Hot on the heels of the highly successful debuts of the live action Aladdin and The Lion King movies, the timing was perfect to reveal Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and The Lion King, an HD re-release collection of two of Disney’s most beloved games. The original games that launched in the 90s were extremely well-received and still a point of discussion among many games media to this day. We just couldn’t wait to be king to team up with publisher Nighthawk Interactive for this magical collection, starting off with the big reveal and sharing details that it’s coming to retail, packed with retro goodness.
If we had a genie of our own, we may have wished for the news that two of the most beloved Disney classic games were coming to modern consoles would be kept under wraps until we shared our announcement. So, when someone let the lion of the bag a day early (it wasn’t us!), we had to regroup quickly and align on plans with multiple internal teams. Since the leaked details were minimal and we wanted to prioritize pushing readers towards pre-order store pages set to go live the next morning, we held to our original release timing. We monitored all the leak coverage to identify if any major misinformation was spreading, kept our internal partners updated, and worked closely with select editors that we provided the news to early under embargo to ensure they all kept the remaining details close to the chest until the embargo lifted the next day.
Our first round of reveal coverage began to hit bright and early with The Hollywood Reporter, Polygon, IGN, Kotaku, VentureBeat and a few others getting the word out just ahead of the official announcement. And once we sent out the press release to our full contact list, the floodgates opened!
We got to reveal many more juicy details that weren’t part of the leak, including info that the collection brings multiple playable versions, revitalized for all modern platforms – Aladdin will have playable versions for Sega Genesis, Game Boy and Super Game Boy, and The Lion King with playable versions for Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo and Game Boy. To say people are excited is an understatement.
Like everyone else, we’re looking forward to this collection hitting store shelves in October; though we’re also bracing ourselves for the inundation of emails for our next big press and influencer push. Before the collection comes out and transports us all to a whole new world, check out some of our top coverage:
