The Lion King (Genesis)

So, I have played two versions of The Lion King. I've played the Gameboy version, and the Genesis version. I have never owned the Super Nintendo version, but from what I've seen, it looks exactly like the Genesis version, but with slight differences in music and graphics quality. I could be wrong, though. But for today's post, it's on the Genesis version I love so dearly.

So, as with Aladdin, the game follows the plot of the movie, of course. You start the game as a young Simba, and after the Hakuna Matata level, you play the rest of the game as adult Simba. Thankfully, as you'd expect, adult Simba can actually attack and whack things with his paws, making him more of a threat. And in the level you start playing as adult Simba, it's almost a practice stage for how to utilize him. I'm not saying the stage is easy, because it's not, but you still get time to grasp the concept before the game throws you into hard last levels.

I always remember the hardest part of the game as a kid, personally, was the second level, which is based on the song "Can't Wait to be King." In it, you hop on animals' heads, like giraffes, and you swing on hippos' tails. In at least 3-4 parts, you come across a monkey puzzle, in which your ultimate goal is to roar at certain monkeys to make then switch positions and they throw you towards the ostrich at the end of each monkey segment. These were always challenging back then because you had to remember what monkeys you roared at, and only the pink ones can be roared at, as the blue ones were set to whatever they're naturally facing. Finally, in those ostrich segments, you have to duck and jump over obstacles, and even double jump sometimes! It was really challenging back then, like most older games.

But all that aside, the Genesis does a nice job at translating the music to 16-bit, personally. Sure, you could argue that the SNES would sound much better, and you might be right about it. Personally, I think it comes down to preference. I would still probably think the Genesis sounds better due to nostalgia and the fact that the Genesis was more prevalent in my life than the SNES, as I still own my Genesis, and my SNES, well.. I think a controller broke and we, for some reason, got rid of it? And then my grandmother got rid of the games, I think, so.. yeah.. sad times.

But as always, thanks so much for reading, as always! Tomorrow I'm going to talk about a Genesis game I still haven't beaten, but it's the kind of hard game you really want to pick up and try again! See you tomorrow for Forgotten Worlds!

Have a nice day!~