#0098: Timon & Pumbaa's Jungle Games

Remember that Lion King video game? Unless you're a filthy millennial, you probably should. It graced all major consoles at the time, and was even available on MS-DOS. It was like they were hunting down potential platforms, truculently shilling their product until they had monopolised the entire industry.

It was pretty good, but man, was it tough. Many would cite the logs in the Hakuna Matata stage or the wildebeest stampede as the source of their misery, but I even struggled to properly time the double jumps on that stupid ostrich. Wouldn't that have been a strange twist for the movie? If while merrily singing about how he just can't wait to be king, Simba crashes into a tree and fucking dies. That probably would have been the plot if Roman Polanski had directed it.

But of course, Disney was basically pooping cash in the '90s, and Lion King was perhaps their biggest meal ticket up to that point. So inevitably, an utter glut of merchandise would surface like hyenas from the elephant graveyard, including other, much less significant efforts. This is where Timon & Pumbaa's Jungle Games comes into play.

In between levels in The Lion King, you had some fairly mundane bonus stages starring Timon and Pumbaa. It was probably my least favourite part of the game, and for that reason, it was an excellent idea to make an entire spinoff based on that premise.

Jungle Games debuted on PC in 1995, when The Lion King was still white hot and people were trying to pretend that Pocahontas never happened. Remarkably, a Super Nintendo port wouldn't follow until November '97 in North America, or March '98 in the PAL regions. By this time, we were playing masterpieces like Star Fox 64, GoldenEye and Final Fantasy VII. Who, exactly, was going back to their Super Nintendo to engage in some mediocre minigames?

Well, besides me, that is.

I acquired this title during a visit to Canada in 1998. The justification, of course, was that I had a North American Super Nintendo, and acquiring compatible software for it in Australia was a tricky bit of business, especially so long after the new console generation had begun. I mostly bought it for the bug dropping Puyo Puyo clone that I had seen on the PC.

You know. The one game that didn't make it to the SNES version. ...It's not funny, Ed.

The remaining attractions on offer are pinball, a Frogger imposter, a gaseous shooter and a slingshoteous shooter. On PC, each game would be preceded by a charming introduction from Timon and Pumbaa, where they would explain the rules, trade banter, and discuss the downfall of the textiles industry in southeast Asia. Reading between the lines a little on that last one there.

On SNES, you receive none of this. You choose a game, and it's like, "fucking figure it out, you asshole." If you didn't read the instruction manual, you were left to fend for yourself, though in fairness, none of the games were complex enough to necessitate thorough coaching.

Incidentally, according to the manual, Timon and Pumbaa built the jungle arcade themselves, which makes you wonder why they never held a steady job. I mean, clearly they are artisan craftsmen, and the only ones in all of the savanna capable of constructing elaborate structures. Frankly, I'm sick of them mooching off my tax dollars.

To investigate them further is paramount to sin, but I shall do so regardless, in the interest of thorough investigative journalism (read: padding).

Jungle Pinball doesn't particularly stretch the imagination. You hit the ball into animals who have willingly offered up their faces to be bludgeoned. There's a hippo that sticks his ass out with a target on it, indicating that he really wants you to send it right on up there. What did you do with your weekend? I put my balls in a hippo's ass, of course.

Sling Shooter is probably the low point, as you aim your reticle around the screen, attempting to fire grapes at passersby. It's just not something the SNES controller was built for, and tragically, there's a crocodile who bursts into tears whenever you shoot him. It's so mean spirited, and I can't help but wonder why he keeps coming back up. Does he feel like he deserves this punishment? Are you aiding the poor creature's flagellation? Why does he hurt so, so bad?

Once you've moved onto Hippo Hop, it begins to dawn on you that you have experienced half of this fucking game in the span of about seven minutes. Sure hope you didn't break the bank on your purchase. Timon attempts to collect bugs as he crosses a river, climbing atop the advertised hippos, as well as turtles, logs and rocks that apparently weren't important enough to mention. For some reason, the bugs are doing a sexy pose.

Finally, there is the cleverly titled Burper, in which Timon shakes a tree, causing various items to tumble towards you, as Pumbaa. You can either take them out by burping at them, or whack them with your tail if they survive the fall. I can't work out why exactly Timon and Pumbaa are engaging in such shenanigans. It's not like they're eating the bugs here, and judging by the amount of monkeys that end up careening to the ground, you're actually being very disruptive, and incredibly dangerous. It's almost as if they panicked when they couldn't come up with more games, so they just said 'fuck it, let's shake this tree and burp at people'.

Funnily enough, I believe that's also Donald Trump's solution to climate change.

As it is in life, there is no victory in the Jungle Games, as you just keep going until you fail, hoping to have achieved a high score. It's a little bit sad to think that Timon will never escape that accursed river, and Pumbaa will be forever condemned to aggressively belch at his assailants.

There is a two-player mode if you can actually convince someone else to join you on this joyless endeavour, but seeing as all of the experiences are for one person at a time, it's not much more impressive than simply handing the controller between each other. Had they actually included Bug Drop, the multiplayer feature would have been much more justified, and indeed, the package as a whole would have become quite tolerable.

Instead of an uninspired Puyo Puyo facsimile and some other junk, we only end up with the junk. If this is the kind of shit that Timon and Pumbaa are into, it's no wonder Simba went back to the Pride Lands. Well, that, and he was chasing some ass. We can all appreciate that.

Overall, Timon and Pumbaa's Jungle Games will exit my life with as little fanfare as it had entered. This kind of tosh may have rolled on PC in the mid-'90s, but when you hastily scrap together an inferior port years later, you end up with little more than a collection of Jungle Lames that even the most tolerant cub would turn his nose up at.

