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| All together now.. "It's the Cirrrrcle of liiiiifffeee......" (Notice George the Turtle in the back of the photo, acting out the part of every animal in the opening of the film, i.e. standing still with head raised.) |
Released on: Sega Megadrive, NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Game Boy, Game Gear, Amiga and PC
Played on: Sega Megadrive
Release date: 1994
Before we get into this blog post - let's address the elephant in the room. (Not that there's an actual elephant in this room you understand - apart from Trundle the Elephant of course - but he stays in the corner and generally keeps himself to himself)
DISCLAIMER for RSPCA/PETA/Any other militant animal rights campaigners - THIS IS A JOKE!
The elephant I'm talking about? The fact that this is a tie-in game, and you know what they say about tie-in games, they are notoriously pieces of rubbish that are knocked-up quickly with no consideration to game quality, right?
Normally I'd agree with you. And indeed, if this was a modern tie-in game, the odds would be weighed heavily against it. Tie-in games nowadays tend to be less entertaining than playing "Watch that Rock" for 3 consecutive hours, followed by spending the rest of the day cleaning a rug with a toothbrush. That wasn't always the case, though, as The Lion King proves.
This game contradicts both of the most commonly held beliefs about tie-in games:
1) They are badly made and awful to play.
2) They are short and/or incredibly easy.
Tackling point 1 first (as any sensible person would do), we'll look at the quality of the game. And I'm telling you now, it's a good game. It's a well-designed 2D platformer with great graphics (the individual sprites were designed by Disney animators) and it plays funky 16-Bit audio versions of the famous songs from the film. How can you not love it?
Point 2 now, and I can only disprove one half of this question, because of the other half. (I know that's a confusing sentence, but bear with me, I'll make sense of it, I promise.) I don't know if the game is short - not from personal experience anyway. I guess I could answer the question if I cheated and looked it up on Wikipedia, but that's true of anything. You can cheat and look up anything on Wikipedia. Granted, an answer from Wikipedia can often have a dubious relationship with the truth, but there you go.
Wow, I digressed there, where was I? Oh yes - difficulty.
This game is hard. Bloody hard in places. In fact, it's harder than a Diamond coated in Kevlar and surrounded by Titanium Reinforced Concrete. (I did have a cruder analogy, but I decided that it would be too rude for your sensitive ears, so I spared you it.) I'm not proud of this fact, but I lost all of my lives and used all of my continues, and still did not get past level 3 (Elephant's graveyard) on my first attempt. So I went into the menu system, changed the difficulty to Easy, and started again.
And that time? I made it all the way to.... level 4. (The Stampede). Now I could complain about that particular level being unfairly hard, as it is a level where you are controlling Simba (as you do throughout the game), running away from the stampeding buffalo. (You remember the relevant bit of the film, don't you?) The problem with this level? It's designed so that you control Simba as he runs into the screen. And then you get to the bit where rocks are appearing in front of you....
Yes, I got frustrated at this point, but it didn't stop me trying over and over again - until I had once again lost all of my lives. This coincided with my time running out, so I stopped.
I know it seems that the vast majority of my opinion about this game is complaining about the difficulty, but that does become the one overbearing feature. I have played the opening two levels of this game hundreds of times, (Which isn't a problem in itself, level 2 in particular (Just can't wait to be King) is an absolute delight to play - as long as you figure out which pink monkeys you have to roar at), but I genuinely don't know what levels happen after the Stampede... maybe one day I will find out.
So all-in-all, it's a fun 2D platformer, brought down, in my opinion, by it's ridiculous difficulty level (and the fact that it has no save game/password system to help you carry on) but it's still great.
Rating: 7/10
Time Played: 1 hour 10 minutes
Would I play it again?: Yes. Definitely.
Next time - It's a return to the 3DS for another retro game - It's Metroid.
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