The Lion King (video game)
The Lion King | |
---|---|
NES | |
Release | November 4, 1994 |
Single-player |
The Lion King is a
Gameplay
The Lion King is a side-scrolling
The player can collect various types of bugs. Some bugs restore Simba's health and roar meters, other more rare bugs can increase these meters for the remainder of the game, and black spiders reduce Simba's health. By finding certain bugs hidden in certain levels, the player enters bonus levels as Timon and Pumbaa to earn extra lives and continues. In Pumbaa's stages, he collects falling bugs and items until either one hits the bottom of the screen or he eats a bad bug, and in Timon's stages, he hunts for bugs within a time limit while avoiding spiders.
Development
The
An Amiga 1200 version was developed with assembly language in two months by Dave Semmons, who was willing to take on the conversion if he received the Genesis source code. He had assumed the game to be programmed in 68000 assembly, and the Amiga and Genesis share the same Motorola CPU family, but he found it had been written in C, a language he was unfamiliar with.[12]
Westwood Studios developed the game for SNES, Genesis, and Amiga. Other conversions were outsourced to different studios. East Point Software ported it to MS-DOS, adding enhanced music and sound effects. The Sega Master System and Game Gear versions were developed by Syrox Developments, and the NES and Game Boy versions were developed by Dark Technologies.
The game had a marketing budget of $8 million[13] from a total budget of $20 million.[13]
Re-release
The SNES, Genesis, and Game Boy versions were included with
Reception
Publication | Score |
---|---|
Electronic Gaming Monthly | SGG: 31/40[15] |
GameFan | SNES: 268/300[16] |
Next Generation | SNES: [17] |
Nintendo Power | SNES: 16.3/20[18] |
VideoGames & Computer Entertainment | SMD & SNES: 7/10[19] |
Electronic Games | SMD: A[20] |
Entertainment Weekly | SMD: B+[21] SNES: A[21] |
GB Action | GB: 85%[22] |
Games World | SGG: 85/100[23] |
The Super NES version of The Lion King had 1.27 million copies sold in the United States.[24] More than 200,000 copies of the MS-DOS version were sold.[25] In the United Kingdom, it was the top-selling Sega Master System game in November 1994.[26] In the United States, it was the top-selling Game Gear game in December 1994.[27] In 2002, Westwood's Louis Castle remarked that roughly 4.5 million copies of The Lion King were sold in total.[28]
GamePro reviewed the SNES version, commenting on outstanding graphics and voices but "repetitive, tedious game play that's too daunting for beginning players and too annoying for experienced ones". They particularly noted the imprecise controls and highly uneven difficulty, though they said the "movie-quality graphics, animations, and sounds" were good enough to make the game worth playing regardless of the gameplay.[29] They similarly remarked of the Genesis version: "The Lion King looks good and sounds great, but the game play needs a little more fine-tuning".[30]
The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly praised the Game Gear version as having graphics equal to, and controls vastly improved over, the SNES and Genesis versions.[15] GamePro wrote that the graphics are not as good as those of the SNES and Genesis versions, but agreed that they are exceptional by Game Gear standards, and praised its much more gradual difficulty slope than the earlier versions.[31] The November 1994 issue of Gameplayers says that "even on the easy setting, the game is hard for an experienced player".[citation needed]
Next Generation rated the SNES version four stars out of five, and stated that "even though the game is much harder than Aladdin, it's never unfair or frustrating".[17]
Entertainment Weekly gave the Super NES version an A and the Genesis version a B+ and wrote that "controlling Simba when he's a playful bundle of fur is one thing; putting him through his paces as a full-maned adult is quite another. When the grown-up Simba gives a blood-curdling roar and mauls snarling hyenas, the interaction is so well observed that it's like watching a PBS nature documentary. The sense of power it gives you is exhilarating, and by the time Simba takes his climactic heavyweight stand against his evil uncle Scar, this Lion King has turned into a wild-kingdom variant of Street Fighter II".[21] Super Play gave the Super NES version an overall score of 82/100, praising its graphics and sound as "almost film-like quality" and stating "a very high-quality platformer game with little in the way of innovation".[32]
Accolades
In 2009,
See also
Notes
References
- ^ a b c "Game Players Vol 7, #10 pg. 10". Sega Retro. October 1994. Retrieved March 3, 2020.
