The game preservation group Codebound announced this week that it has archived a previously unreleased prototype of Westwood Studios' notoriously difficult licensed platformer The Lion King for the Super Nintendo.
This version of the game is dated March 22nd, 1994 — eight months before its official November 1994 release date — and is evidently quite an early version, judging from the few levels that are included and the amount of placeholder graphics that are still in use.
Some of the screenshots Codebound has provided, for instance, display a crudely drawn Simba running from the wildebeest stampede that serves as the fourth level in the game (following the Elephant Graveyard) and an even simpler version of the character that looks like a desiccated dog idling within the second level, which is based on I Just Can't Wait To Be King — a musical number from The Lion King film.
This version is particularly interesting to us as it is clearly from before the studio had managed to implement all of the sprites and backgrounds that had been created by Disney's animation team, with Westwood's designers instead simply sketching out a rough idea of the basic-level design, ahead of the art going in at a later stage. It's a fascinating look into the process behind the making of the title and will likely be of interest to those who have always wanted a deeper understanding of how it was created.
Interestingly, it isn't the only Lion King prototype Codebound has managed to save either, with the preservationist group also managing to archive two prototypes of the Sega Game Gear port.
This includes an early build dated May 25th, and a later prototype assumed to be from August 1994 — roughly the same period as other previously dumped versions that have been catalogued on the game preservation website Hidden Palace. Both of these versions are the work of the game studio Syrox Developments (who also handled The Lion King Master System port).
As Codebound states, the May 25th prototype seems to be lacking Levels 1, 5, 8, and 10, throwing up a "Not Installed" message when selected before returning to the build's level select screen. Meanwhile, the second build is a lot more finished, being from just three months before the game's release.