Game designer Louis Castle revealed that two levels, Hakuna Matata and Be Prepared, were adapted from scenes that were scrapped from the final movie. The sprites and backgrounds were drawn by Disney animators at Walt Disney Feature Animation, and the music was adapted from songs and orchestrations in the film soundtrack. In Pumbaa's stages, he collects falling bugs and items until either one hits the bottom of the screen or he eats a bad bug, and in Timon's stages, he hunts for bugs within a time limit while avoiding spiders. By finding certain bugs hidden in certain levels, the player enters bonus levels as Timon and Pumbaa to earn extra lives and continues. Some bugs restore Simba's health and roar meters, other more rare bugs can increase these meters for the remainder of the game, and black spiders reduce Simba's health.

The player can collect various types of bugs. The game ends prematurely when the player loses all of their lives, although they can continue playing from the current level as long as they have continues. Passing through checkpoints throughout the level allow Simba to restart the level from that point when he loses a life. Simba starts the game with a certain number of lives, depending on the difficulty setting, which are lost if he runs out of health, falls into a bottomless pit, or a lake of water or lava, or is hit by a rolling boulder. In the second half of the game, Simba becomes an adult and gains access to various combat moves such as scratching, mauling, and throws. Simba' roar consumes a replenishable meter, and can be used to stun enemies or solve puzzles. In the first half of the game, players control Simba as a cub, who primarily defeats enemies by jumping on them. The Lion King is a side-scrolling platform game in which players control the protagonist, Simba, through the events of the film, going through both child and adult forms as the game progresses. The game follows Simba's journey from a young cub to the battle with his uncle Scar as an adult. It is the final licensed NES game worldwide. The Amiga, Master System, and NES versions were only released in the PAL region. The game was developed by Westwood Studios and published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment for the Super NES and Genesis in 1994, and was ported to MS-DOS, Amiga, Game Gear, Master System, and Nintendo Entertainment System. The Lion King is a platform game based on Disney's 1994 animated film The Lion King.

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