LONGPLAY: Lion King (1994) [MS-DOS]

The Lion King is a platformer video game based on Disney's popular animated film of the same name. The title was developed by Westwood Studios and published by Virgin Interactive for the Super NES and Genesis in 1994, and was also ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, PC, Amiga, Master System, and Game Gear. The NES, Master System and Amiga versions were only released in the PAL region, with the NES version in particular being the last game released for the platform in the region. The game follows Simba's journey from a young care-free cub to the battle with his evil uncle Scar as an adult.

The Lion King is a side-scrolling platform game in which players control the protagonist, Simba, through the events of the film, going through both child and adult 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 stun enemies, make them vulnerable, or solve puzzles. 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 through the game. Some bugs restore Simba's health and roar meters, other more rare bugs can increase these meters for the remainder of the game, while black spiders 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 collecting 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.

The sprites and backgrounds were drawn by Disney animators themselves at Walt Disney Feature Animation, and the music was adapted from songs and orchestrations in the soundtrack. In a "Devs Play" session with Double Fine, game designer Louis 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.

The Amiga 1200 version of the game was developed in 2 months from scratch in Assembly 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.

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00:00 Main Menu
01:08 Level 1: The Pridelands
04:22 Bonus: Bug Toss
04:49 Level 2: Roar at Monkeys
09:30 Bonus: Bug Hunt 3
11:11 Level 3: The Elephant Graveyard
16:53 Bonus: Bug Toss
17:13 Level 4: The Stampede
18:45 Level 5: Simba's Exile
20:53 Bonus: Bug Toss
21:15 Level 6: Hakuna Matata
26:42 Bonus: Bug Hunt 1
27:13 Level 7: Simba's Destiny
32:15 Bonus: Bug Hunt 2
33:12 Level 8: Be Prepared
38:47 Bonus: Bug Hunt 3
40:35 Level 9: Simba's Return
44:47 Level 10: Pride Rock
51:22 Ending