STORY / GAMEPLAY Young prince Simba just can't wait to be the King of Savannah. But his father, King Mufasa, dies and his evil brother Scar takes over the kingdom. Simba is banished from his homeland and now he has to survive, grow up fast and hone his skills until he returns to avenge his father's death.
Apart from killing enemies by jumping on them, and make leaps over deadly pits, the gameplay features minor puzzling, swinging and character upgrade elements. If Simba loses all of his health he floats in the middle of the black screen standing dazedly, and faints! Health can be restored by collecting bugs found in the way. There are also a few levels that differ from the norm, to give some variation (such as Level Four that has you running towards the screen and dodging a buffalo's charge from behind). These extra elements add some more to the game although they make it more challenging to further progress.
More on that, the controls are pretty tricky to master (to be honest, it was way easier for me to use keyboard in the DOS version than a joystick on the Amiga or a joypad on the SNES). Other than that, the game plays and looks great and offers lots of fun.
GRAPHICS / SOUND The graphics on the Amiga AGA are very impressive. Each stage is well drawn with nice textures and some great use of lighting shading. The art from the movie is almost intact and everything is very recognizable and authentic. The sprites are superbly animated and they move fast on screen. The Amiga version is available only on the AGA machines and looks good though the extensive use of color-dithering to resemble the original color palette. The sound quality is equally great, the music is faithful to the movie and features some of the original soundtracks while there are also several sampled sound effects (like when Simba roars, etc).
GAMEPLAY VIDEO On our video below we included both the Amiga AGA and DOS versions of the game.