Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Video Game Review #145: The Lion King

The Lion King
Sega Genesis



My step brother rented The Lion King for the Sega Genesis back in 1994, shortly after the game came out. Despite having never seen the movie, I had great interest in the game. Why? Well, I mean, it was a video game and I liked video games. Duh! But I especially liked 2D side-scrollers based on movies. A lot of movie based games got critically panned, but for some reason I always enjoyed them and would check them out whenever they’d hit store shelves.

It was a Saturday and I only had half a day to play the game with him before I had to leave to go to my mom’s house. Despite the fact that we played this game for hours and hours on end, we were never able to make it past the second stage. Thinking back to that day, the only thing I can remember is a puzzle involving monkeys that would fling you around the stage. Some of the monkeys you could roar at. This would make them change the direction in which they’d toss your character. Despite trying virtually every combination in the book, we could never figure this puzzle out. Not only that, but even simply getting to the monkey puzzle was incredibly tough, too. And this was coming from someone who was good at video games. The Lion King was freaking hard! As much as my 12 or 13 year old self wanted to stick around and continue to work on making it through the stage, I had to leave. This may sound silly, but I never forgot that day. If and when I ever got the chance, I vowed to return to The Lion King someday and vanquish those gaming demons.




Fast forward to, geez, 20 some years later. I have already mentioned my cousin Ryan and his box of Sega Genesis games many, many times throughout the lifespan of this blog. Well, guess what? I am going to do it again. A few years ago he loaned me a box of Genesis games to review for this blog. The Lion King is one of the games that was in the box. It took me a while to get around to playing it, as I had higher gaming priorities. Plus, I am not gonna lie: the challenge of the game was a bit intimidating to me. I knew I would get around to the Lion King eventually, but I was definitely in no rush to do so.

Years passed with this box of games in my possession until finally, the right time came to play it. I don’t know what changed to signify that it was the right time to play. But something clicked in my head. I was ready to take on this challenge. It was now or never.

The first thing I noticed upon starting up the game was of course its presentation. I mean, the game looks really good! The colors are vibrant and bright. The characters and animations are well drawn. Each stage is bursting with life and personality. This is one of the best looking Genesis games you will ever see. The music is fantastic too. The songs are all rehashed versions of songs you hear in the film, minus the vocals of course. But everything is pretty much instantly recognizable from its film counterpart. My favorite track is for the first level of the whole game. I’d suggest giving it a listen when you are done reading this review. Or heck, start it up now and listen while you read along. It really gets you into the mood to play The Lion King. When you couple the game’s outstanding music with its eye popping visuals, you get one really immersive and impressive sensory experience.




As impressive as the visual and audio quality of the game was, would it actually be any fun to play? I went back and forth on this multiple times, but the more I played, the more the game began to grow on me. I may not have thought this way in the beginning, but my answer now is a firm and resounding yes!

Right off the bat, the game is a challenge. The first level is pretty easy. I passed it with no trouble. But the second level... man. The second level. It is not often that I need to access an online guide for help with a 2D sidescrolling game. Especially on just the second level of the game! These kinds of games I have always been naturally good at. But I just had to with The Lion King. It was that hard. Even with a guide, I still struggled. My first few attempts at this game, I burned through all my continues before finally making it through to the third stage. And even then, I only made it with one remaining life and no continues. Two minutes later, I died on stage three, and had to start the whole game from the beginning again.




The game's controls are pretty basic, especially considering that this was made for the Sega Genesis. Controlling Simba as a cub, the only two attack moves you have are jumping and roaring. To kill your enemies, you have to jump on them. Easy enough. Your roar move is not very effective, as Simba is still young and does not have an intimidating roar. As an attack, I only used it to roar at porcupines, as the roar would flip them over and expose their vulnerable belly for you to jump on. Other than using it to change the position of the monkeys on stage two, I didn't see much other use for the roar at all.

The game loosely follows the plot of the movie, so as you play Simba gets older and larger in appearance. I believe that for the first six stages of the game you play as young Simba, and for the remaining four stages you play as adult Simba. Adult Simba is much more dangerous than his young counterpart. He can swipe enemies with his paw, as well as pounce on them and maul them to death. He is also stronger, and can jump higher and longer distances. His roar is fully developed now, but unless was doing something wrong as I played I didn't see much use to even use the roar at all. I wish I had the chance to control older Simba for a few more stages, but alas - the story of the game did not allow for more of them.




Level progression is fairly linear. You start at point A and have to make it to point B to finish the level. Normal enemies include insects, spiders, monkeys, hyenas, vultures, bats, frogs, and other jungle dangers you may encounter. Simply jump on them as young Simba to kill them, or use your claw or pounce attack to kill them as adult Simba. The design of the levels loosely follows the plot of the movie. The first stage has you making your way up to the top of Pride Rock, where at the end you find Mufasa and he tells you that everything you see is yours. The second level has you jumping across giraffes, riding on the back of an ostrich, swinging from hippopotamus tails (damn these things. WHY WON'T YOU GRAB ON???), and getting flung around by monkeys, all set to the tune of "I Just Can't Wait To Be King." This is the aforementioned uber-challenging level that I mentioned earlier. The third level has you moving on to the Elephant Graveyard. The next level is the stampede. So on and so forth. Like I said, it loosely follows the plot of the movie. So if you have seen the movie before, you should be able to tell what kind of stages this game is going to have.

