Disney’s The Lion King (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Virgin’s 1995 license-based platformer for the NES, Disney’s The Lion King. The Lion King was the final official release for the NES in PAL-territories, showing up on shelves sometime in mid-1995. It was also one of the few NES titles released exclusively for that market. Having recently uploaded the NES Aladdin game ( ), I’m finding myself at a loss for anything new to say about The Lion King that I haven’t already said about Aladdin. It’s an NES port of the Game Boy game that came out a year prior ( ), and it seems as though not much effort was put into the conversion, yet again. The graphics make poor use of the NES’s abilities (you’ll get hurt or killed by lots of things that you couldn’t see thanks to color palette choices), the controls often lurch between twitchy and laggy without warning, and the hit detection feels haphazard at the best of times. There’s also the fact that over half of Genesis game it’s based on is missing, leaving it to end on a ransom, sudden note, and the stampede stage is so laughably poor that I have to wonder why they even bothered to include it. And the wildebeests look like corn dogs. Or like Zeppelins flying backwards, maybe? I don’t know. Not like wildebeests, though. It’s not a completely terrible game, to be honest. It’s mindlessly entertaining to run through if you are familiar with it. The sprite animations are nice, though the sprites themselves are tiny, and the soundtrack is business as usual as far as NES soundtracks go. So yeah, on the whole, the game isn’t good, but taken in context of the NES library as a whole, it could’ve been much, much worse. It would’ve been a big disappointment to have blown weeks of pocket money on, though. That’s for sure. Just like Aladdin, The Lion King should’ve been way cheap and lazy nature of this port leaves a sour taste in my mouth when I think back on what a celebrated showcase title it was on the SNES and Genesis. _____________ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete () punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!