How to Get Disney's Simba's Pride GameBreak Working on Modern Windows
It's no secret that games based on films are often terrible. But Disney have actually released some classic games over the years, such as Hercules, Aladdin, and The Lion King.
Simba's Pride GameBreak is a little-known addition to this list of gems. Believe it or not, I first discovered it when the "Cub Chase" minigame was distributed inside cereal boxes - a sales technique that clearly worked, as I ended up buying the whole cereal range to collect all the CDs!
Sadly, though, Simba's Pride's GameBreak doesn't work on modern version of Windows. At least, not without a little tinkering. Trying to install it using the CD results in the message:
Simba's Pride GameBreak requires the Windows 95 operating system. Click 'OK' to exit the installation process.
UPDATE!
There is an ISO image here which should work without any issues.
An alternative ISO is available here , courtesy of Saptadeep.
If you don't know, an ISO image is basically a virtual CD. Windows 8 and above should be able to run it out of the box.
What a rollercoaster this has been!
I have had so many people contact me about this game, and together we have undergone much discussion and experimentation. Finally, a fan by the name of Saptadeep realised that the ISO image floating around on the web was corrupt, and another fan by the name of Jen actually tracked down a physical copy and uploaded a fixed disc image.
Fingers crossed this works for everyone, but if you have any trouble then please .
In case it helps anyone, all my archived findings are available by clicking here:
Show Archived
The Fix
This has been tested with Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, but it should work with other versions of Windows.
Create a folder on your hard drive where the game will be installed. This guide assumes the game will be installed to C:\GameBreak.
Copy the files (the files themselves, not the whole folder) from the WIN95 folder on the CD to the folder you just created. You should have the following files:
Download whichever of the following registry files is appropriate for your computer (Right-click -> Save As):
These registry entries were found by installing the game on a Windows 98 emulator. Note that 32-bit applications expect their registry entries to be under the Wow6432Node on 64-bit Windows.
To install these registry entries on older versions of Windows (e.g. Windows 98), change the first line from Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 to REGEDIT4. Thanks to Jen for this tip!
Edit this file and change all references to C:\\GameBreak to the folder where you installed the game, using double slashes to separate folders (e.g. C:\\Games\\GameBreak if you installed to C:\Games\GameBreak).
Also change all references to E: to the letter matching your CD drive (e.g. D: or G:).
Double-click on the registry file to add the information to the registry.
Voila! You should now be able to play the game!
Still having trouble?
Regional Differences
Depending on the region of your game, your executable may have a different name, e.g. "SPAG.exe" instead of "SPAGUK.exe". The registry file will need to be changed to reflect this.
If the game still doesn't work, try running the executable from the CD itself, in the "Win95" folder.
Thanks to McGloomy for this information!
Compatibility Mode
From Iza :
I finally managed it! The game is working properly :D I found in the Internet that when you click the right button on SPAGUK there is an option of compatibility and there you can choose an option to open it in the mode which complies with Windows 95. And that's it. :) But then some of the games didn't work so I deleted the copy of the folder WIN 95 and installed the game from CD. I matched this option on other applications, for e.g. the Launcher. And everything is working. :)
Missing File Paths
From Timmy :
I ended up using your guide, but it didn't work for me as expected. I could start the EXE, but the second I tried to start a "mini game", it crashed and showed a popup with an error message about a file not being found. I ended up using the (free) program Process Monitor to see which file the game was trying to access. I forgot to write down exactly which file it was, but it turned out that for some reason one folder was skipped in the request's path.
For example the game seems to require the /Scenes/Paddle/* files to exist, but when it's time to actually use them, it leaves /Scenes/ out and instead requests /Paddle/* . Assuming that you haven't forgotten anything in your guide, this seems to be a difference in behavior between Windows 7 and Windows 10.
In addition to your guide, I also copied the following folders to the hard drive:
CD\Demos --> GameFolder\Demos
CD\Scenes --> GameFolder\Scenes
CD\WIN95\RMScenes\Paddle --> GameFolder\Paddle
CD\WIN95\RMScenes\Swamp --> GameFolder\Swamp
And here's what I have in the registry:
SPAG/Paths
CD: (GameFolder)\Scenes\
Global: (GameFolder)\Scenes\Global\
Local: (GameFolder)\
LocalCD: (GameFolder)\Scenes\
(Ed: This may be missing a few paths, e.g. "typingdemo".)
Note that I edited entries so that everything would be read from the game folder and so that no CD needs to be inserted (or no image mounted).
I can also confirm that the folder inside the registry can indeed be called "SPAG".
Corrupt CD Image
From Saptadeep :
After searching around at archive.org for a few more CD images, I got two of them, but they had the same image. I quickly realised that one of them had the executable corrupted and so every copy on the internet is having the same issue. As a result I downloaded the Demo of the game which was included in the Lion King 2 Active Play Disk, it had an executable SPAGDemo.exe and it surprisingly works and has the icon. The Demo even starts without any problem, and some registry problems after launching the Demo can be fixed by setting the compatibility to Windows 95.
I checked the bytes of both the game executables but they were completely the same, but for some reasons the demo executable doesn't work with the main game, it will work only if the Active Play disk is inserted to which it will run the demo levels.
At the end of the day, it was all a faulty executable that doesn't allow me to run the game. And as I mentioned earlier, if the game crashes after starting, complaining about an invalid registry, the Windows 95 compatibility should make the game work.
Other than that, if the game crashes without any error then it might be a DirectX error which may be fixed by DDrawCompat or dgVoodoo, however the existence of this problem is still unknown.
Published 17/09/2014
Last updated 30/10/2021
