The Lion King is a side-scrolling platform game in which players control the pro

tagonist, Simba, through the events of the film, going through both child and ad
ult forms as the game progresses. In the first half of the game, players control
Simba as a child, who primarily defeats enemies by jumping on them. Simba also
has the ability to roar, using up a replenishable meter, which can be used to st
un enemies, make them vulnerable, or solve puzzles. Midway through the game, pla
yers play through a unique stampede level in which they must avoid wildebeest an
d rocks. In the second half of the game, Simba becomes an adult and gains access
to various combat moves such as scratching, mauling, and throws. In either form
, Simba will lose a life if he runs out of health or encounters an instant-death
obstacle, such as a bottomless pit or a rolling boulder.
Throughout the game, the player can collect various types of bugs to help them t
hrough the game. Some bugs restore Simba's health and roar meters, other more ra
re bugs can increase these meters for the remainder of the game, while black spi
ders will cause Simba to lose health. By finding certain bugs hidden in certain
levels, the player can participate in bonus levels in which they play as either
Timon or Pumbaa to earn extra lives and continues. Pumbaa's stages have him coll
ecting falling bugs and items until either one hits the bottom of the screen or
he eats a bad bug, while Timon's stages have him hunting for bugs within a time
limit while avoiding spiders.
Development[edit]
The sprites and backgrounds were drawn by Disney animators themselves at Walt Di
sney Feature Animation, and the music was adapted from songs and orchestrations
in the soundtrack. In a "Devs Play" session with Double Fine, game designer Loui
s Castle revealed that two of the game's levels, Hakuna Matata and Be Prepared,
were adapted from scenes that were scrapped from the final movie.[1]
The Genesis version of the game does not have background vocals unlike the Super
NES version, but the Super NES version has fewer background particles than the
Genesis version. This is evident in the Elephant Graveyard and Stampede levels,
as well as on the title screen. The MS-DOS version contains background vocals wh
en the game is played with a SoundBlaster sound card. The vocals are missing whe
n the game is using an AdLib sound card due to AdLib's inability to play digital
sound.
The Amiga 1200 version of the game was developed in 2 months from scratch in Ass
embly language by Dave Semmons, who was willing to take on the conversion if he
received the Genesis source code. He assumed the game to be programmed in 68000
assembly, since the Amiga and Genesis shared the same CPU family, but turned out
to be written in C, a language he was unfamiliar with.[2]
Windows technical issues[edit]
The Windows 3.1 version relied on the WinG graphics API, but a series of Compaq
Presarios were not tested with WinG, which caused the game to crash while loadin
g.[3] The crashes caused game developers to be suspicious of Windows as a viable
platform and instead many stuck with MS-DOS. To prevent further hardware/softwa
re compatibility issues, Direct X was created. This also led to the Windows 95 p
ort of Doom to try to regain developers' faith in Windows.[4]
Reception[edit]
The SNES version of The Lion King sold well, with 1.27 million units sold in the
United States alone.[5] The PC version sold over 200,000 copies.[6]
GamePro gave the SNES version a generally negative review, commenting that the g
ame has outstanding graphics and voices but "repetitive, tedious game play that'
s too daunting for beginning players and too annoying for experienced ones." The
y particularly noted the imprecise controls and highly uneven difficulty, though
they felt the "movie-quality graphics, animations, and sounds" were good enough

to make the game worth playing regardless of the game play.[7] They similarly r
emarked of the Genesis version, "The Lion King looks good and sounds great, but
the game play needs a little more fine-tuning ..."[8]
The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly praised the Game Gear version as
having graphics equal to the SNES and Genesis versions and control that is vast
ly improved over those versions. They scored the game a 7.75 out of 10 average.[
9] GamePro wrote that the graphics are not as good as those of the SNES and Gene
sis versions, but agreed that they are exceptional by Game Gear standards, and p
raised the Game Gear version for having a much more gradual difficulty slope tha
n the earlier versions.[10] Gameplayers wrote in their November 1994 issue that
"even on the easy setting, the game is hard for an experienced player".[citation
needed]
The PC version was a subject of controversy due it requiring technical specifica
tions and setup beyond what most of the game's target audience had experience wi
th, which resulted in many people who bought the game finding that they could no
t make it run.[3][6]