In this month's edition, Karl explores the animal kingdom with The Lion King on the Super Nintendo!
Hey there, folks, and welcome to the second iteration of NWR's first and only monthly column dedicated to the games of yesteryear. In case you weren't around last time, the concept is thus: I randomly choose a game with at least fifteen years of dust on it, clean it off, and take it for a spin. Along the way, I usually track down someone who worked on it, and through them, I'm able to give you guys the real story of how it all went down.
So with that out of the way, let's kick off the sophomore effort. This month on Reset Button, we're talking about…
In case you lived under a rock during the 90s, The Lion King starred a young lion named Simba, destined to take over as king of the animal kingdom after his father, Mufasa. Unfortunately for our hero, though, he had an evil uncle named Scar who sought to usurp the crown and assert his own rule. After organizing a methodical coup, Mufasa was killed, and Simba was expelled from his kingdom. Luckily, with a little help from new friends (and a few old ones), Simba was eventually able to take back what was rightfully his, and both critical and commercial success followed.
In the game, you follow a loose (we'll get to that later) translation of the film's plot, tracking Simba throughout his journey via side-scrolling platforming levels. Though you start out only being able to jump, roll, and momentarily frighten enemies with a roar, you eventually gain stronger abilities after you've aged from a cub to a full-grown adult lion.
As for how the game came to be, though? Well, that's where our story begins…
Louis Castle had never intended to become a prolific video game producer. Far from it - in fact. He started out as an architect, originally seeing computers as a tool for drafting. After developing an appreciation for the PC's artistic aptitude, however, he found himself in the only field available to a young digital artist - creating for video games. That eventually lead him into programming. By 1993, he'd been in the industry for more than 10 years, and was acting as the CFO and COO for Westwood Studios.
A year earlier they'd been bought by Virgin Interactive, who was then gearing up to publish the highly-lauded Aladdin. Seeking to strike gold again, Virgin offered Castle the chance to develop the next licensed Disney project: a film called The Lion King.
The problem was that Disney wanted the game to ship within six months - a daunting task, especially considering that the game was being developed simultaneously on both the Sega Genesis and the SNES, among other platforms. Hesitant to take on such a burden, Castle initially declined, but was won over after seeing the first five minutes of the film. Knowing that he'd need to live up to high expectations, he assembled his team, and got to work.
Starting on the Super Nintendo version, Castle and his team immediately caught a break, thanks to their familiarity with the Apple IIGS, which actually had the same processor as the SNES. Already having a strong sense of how far the system could be pushed, Westwood actually faced the most difficult hurdles outside of the development house altogether. Jeffrey Katzenberg's Disney was hardly known for openness at the time, and as a result, Westwood went a whole three months before even receiving production stills, causing a tremendous amount of guesswork to be applied.
Furthermore, the team at Westwood had to educate Disney's animators on the practicality of fluidity in a game. For example, the film's team wanted to make it so that if Simba were to flip back mid-jump, the game would actually show all of those motions, not realizing that such latency would make precision nearly impossible. These types of problems popped up often, as Disney hadn't yet grasped the limitations of that generation's hardware.
Worse yet, script changes within the film causes inconsistencies with the game. The waterfall level, in particular, was actually taken from a scene in the movie, but after meeting its end on the cutting room floor, became exclusive to Westwood's effort.
One of Castle's most vindicating moments came during a meeting with one of Disney's technical directors, in which the latter expressed a lack of enthusiasm about the wildebeest level where Simba is running towards the screen, skeptical that any sort of 3D could be achieved on the Super Nintendo. Castle and then-Westwood employee Patrick Gilmore agreed with the sentiment, but fortunately had already done it, showing off a demo of the game running surprisingly smoothly.
Oddly enough, when Westwood was nearing completion on The Lion King and was looking for final approval from Nintendo and SEGA before they could publish, they found both to be extremely eager to rush the title out of the door (something that was very much unlike Nintendo at that time). Thanks to the runaway success of the film, both SEGA and Nintendo were eager to pack in the title with their respective console for Christmas. In the end, SEGA ended up edging out The Big N, and even though both versions released on December 8th, 1994, it was the Genesis that attained the prized pack-in.
The Super Nintendo version, was certainly no slouch, though - it sold well over a million copies and received strong critical acclaim. As for Louis Castle, he'd go on to be involved in a plethora of hits with Virgin Interactive, from 1995's Monopoly (the highest selling software version of the game ever) to 1997's Blade Runner and Command & Conquer: Red Alert. Later, he'd join up with Electronic Arts, producing more games in the C&C franchise and finally, Boom Blox on the Wii with Steven Spielberg. These days he's working with Instant Action to bring high-quality, embeddable gaming to your internet browser.
So was all of The Lion King's success deserved? The game certainly had its issues - the hit detection wasn't always precise and the difficulty was pretty uneven (the second level in particular was more than a little cheap), but overall, The Lion King stands tall along other licensed hits of the day, and is most definitely worth diving into your old storage boxes to give another go.
And thus ends yet another Reset Button. Thanks for reading, folks, and be sure to head on into the Talkback thread to share your opinions. And to hear more on the subject, make sure you're subscribed to Radio Free Nintendo, because this Sunday you'll be able to hear my full, uncut interview with Louis Castle. Don't miss it, and remember to come back next month for more Reset Button!
