before I let it play itself.

I like the sound, that’s a plus. And it was doing a good job of incorporating elements of the movie, so there’s another plus. Graphically, it looks terrible compared to Aladdin, but not so bad that it’s unplayable. Gameplay design is a different story.

Ramping up the difficulty as you go is design that makes sense. Who thought a stupidly easy first level should be followed up with a brutally difficult second level? Last week I said Aladdin was about a three on the difficulty, and if you could beat Mario and Sonic, you could beat Aladdin. This is the game that does what Aladdin didn’t: bust you in the balls, then kick you in the face while you’re lying on the floor.

Last week, I spent about a thousand words before getting to the gameplay. This week, we’re not even going to make it to a thousand words.

Why? Because I just said I stopped playing after dying 20 times on the stupid ostrich jump. What’s left to say? And yes on modern consoles you technically have infinite lives considering you can save at any point and resume from that point. Which I did; I saved every time I cleared the stupid double jump. It’s still a terrible level.

The Disney Classic bundle this abomination is a part of is still worth the $20 because of Aladdin, but The Lion King can kiss my entire ass. Screw whoever designed this steaming pile of hippo shit.

Somehow, it’s still a better game adaptation than Hook managed. Maybe we’ll see at some point.

The Lion King gets a one out of five: FLAWED.