Disney's Aladdin, Lion King & Jungle Book Hit GOG
Blast from the past
"A whole new world!" sang Aladdin, trying to get his leg over. That was 1992, though. Since then, we've decided we don't want new things; we want old things repackaged in a way that excites us. So flipping heck, flaming Nora, and stone the crows - Disney have brought a trio of '90s platformers based on their animated movies to GOG. You can now once again get Aladdin, The Lion King, and The Jungle Book, this time handily packaged for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Before you ask, yes, Aladdin is the Virgin Games version - the one released for Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis, for our American cousins) then Amiga and MS-DOS and whatnot. For people who are puzzled by this, I'll explain: The Good Old Days had many a ha-ha-hilarious mess of licensing issues meaning that several entirely different games could be released under the same name by entirely different companies, especially for tie-in games.
I think the Mega Drive version is meant to be best? Heck, even SNES version designer Shinji Mikami - yes, the Resident Evil and Vanquish and Evil Within fella - has said he might prefer the other version.
Anyway! You can now get Aladdin, The Lion King, and The Jungle Book on GOG. A small launch discount brings them to £6.29 each, or all three are cheaper together - £14.07.
Question: are these games good? They're far enough in the past that I can't remember whether we actually enjoyed them or we enjoyed recognising things from something else we liked. I do remember that The Lion King had a truly awful level set in a maze of caves. Total guff. But maybe your nostalgia includes being delighted by plumbing the mysteries of that cave system, drawing maps on paper to mark which door leads where. The past is a strange place, maaan.
