Superb music and graphics meets absurdly difficult game play - welcome to hammer-fist city.
Gameplay: In the Lion King you start off as young Simba in the Pridelands. This is a standard side-scrolling platformer. You can roar and jump. Simba has both a red life bar and a yellow roar bar. When it's full you can roar at certain enemies to flip them over on to their backs, then pounce on them. Furthermore you can grab on to ledges and certain overhanging beams and either swing or pull yourself up. Like most similar games you will want to explore each level to find as many items and power-ups as possible. You can increase your health bar and roar bar, and find continues and 1-ups. Enemies include but are not limited to; hyenas, vultures, porcupines, lizards, cheetahs, and wildabeast. On top of that there's many obstacles in the game such as spikes, lava, and rolling boulders. Roaring, jumping and clinging to ledges, pouncing on enemies, collecting power-ups, avoiding spikes, swinging, and running from boulders are standard tactics in this game. There are very few boss fights. There's also some levels in the game that switch perspectives from 2-d side scrolling. The stampede level for example is Simba running for his life toward the screen, away from a stampede of wildabeast. The gameplay in this game is much more difficult than I would expect, even on easy. I'm a grown man and to me this game is very frustrating to progress through. Having been marketed towards children, I couldn't imagine their difficulty with this title. Anyway, eventually Simba can turn in to a large mature lion if you're able to even get that far. It happens after a very difficult level ironically entitled Hakuna Matata. Believe me - it doesn't mean no worries. You better start worrying about this level right now.
6/10
Graphics: The graphics in the Lion King are superb. Character sprites are medium in size and beautifully rendered. Their movements are extremely cat-like and graceful to watch. Environments are colorful and nicely varied. Enemies are easy to distinguish.
10/10
Audio: Again the sound quality in the Lion King is top-notch. Both music and sound effects are very well done and enjoyable to hear. It plays the jingles from the film which is great and Simba says, "cool" every time he retrieves an important item. When Simba grows up his little squeak roar turns into a formidable mature roar.
9/10
Controls: Not great at all. When jumping there's zero maneuverability in the air whatsoever. The controls are kind of slow and respond a second later than you would like. At times, instead of grabbing onto a branch Simba will go right through it and plunge to his death.
5/10
Replay: I couldn't imagine the replay value being very high at all. Number one you'll never beat it. You have to beat the game in the first place in order to 'replay' it. Number two there's no reason to replay this game even if you did beat it. There's only one character, no alternate endings, and no unlockable characters or levels.
4/10
Pros: I like animals so it appeals to me on that level. Excellent graphics and audio.
Cons: Frustrating and very difficult. You don't grow-up until level 5 or 6.
Overall: This game is a lot like the movie, except in this movie Simba gets killed again and again and again. I couldn't recommend this game to anyone even though I really do enjoy the graphics and music. The first couple levels are pretty fun and then it just gets difficult to the point of not being fun. If you're a huge Lion King fan you probably would love this game. Anyone else: there are too many other great side scrolling platformers out there to waste time on this one.