#0019: WWF SmackDown! Just Bring It

Partly because my overview of top 20 favourite games has reminded me that certain games are poor and need not be in my collection, and partly because selling Madden scored me a cool four-dollar profit, I press on with another gaming sacrifice.

This time, it’s with one of my earliest PS2 games, my third ever if I recall correctly. Upon purchasing it, I thought it was all sorts of splendid and invested lots of time in it. Just one year later, when I picked up its sequel, I was finally able to see just how abysmal it truly was. It was like unmasking the Phantom of the Opera. What once seemed beautiful had now had its scars revealed. Just with less Andrew Lloyd Webber, and more Perry Saturn.

Ladies and gentlemen, now entering the ring… WWF SmackDown! Just Bring It.


Sometime in the late 90s, I became a fan of World Championship Wrestling. I recall with glee my weekly viewing of Monday Nitro, taking in the action of Hollywood Hulk Hogan, Sting, and my bishi Lance Storm. Grand times for all involved; thinking it all to be real, trying to understand the sanity behind a fifteen minute David Flair promo, and listening to a hip hop song by Konnan after each presentation. Battle followed by boogie.

Perhaps it was a series of poor creative choices, or perhaps it was because I just didn’t love it enough, but in 2001, after thirteen years of man-slammin’ mayhem, WCW ceased.

Immediately, my world became deprived of sweaty men hitting each other with foreign objects. It was a tragic event, but fortunately for me, the brand hadn’t folded outright, but rather, had been purchased by the rival World Wrestling Federation. I had been trying without much success to get into the WWF to get my fill of the rasslin, but when I spotted Storm strutting around the mat, I instantly was re-hooked into wrestling. Rear hook suplexed.

So my fandom of WWF was still fairly young when Just Bring It hit the shelves, the third in the SmackDown! series, and the first for the PlayStation 2. I had only owned one other wrestling game prior to this, No Mercy on the N64, so understandably the leap in technology from one generation to the next had me thinking I was looking at something fantastic.

Funnily enough, my dad had seen me playing Dead Or Alive 2 prior to this, and when he saw the blurry pixelated tattoo on the jagged model of the Big Show for the first time, he asked me plainly, ‘are you sure these graphics are okay?’

Indeed, a valid question, papa.

When you first pop JBI into your PS2, you soon realise that it is a ravenous beast that will eat your memory card alive. It commands a whopping 4,173 KB to hold a save file. To put this in perspective, SmackDown vs. RAW, the sixth title in the series, requires only 498 KB. Sometimes I wonder what exactly JBI needed all that extra space for. It’s probably not accurate to assume it must all be for Steve Blackman. It could be, though. He was a powerful man, you see.


The next thing you will learn is that the graphics are atrocious, especially if you’re like me and have your daddy nearby to point this out for you. The character models have low polygon counts and animate like stop motion figures. You’ll likely feel especially cheated if you gained high expectations after watching the opening sequence, which features graphical quality you will never see again, as long as you live.

Kurt Angle doesn’t look much like his real-life counterpart, Kane’s hair animates like a broom, and my created wrestler has a head shaped like a sausage.


The third and final thing you shall discover before turning the PS2 off and crying yourself to sleep is that this game has some of the worst commentary you have heard since Mattel introduced the Intellivoice in 1982.

Tazz and the ever-irritating Michael Cole bring you commentary that ranges from disjointed to downright bizarre. An example of the script will yield such gems…

Cole: Welcome to Raw is War!
Tazz: I’ll be announcing tonight’s event.
Cole: We can’t miss… Raw tonight!
Tazz: That’s dumb.
Cole: Michael Cole and Tazz at ringside.
Tazz: How can you miss that?
Cole: They’re colliding in the ring!
Tazz: Just look!

Those might seem okay on their own, but in actuality that is a segment taken from the opening twenty seconds of a match. Tazz sounds like a cranky toddler. But sitting next to Michael Cole would make me cranky, too. My primary regret throughout the SmackDown! games was never being given the chance to put him through a table.

JBI offers a multitude of match types and a bizarre story mode that involves running around the backstage area looking for friends to team up with and competing for titles you don’t want, followed by curiously worded arguments that border on playful. Actually, it sounds a bit like the premise to a My Little Pony cartoon when you think of it out of context.

As a standalone title, JBI might have been okay. After all, I was big on it at the time, but the fact of the matter is that just one iteration later, everything was improved astronomically. The increase in quality would only ever be in minor increments after that, so the big gaping hole that lies between JBI and #4, Shut Your Mouth, makes the former look like a big silly pink elephant in comparison.

The main thing you must learn is when to press the square button. Once you’ve seen the animations and read the AI enough, you will be able to counter any move at all with the mighty square button. Grapples, strikes, flying leg lariats, the whole gamut. That square button holds such raw power it might be president someday, so better get chummy with it now.

Successfully spamming the counter button is fun. What’s also fun is discovering how far you can progress in the menu after ejecting the disc.

Apparently, the game offered me an opportunity to meet a WWF superstar backstage at a live WWF event in the USA. I never took them up on this chance, though I’m tempted to give it a try now. Even though a live WWF event these days would limit me only to shows about panda preservation and discussions about your favourite type of shrub. …For this is what I assume occurs in the workings of the World Wildlife Fund. It’s no more ignorant an assumption than a KB-hungry Steve Blackman, really.

And if that didn’t confuse you, perhaps this will…

Mind fucked.