The Lion King (Genesis)

This page details pre-release information and/or media for The Lion King (Genesis).

Although most of the game's progress appears to have been made on the SNES, several Sega magazines received copies of the game at various points of development. Most of the screenshots are just mockups, but some of them made its way into the Game Boy version's source code.

Mockup Screenshots#

The health and roar bars are the same as those found in the early SNES prototype, but with a slight change - the roar bar has been moved to the bottom right of the screen. The backgrounds in The Pridelands and Simba's Return match those found in that same prototype, but the Elephant Graveyard screenshot shows significant progress has been made. In the final, the skull is more covered at the bottom.

• These materials were found in the source code for the Game Boy version here.

Unknown Later Build#

The health and roar bars are different to the ones seen in the final, with different coloring. These bars have yet to be shown in a screenshot for the SNES game in any form. There's also a different font used for the lives, seen in early SNES screenshots. Finally, there's a vulture at the bottom of The Elephant Graveyard, but it's possible that the player just fell down from the top of the skull and the vulture chased Simba down there.

Beep! MegaDrive November 1994#

While hard to tell, the health and roar meters swapped places in the final game. However, since the screenshots of The Stampede only show the right bar, it is possible that only their graphics were swapped.

While the graphics are near-finalized, the palette still resembles that of the early SNES prototype. The right bush was also redrawn to have a more prominent shadow.

The Stampede still uses the same rougher trench look as the early SNES prototype. While hard to tell, the wildebeast also appears cut-off at the top of the screen, which was fixed in the final game.

The beginning of Simba's Destiny is emptier in the screenshot. Additionally, the game at this point used the same thin font as the SNES version.

Near Final#

In the final game, the hyenas here are cutscene characters, not regular enemy sprites. Simba's sprite also looks more distressed. No known prototypes show this version.

Early Advert#

An early advertisement seen in multiple magazines shows a few near-final screenshots.

The health and roar bars are shown above the scene, rather than at the top of it in the final.

This Scar sprite does not exist in the final game. The falling sprite he has is completely different.