- ^ a b "News". Hull Daily Mail. November 3, 1994. p. 32. Retrieved May 27, 2023.
The Lion King this week arrives as a video game release, amidst a flurry of advertising and just a month after the film went on general release. Sega versions surface first, tomorrow, with the SNES cart out a week later on November 11.
- ^ "Software List (Released by Soft Licensees)". セガ 製品情報サイト (in Japanese). Sega. Retrieved May 15, 2023.
- ^ Gelmis, Joseph (November 10, 1994). "You can play along with ' Frankenstein '". Austin American-Statesman. p. 114. Retrieved December 3, 2023.
The cartridge games of Disney's The Lion King, from Virgin Interactive, arrived in stores Oct. 31.
- ^ Bassave, Roy (November 4, 1994). "Lion King video game looks a lot like the movie". Miami Herald. p. 205. Retrieved December 3, 2023.
Roaring into stores on Tuesday: the new video game based on Disney's The Lion King.
- ^ "Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse". Miami Herald. October 28, 1994. p. 194. Retrieved December 3, 2023.
Also Disney's Lion King game hits the streets Nov. 9.
- The Times Leader. November 10, 1994. p. 33. Retrieved December 3, 2023.
Don't forget Disney's The Lion King game, which hit the street yesterday.
- ^ "Software List (Released by Sega)". セガ 製品情報サイト (in Japanese). Sega. Retrieved May 15, 2023.
- ^ "Game Boy (original) Games" (PDF). Nintendo. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 15, 2011. Retrieved September 24, 2011.
- ^ Fahey, Mike (December 23, 2014). "How Westwood Made The Lion King, One Of Gaming's Finest Platformers". Kotaku. Retrieved July 3, 2022.
- ISBN 978-1-4766-4501-8.
- ^ "An interview with Dave Semmens". 1989. Retrieved September 4, 2018.
- ^ Newspapers.com.
- ^ Stewart, Marcus (September 23, 2021). "The Expanded Disney Classic Games Collection Includes The Jungle Book And SNES Aladdin". Game Informer. Retrieved September 27, 2021.
- ^ a b "Review Crew: The Lion King". Electronic Gaming Monthly. No. 65. Ziff Davis. December 1994. p. 46.
- ^ "Viewpoint - Lion King - SNES". GameFan. Vol. 2, no. 11. DieHard Gamers Club. November 1994. p. 33.
- ^ a b "Finals". Next Generation. No. 1. Imagine Media. January 1995. pp. 102, 104.
- ^ "Now Playing". Nintendo Power. Vol. 68. January 1995. Retrieved August 22, 2021.
- Video Games & Computer Entertainment. No. 71. pp. 96–97. Retrieved August 22, 2021.
- ^ Yates, Lauren (November 1994). "The Lion King". Electronic Games. pp. 110–111. Retrieved August 22, 2021.
- ^ a b c "The Lion King". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved September 4, 2018.
- Video Games & Computer Entertainment. No. 33. Christmas 1994. pp. 8–9. Retrieved August 22, 2021.
- ^ Dave; Nick; Nick II; Adrian (December 1994). "The Lion King". Games World. No. 6. p. 21. Retrieved August 22, 2021.
- ^ "US Platinum Videogame Chart". The Magic Box. Retrieved August 13, 2005.
- Imagine Media. p. 27.
- Computer & Video Games. No. 158. Future plc. January 1995. p. 115.
- ^ "EGM's Hot Top Tens" (PDF). Electronic Gaming Monthly. February 1995. p. 42.
- ^ Pearce, Celia (December 2002). "The Player with Many Faces". Game Studies. Vol. 2, no. 2. Archived from the original on June 27, 2003.
- ^ "ProReview: The Lion King". GamePro. No. 64. IDG. November 1994. pp. 116–117.
- ^ "ProReview: The Lion King". GamePro. No. 65. IDG. December 1994. pp. 90–91.
- ^ "ProReview: The Lion King". GamePro. No. 65. IDG. December 1994. p. 220.
- Future Publishing. pp. 44–45.
- ^ Antista, Chris (September 21, 2009). "The Top 7... Kickass Disney Games". GamesRadar. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved May 3, 2022.
- ^ "The GamesMaster Mega Drive Top 10" (PDF). GamesMaster. No. 44. July 1996. p. 74.