Alright, Disney. You got one over on me this time. You had me snowed over with The Disney Afternoon collection to a point where I bought the new Disney Classic Games collection without thinking, and I am now $30 more disappointed than before as a result. Next time you try this I’m not going to be so quick to purchase. Because as the say goes, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

So as you can now guess that’s today’s review: The Disney Classic Games Collection. It’s a mix of sour and sweet, but mostly sour. And not in a fun way like sour warheads or my beloved sour patch kids. Like the sour that comes from curdled milk or that time my friends put apple cider vinegar in my apple cider. Good one, guys!

But before one spikes a game into oblivion, it needs to be set up to get hit so let’s get started. This is basically a “collection” and I use that term loosely, of different versions of Disney’s Aladdin and The Lion King games released in the early to mid 90’s. You have the option to mess with settings like a level select, make yourself invulnerable, even watch the game play itself, which is convenient because these games are hard. I’m not going to review the content of the games themselves very much because I don’t think that’s fair as they’re over 20 years old and game design was a different animal with its own set of challenges back then.

Check the Gameboy Color version of Aladdin…the colors are green, blue and pink, and they made Genie pink. GENIE’S COLOR IS INCLUDED IN GAME’S PALETTE, AND THEY MADE HIM PINK.

The games also have the obligatory Rewind Button that’s included with so many retro collections now. Miss a jump in that Ostrich level in Lion King? Rewind. Trial and error death while escaping the Cave of Wonders? Rewind. Taking your rage from playing these games out on your loved ones and breaking your controller? Rewind. (Well, actually no rewinds on that one. You’ll be living that one down for awhile. But welcome to the club. The Broken Controller Club. See what I did there?)

The different versions consist of the original Genesis versions of each respective game, SNES version of Lion King, a japanese version, a “Final Cut” version of Aladdin – but not Lion King for some reason – that has various camera and bug fixes, and the gameboy versions of the games and that’s it. After doing some searching online I’m apparently in the minority who preferred the SNES version of Aladdin over the Genesis version, so it’s of little relevance that I’m disappointed that it didn’t make it into this collection. Oddly enough, Lion King’s SNES version made it. Even weirder is that the gameboy games still made it. Though after playing those, I can definitely say they’re not helping the collection and might as well have stayed in the ether. Check the Gameboy Color version of Aladdin…the colors are green, blue and pink, and they made Genie pink. GENIE’S COLOR IS INCLUDED IN GAME’S PALETTE, AND THEY MADE HIM PINK.

One thing I really dug, and this’ll be no surprise to anybody who watched my Dragon’s Lair review, is that they included some featurettes of interviews with the developers of how the games were made. So while I thought these games had a lot of problems on gameplay levels, you can really see just how much the team at Virgin cared about bringing the movies to life on consoles. You can also really see just how terrible fashion was back in the early 90’s as that’s when some of these interviews were done. Apparently everybody at Virgin dressed like Screech from Saved By The Bell.

That’s seriously it for this collection, though. For 30 bucks I feel a little taken, which is the same feeling I get when paying to see most Disney movies now. But, that’s mostly the purpose of reviews, right? If I can help save someone some money by telling them to wait for a sale, which is what I’m doing at this moment, then I feel pretty good about that. And seriously, wait for a sale for this one because it ain’t worth full price.