In 1994, The Lion King looked like a miracle on PC screens, but it hid some of the most merciless platforming of the 16-bit era behind its gorgeous Disney animation.
Westwood built a looker, but East Point made it fly on PC
When you boot up the 1994 release on MS-DOS, the visuals hit you immediately. Built alongside the animated film, director Louis Castle and the team at Westwood Studios got actual Disney animators to draw the frames for young and adult Simba. The team at East Point Software handled the PC port, running it through the DOS/4GW runtime at 320x200 resolution in 256-color VGA at a silky 50 frames per second.
If you had a Sound Blaster or a Gravis UltraSound hooked up, the synth music and digitized lion roars blew past anything coming out of a standard PC speaker. It felt like playing a cartoon in real time, full of parallax scrolling and expressive animations as young Simba pounced on lizards, spiders, and hyenas across The Pridelands.
Why level two destroyed every kid's weekend in 1994
The beauty was a trap. The initial stage feels gentle enough as you jump on lizards and roar to stun small critters. Then you hit level two, Can't Wait to be King, and the illusion of a cozy Disney movie vanishes completely.
This second level forces you to use young Simba's roar meter to change the direction of pink monkeys hanging in trees, then jump onto their tails to swing across bottomless gaps. The timing is excruciatingly tight. Jump half a second off, and you plunge to your death, losing one of your few lives. To make matters worse, there is no in-game save function anywhere in this action game. If you run out of continues, you restart from level one.
- Roar Meter: Stuns small enemies and flips tree monkeys to set up puzzle paths.
- Health Bugs: Blue and red bugs restore health and expand your maximum roar gauge, while black spiders drain your life.
- Adult Combat: Later levels let adult Simba claw, maul, and throw enemies off screen.
- Bonus Rounds: Timon and Pumbaa mini-games grant extra lives and Circle of Life continue markers.
The mechanical split that changes how you play The Lion King
The game fundamentally changes halfway through when Simba grows up. Levels like Hakuna Matata and Simba's Exile continue the punishing platforming, but once you reach Be Prepared and Simba's Return, adult Simba trades pouncing for raw combat. You can slash with claws, perform a mauling combo, or grab hyenas and toss them clean off the edge of the screen.
The final showdown with Scar on Pride Rock demands master-level execution of these throw mechanics, ending a campaign that took no pity on casual players. If you ever got completely stuck on these late stages, typing dwarf on the main title screen triggered a cheat mode where pressing L skipped the level and H restored your health.
A sneaky copy protection check left bad cracks unplayable
The developers included a clever anti-piracy check right at startup. If a pirated copy failed this check, the game would still run, but young Simba's roar meter would never refill and upgrade bugs would stop working. That sneaky punishment made the monkey puzzles in level two literally impossible to complete.
Even without bugs, the unforgiving precision jumping makes it a tough game to love all the way through, but its presentation holds up brilliantly. If you want to experience Virgin Interactive's classic presentation, the best choice today is to jump right in and see how far your reflexes take you.
Ready to test your jumps on Pride Rock?
You can play The Lion King online right now, right here in your browser for free. There is nothing to install and no setup required. Start up the initial stage, grab a few health bugs, and see if you can figure out the monkey tree timing in level two without losing all your lives.