The old Lion King video game made an appearance on reddit r/gaming

[soulImbibe]

Referring to the SNES / Sega Genesis game. I remember playing the game on Genesis with my friend, I would have been 8 years old back then so it was quite challenging and frustrating. I don't think we ever managed to beat the game.

The Lead Artist posted some comments:

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2bef9h/walked_in_to_a_gaming_pawn_shop_last_night_walked/cj4ysdi


Hi. I was the Lead Artist on this and did some level design. I would like to apologize for the 'Can't Wait to Be King' level. I actually didn't do any work on that level, but it has quite the history. The monkey puzzles started out a lot harder and were made simpler. But then there was talk of making it so you couldn't die on that level. Making it a just for fun, puzzle level and I thought that was a stupid idea and campaigned heavily against it. In retrospect I was wrong, that would have been more fun. Also, we never could figure out why, on that level only, sometimes you wouldn't make jumps it looked like you should have. The programmers went to extraordinary lengths to figure it out and even made the mechanism that detected if you caught the edge much more robust, but still messes up.
If you don't know the code to get to the cheat menu are the names of the two lead programmers. Barry did the SNES version so go to the options menu and type B A R R Y. For the Sega Genesis the lead programmer was Rob, but being from the UK he hated the way us yanks pronounced his name. He claimed we made it sound more like RAAB, which is the cheat code R A A B.
Although I did work on just about everything, the stuff that I primary created were all the the titles, menus and UI, Pride Lands, Elephant Graveyard, Simba's Exile and the Pride Rock.
Trivia: James Earl Jones returned to record the line... wait no that's not right. I was gonna say that he re-recorded the line "Everything the light touches is our kingdom" to "your kingdom" as we had moved that bit to after Mufasa had died. But I just watched a play thru video and it comes right after Pride Lands and is "our kingdom." Was it another line we change? I know there was something because it was a big deal that James Earl Jones, the most expensive voice actor in Hollywood at the time, came back and did it for free.
Okay, here is another one. The Bug Toss bonus game (Yes, a Kaboom clone. We were all old school gamers.) We only had 6 months to do the game to make it out in time for the movie's release. This meant starting before the contract was officially signed as it had to go back and forth to lawyers and such and the process takes quite awhile. Disney really wasn't supposed to give us anything until the contract was done, but everybody realized that we had to start ASAP so they did what they could. We got a cassette tape of music that included some other things that were pretty cool such as the Electric Street Parade music (which was available anywhere back then, but you can get now) and early Aladdin music before they completely changed the story. It was Aladdin and his brothers and lots of stuff about high Adventure. Anyway, they also gave us composite cards with stills from the movie. One of them was the background we used for the Bug Toss game. If you watch the movie you'll notice that it is actually the root that Pumba gets stuck under when Nala is chasing him. Disney was worried that people would notice this and it would be confusing. We explained that nobody would care.

[Sharifu]

That was interesting to read! Thanks for posting! :)

When the game came out in 1994, my sister and I didn't have any video game systems, my dad wouldn't allow it... But we played it on SNES at my friend's house. We weren't very good at it, I was only 9 and didn't have much experience playing video games since we didn't own any... I could never beat the "Can't Wait to be King" level.

But during the Christmas of 1997, my mom got us a Nintendo 64, even though my dad didn't like that. But she said she didn't care, they were getting a divorce anyways. :p So since where allowed to have video games now, I bought a Sega Genesis at Toys R Us in 1998 since it was pretty cheap. And one of the games I bought for it was TLK. And after playing it for a bit, being older and now having more experience playing video games in my own home, it became easier for me and now I can beat it easily. It's a fun game. I still own it and can play it anytime, as long as my Sega Genesis still works. :p It did years ago last I tried anyways.

[Leorgathar]

Whoa, excellent and interesting facts from the TLK game! :D So that's the reason behind the frustratingly punishing 'I Just Can't Wait to be King' stage :lol:
I had a PC version of the game when I was a kid. Beating 'IJCWTBK' was all an accomplishment in itself... only to be mauled to death by hyenas in the next stage :p Then as the years went by I became a TLK fan and got the game again in a SNES emulator, which I finally got to beat until the very end.
It's a really good game I'm very fond of. I'm still puzzled about there being a river of lava below Pride Rock, though :p

[Sharifu]

Yeah, what is up with that lava level? What were they thinking? Lol, saying that last sentence is making me think of the Angry Video Game Nerd. :p It just seems like it has nothing to do with the film at all. Was it under Pride Rock? Haha...

[King Simba]

I have that game for SNES (I think Leor gave me it once). Never played it though because I haven't had my SNES out in ages. Right now the game is tucked away in a box ready for the move. As for my SNES, I think that's up in the loft somewhere. Maybe after the move I'll get it out and play it for a while, for a bit of nostalgia. :p As for the lava bit, maybe the lava part is inspired from the last part of the movie where Pride Rock is on fire? Either that or Pride Rock is a secret volcano... :thinks: God knows. :lol:

[Sharifu]

It's probably they just needed to added more levels with adult Simba, or there would have been too few levels with adult Simba in it. I don't know, I'm taking a guess here. :lol:

[ThiagoPE]

This game is a classic, I remember playing it back in 1995, but I don't remember if I was able to finish it, add it is considered a very hard game. Even tough not having the same success of the snes classic, I enjoy the PlayStation game too, even it being very hard to play too.

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[Vidan]

I never played that game (not a console gamer) but it was interesting hearing about some mid-school (as opposed to really old-school, from the 80's and before) geekery from someone who was there. Thanks for the post.

Come to think of it, I don't think the TV I grew up with would have had a connection for a console anyway, other than the Atari-generation stuff that might have used the pre-coaxial two prong connection.

[Guntur]

As a SNES gamer I never owned The Lion King on console back then. I only saw the game play on the game store near my house in Malacca. I only own one cartridge but me and my neighbor usually share out cartridge with each other back when I was a kid. but the bad news is we all never owned the video game. But as a pre teen I discovered SNES emulator back in 00 so I managed to finish the game like 2 days on PC but for me it was an enjoyable game to play. As a fan of TLK I approve the game and find it enjoyable.

[Shadow]

Wow that was a really cool and interesting read thanks for sharing that.

Man i have found memories of my innocent little childhood playing that game ^^

[KanuTGL]

That's so cool! Thanks for sharing! :D

I never owned the game when I was little, but when I was about 8 I had a 'friend' who had it on her Mac, so even though she really wasn't a particularly nice friend, I'd go to her house specifically to get to play the game... xD I didn't get to play it properly until a few years ago, when a kind soul on Lilymud sent me an emulator with the TLK game. I was overjoyed, haha!