The Lion King and Aladdin video game remasters coming this autumn

The Lion King's graphics were by real Disney animators (pic: GameXplain) — The Lion King’s graphics were by real Disney animators (pic: GameXplain)

The SNES and Mega Drive versions of Disney’s Aladdin and The Lion King are being remade for modern consoles, according to a leak.

In recent decades Disney has shown increasingly little interest in video games, only begrudgingly allowing Marvel to start making new titles and simply selling off the licence for Star Wars to EA. But things used to be different.

Back in the 90s they licensed video game versions of almost all their cartoons and movies, many of which were made by Japanese developers such as Capcom and ended up as minor classics.

The Lion King and Aladdin games came towards the end of that period but were extremely popular on the Mega Drive and SNES, and now they’re coming back.

Nothing official has been announced but according to leaks from the annual GameStop Managers Show (where there was also a new The Last Of Us Part II demo) the two games are coming out this autumn as a double pack.

The leaked image above is the only proof so far but apparently they’ll be available to pre-order (at GameStop at least) from today on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch.

Both GameXplain and Gematsu have corroborated the information, adding that the games will be available to play in their original form and a remastered 1080p resolution.

You’ll also get the original soundtracks and a new fast-forward and rewind feature to help with the games’ legendary difficult – which sounds similar to the help system Nintendo adds to its older re-releases.

What isn’t clear though is which versions of the games it will be, as the SNES and Mega Drive versions of Aladdin were quite different, with the former being developed by Capcom and the latter by Virgin Games.

Hopefully they’ll include both, with bonus points if they also add the NES version of The Lion King – which was the last official NES game to ever be released in Europe.