Lion (Game & Watch)

For most Game & Watch games, you can count on Game B to be the mode worth playing. Game A has its purpose, it’s often a simpler version of the game with less dangers so you can learn the game or younger players can still earn decent scores. Game B is where the true challenge often lies, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with the Game & Watch title Lion. Rather than properly escalating the danger for a more exciting experience, Lion actually ends up exacerbating its fundamental issues instead.

 

Lion’s simple point-focused gameplay is about trying to keep the King of the Jungle contained in a set of three stacked cages. Despite seeming to take place out in the wild with its trees, grass, and an additional seemingly friendly lion who rings a bell and will only appear if you set an alarm on your system, the manual calls the two characters you play as “zoo keepers” rather than something like lion tamers. Whether this is an effort to acquire some new big cats for the zoo or to contain them in a habitat that is a very convincing facsimile of the wild, you’ll be controlling a pair of men who are armed with nothing but chairs to keep the lions at bay. With there being no true ending to this score chaser, the game will conclude when you’ve failed three times, although letting a big cat loose at least leads to them chasing a keeper up a tree rather than something more violent.

Game A features two lions who can move freely between the three stacked cages, the player needing to move their left and right zoo keeper up and down with the associated buttons. The lions will periodically shift which cage exit they’re nearest, and when they’re ready to make a break for freedom, you’ll notice them change appearance a bit as they head towards the open cage door. So long as a zoo keeper is waiting there with his chair, you’ll repel the lion backwards automatically and earn a point for doing so. However, these big cats aren’t always straightforward, sometimes faking you out as they’ll head to towards the exit only to pull back, potentially baiting your zoo keeper on that side into moving into a sub-optimal position. While there are only two lions in the big cage in Game A, they can move quickly and more importantly can appear on the same side of the cage. You can’t have your keepers cross the cage, stuck just moving up and down to block exits, so if two lions are both seemingly making a break for it on the same side of the cage, you need to watch more closely than usual so one doesn’t trick you into letting the other escape.

 

You will likely come to learn quickly when it’s wise to actually move to block a lion though, Lion playing fair in that you will have time to move up or down a layer or two by the point it is possible to tell if the beast in the cage really is considering an escape or just trying to trick you. Unfortunately, the fact the lions will always have a point where you can tell if they’re truly making an attempt also means it’s not too hard to be in position in time, meaning Lion can boil down to a constant waiting game where things only get interesting for a bit when two lions are on the same side of the cage. It’s not a particularly riveting score chase as a result, the pressure not strong enough to keep you invested, but surprisingly, Game A’s speed and level of danger actually ends up being greater than Game B despite a change that would seemingly make that mode tougher.

Game B puts three lions in the cage, meaning you now have more predators to track unless you want to end up prey. Lions can still only attempt an authentic escape one at a time and will do fake outs to try and trip you up into guarding the wrong entrance, but the game seemed to have very little faith in the player’s ability to manage what amounts to six spots to block once three big cats are involved. Game B is unusually slow compared to Game A, mostly because the lions are made far less aggressive. They’ll more frequently make fake out attempts but generally make fewer bolts towards the exits. Three lions won’t ever appear on the same side of the cage either, meaning it’s not really much harder to manage. You can just leave your zoo keeper on the side with one lion blocking it easily enough while watching for the two on the other as if this was just a somewhat common situation in Game A. What this amounts to is technically one more lion to watch but not only fewer instances where you’ll likely slip up and fail, but far fewer chances to score. You can get more than double the points in a minute in Game A than you can in Game B because of how sluggish and timid the Game B lion trio are, the high score in Game B harder earned not because of higher difficulty but because it takes so long to earn points in general.

 

If you do manage to earn 200 or 500 points, you will have any misses associated with letting lions out of the cage wiped away, although this very much feels like a benchmark you’ll not hit because interest will be lost well before then. Also, technically, thanks to the system’s positioning of the buttons for the two zoo keepers, you could do something similar to the Mario Bros. Game & Watch and make the game a bit worse by making this into a two-player experience where managing the lions would be even easier. Game A at least has the occasional speed to make Lion a Game & Watch game with a bit of bite, but generally, its simplistic design does not keep you active enough to make it worth seeking a high score in.

THE VERDICT: Lion on Game & Watch seems to misunderstand its own difficulty. Much of the time, the action is just too easily managed, the danger only arising should two lions be on the same side of the tall cage. The faking out is good for tricking you into being in the wrong spot on Game A, but in Game B the lions are so afraid to try and escape that your chances to earn points or even fail feel like they come far too slowly. Neither mode ends up really holding your attention as a result, the higher speed of Game A at least more likely to lead to occasional slip-ups and a more meaningful high score, but generally Lion is a snooze fest because it never gets up to the kind of dangerous speeds that would make it a worthy challenge.

 

And so, I give Lion for Game & Watch…

A TERRIBLE rating. Lion’s low energy in Game B really killed it. Game A ends up being the less easy mode simply because the lions can actually muster up the energy for frequent escape attempts, but in Game B, sometimes you will leave your zoo keepers sitting in place for seconds at a time waiting for some kind of meaningful movement from the three big cats. The lions faking you out to move you out of position was probably just a flawed idea from the start. Many other Game & Watch games like Fire or Chef don’t need to have what you’re juggling sometimes only pretend to move. Keep the lions fast and aggressive and then the game would let you rack up points quickly while still needing to respond in time to be in the right spot. The lions could even afford to move faster to accommodate the potentially watchful eye you’ll develop, but it would at least let Game B start to feel like a tense scramble to keep the lions contained rather than a sedate waiting game. The fake outs were probably an attempt to be a bit more clever or add something less basic to the design but the difficulty seems to have been reduced to account for them, Game A only barely able to keep this Game & Watch’s head above water because you have to sit up a bit and pay attention when the lions are on the same side of the cage.

 

Lion’s fundamentals would still probably lead to an okay game at best if the lions are made more aggressive, blocking the six cage exits still a matter of sitting the zoo keepers in the right spot and earning points in a manner determined more by the game’s actions than your own. A zoo keeper or lion tamer Game & Watch could have been a lot more tense or electric if the lions actually lived up to their fearsome reputation, but instead, the King of the Jungle can feel like a bit of a wimp in this slow and monotonous chore of a title.