#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.