There are random boss battles scattered throughout the game. The most memorable battle in my mind is against a giant ape that throws fruit at you. You have to dodge his attacks and wait for him to stand up, then you can jump on him. He follows a very reliable pattern and is easy to kill once you get the pattern down. But man, I will not lie. That fight took me a LOT of attempts and cost me quite a few lives and continues. It is a toughie, for sure. The other boss fights are not as memorable. You fight a solo hyena in one level. Obviously Scar is going to be the big bad at the end. If there are any other boss fights, they aren't coming to mind. Is that it? Just three boss battles?




Each level contains hidden bugs you can collect. They do things like increase your roar meter (yes, there is a meter for that), increase your health, or can grant you access to a special stage at the end of each level. In these special stages, you must control Timon or Pumbaa and collect bugs. The more bugs you collect, the more extra lives or continues you can score. Trust me, it is important that play these special stages and do well on them. You will need every extra life or continue you can get!

While the game is mainly a 2D platformer, there is one very unique stage in the game: the stampede stage. Rather than controlling Simba from the normal 2D perspective, things shift to a full frontal escape scene where Simba is running directly towards the camera. You have to run back and forth, avoiding getting trampled by stampeding animals. As if this is not hard enough, rocks come at you from off camera with only a second or two worth of notice. Trying to avoid the stampeding animals AND these rocks is no easy feat. I am pretty good at the stage now due to pattern recognition, but again - I struggled a lot with this when I first played it. This stage is another life/continue eating machine. Despite being challenging, it is still a really fun stage, however. And it is a nice break from the normal side scrolling gameplay. A lot of people refer to this as a "classic" stage from the 16-bit era, and I can not say I disagree with that.




It took me an entire weekend to beat The Lion King. All I can say is kudos to the makers of the game for challenging someone like me, who considers himself pretty darn good at these kinds of games. This game is famous for its difficulty, and for good reason. You have to pay attention and learn from your mistakes as you play. You can't just expect to pick this game up and beat it on your first attempt. It doesn't work that way. It is tough, but it does not feel unfairly challenging at the same time. Every time I died, I knew it was my fault and that I needed to do better the next time around. The only time I thought I ever suffered a cheap death was during the second stage. The ostrich double jump is tough to pull off the first few times you give it a shot. I was like COME ON!! WHAT IS KILLING ME?? Turns out that not only do you have to ensure that Simba survives the double jump, but the ostrich does too. Once I figured that out, I was good to go. The other time I felt I died unfairly during this stage was the part when you have to swing from hippo tail to hippo tail as you move over the water. My jumps were aligned perfectly, but for some reason Simba wouldn't grab on and would fall to his death. I know how to do it now, but I'll be damned if I didn't burn through more continues than I can count just on this one seemingly simple part.

Not only is The Lion King hard enough as it is, but I think there is something wrong with the copy of the game that was in my cousin's box. Often as I played, the game would randomly restart to the title screen for no apparent reason at all. There was no option to continue; I would have to start the whole game over from the beginning again. There was never any warning that it was going to happen either. It would just happen. Sometimes it would be on the first stage. Sometimes on stage seven. One time it even happened during the final fight with Scar at the very end of the game. I had him on the ropes and all I had to do was toss him over the edge of the cliff. I was PISSED@@@!@!@!!!!! By this time I had already sunk hours and hours of my day into the game. I had played off and on for three days straight. I did not feel guilty using a cheat code to skip to the last stage and beat it from there. No siree!




While I hate the fact that I had to use a code to beat the game, I didn't consider this my fault at all. The randomly restarting to the title screen was an obstacle that everyone else who had to play through this game did not have to overcome. I was at the very end of the game, about 20 seconds away from beating it when it restart. What was to stop it from happening again and wasting even more of my time? So I consider my completion of The Lion King to be completely valid. I will fight you if you say it is not!

Restarting issue aside, I had a surprisingly fun time with The Lion King. Yes, the game is challenging, but that is part of its charm. Through simple trial and error, you learn from your mistakes and slowly do better each time you play it. This isn't a game you can beat in one sitting, like many movie based 2D games that came out in the 90s. There is a lot of depth to this game. It is really rewarding when you struggle through a level, but finally manage to make it through after several attempts. Not only does the game manage to be fun and challenging at the same time, its production levels are high too. Music, sound effects, graphics, everything is top of the line. One of the best looking and sounding Genesis games I have ever played. This is a very well made game.




Everyone may rant and rave about Aladdin being the definitive movie based game for the Sega Genesis, but I think The Lion King is better. It is by no means the perfect 2D platformer, but it is very good. If you are a fan of the genre, this is a must-play.


Overall:
A-


If you liked my review of The Lion King, please check out some of these other reviews:


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