Disney's Animated Storybook (stylized as Disney's Animated StoryBook, and also known as Disney's Story Studio) is a point-and-click adventure interactive storybook video game series based on Walt Disney Feature Animation and Pixar films that were released during the mid-to-late 1990s. They were published by Disney Interactive for personal computers (Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh) for children ages four to eight years old. Most of the entries in the series were developed by Media Station. The games take players through abridged and narrated retellings of their respective Disney films, allowing the player to click on hotspots to trigger animations or sound effects. Some of the games feature voice talent from the films reprising their roles.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Disney outsourced video game development via its Walt Disney Computer Software division. The Disney's Animated Storybook series was conceived following the success of Disney's 1994 animated film The Lion King, with Disney entering the edutainment software industry around that time. Development of Disney's Animated Storybook: The Lion King, one of Disney Software's first CD-based computer titles, was handled by Media Station, which only had five months to complete the title. The rush to meet a Christmas 1994 release resulted in a lack of testing, leading to widespread technical issues on consumer hardware and heavy customer complaints.
Following the commercial success of Disney's Animated Storybook: The Lion King, Disney Interactive was formed as an in-house game development studio that would handle the animation, design, and marketing of subsequent entries while Media Station handled the programming and development. The games were generally developed on tight budgets and schedules and alongside the films to ensure authenticity and efficiency. The games were heavily promoted and commercially successful, particularly The Lion King and Toy Story, which were the top selling children's titles in their respective years. Reviewers praised the games' animation, fidelity to the films, and appeal to young children, though later titles were criticized for their repetitiveness and simplicity.
Titles Title Developer(s) Release date Based on Disney's Animated Storybook: The Lion King Disney Software (in association with Media Station) November 18, 1994 The Lion King (1994) Disney's Animated Storybook: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey TreeDisney Interactive (in association with Media Station) August 28, 1995 Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966) Disney's Animated Storybook: PocahontasDisney Interactive (in association with Animation Services at Walt Disney Feature Animation and Media Station) December 1, 1995 Pocahontas (1995) Disney's Animated Storybook: Toy Story Disney Interactive and Pixar April 24, 1996 Toy Story (1995) Disney's Animated Storybook: The Hunchback of Notre Dame Disney Interactive (in association with Media Station with special thanks to Animation Services at Walt Disney Feature Animation) November 11, 1996 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) Disney's Animated Storybook: 101 DalmatiansDisney Interactive (in association with Media Station) March 18, 1997 One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) Disney's Animated Storybook: HerculesDisney Interactive (in association with Media Station with special thanks to Animation Services at Walt Disney Feature Animation) July 25, 1997 Hercules (1997) Ariel's Story Studio (a.k.a. Disney's Animated Storybook: The Little Mermaid)Disney Interactive (in association with Media Station) November 25, 1997 The Little Mermaid (1989) Disney's Animated Storybook: Mulan(a.k.a. Disney's Story Studio: Mulan)Disney Interactive (in association with September 14, 1998 (PC)November 1999 (PlayStation) Mulan (1998) Disney's Animated Storybook: Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too Disney Interactive (in association with Creative Capers Entertainment) April 30, 1999 Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974)
Development Background and Walt Disney Computer Software (1988–1994) Video games based on the Walt Disney Company's properties have been released since Mickey Mouse for Nintendo's Game & Watch in 1981. Disney licensed out its properties and established partnerships with developers and publishers such as Nintendo, Sega, Capcom, Square, and Sierra, who used the characters in games. The earliest of these resembled arcade-style "cause and effect" games that featured Disney characters. Later, licensors began to create more sophisticated adventure games that comprised different environments, interaction with characters, unlocking secrets, and overcoming obstacles. Instead of creating new narratives, the developers of these games based them on stories presented in other media; early examples include Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood (1985) and The Black Cauldron (1986). In the latter, designer Al Lowe had access to Disney's original musical score, hand-painted backgrounds, and animation cels, which allowed for more advanced graphics when compared to previous games. In 1988, Walt Disney Computer Software (WDCS), Disney's in-house game development studio, was founded so Disney could enter the software market. Because Disney did not want to handle the menial programming and expensive publishing of games on its own and instead wanted to collect profits from developers, WDSC only licensed properties to external developers. As such, it was placed in the company's Consumer Products arm for licensing agreements.
Over the next few years, Disney built a routine of releasing tie-in games shortly after film releases. They later became more involved in the development process; for example, for the Sega Genesis version of Aladdin (1993), Disney animators worked with the game designers. Roy Disney was unhappy with the quality of a third-party Fantasia game he was overseeing and shut down production; the greater involvement from Disney's feature animation team led to the games being better received by critics and the public. In 1991, low sales figures coupled with developers charging license fees and Disney shutting down low-quality games during development meant the company was to be turned into a joint partnership with outside software houses. In 1993, Disney chairman Michael Eisner publicly "defied interactive hype by portraying the company as low-tech". Disney executives discussed if they should "shift all game development in-house while tripling the number of people working in the division", or "in six weeks cut the whole team", but a final decision was reserved until 1994.
Throughout the 1990s, popular children's stories in print were adapted into digital storybooks that encouraged interactive learning and play on the computer. Broderbund's Living Books series was perhaps the first example, or at least popularized the animated storybook format through games like Just Grandma and Me, and Arthur's Teacher Trouble, which were based on popular children's books from the 1980s by Mercer Mayer and Marc Brown, respectively. They combined the authors' illustrations and stories with digital activities and were guided by a narrator—each screen began with a brief animation followed by a narrator describing the action. After the conclusion of each page, the scene became an "interactive mural with hot buttons" the player could click. The Living Books became popular and encouraged other developers to follow suit and copy the formula. Disney Interactive was one of several interactive divisions of film studios sprouting at the time, including Universal Interactive Studios, Turner Interactive, Fox Interactive, Sony Imagesoft, and Imagination Pilots (MGM).
Series conception (June 1994) Disney's 1994 animated film The Lion King won multiple awards and garnered financial success. Its merchandise sold well through the Disney Store and Disney's mail order catalog, and their product licensees had an increase in sales. The company began to cross-market the property throughout its Walt Disney Attractions, Buena Vista Television, Buena Vista Home Video, Walt Disney Records, and Disney Theatrical Productions divisions. Disney wanted to "add to the Lion King synergy of book, products, video, theme park units and recording sales" by making an animated storybook available by the 1994 Christmas shopping season. A new product line was announced on June 24, 1994, while The Lion King was being privately screened. The announcement included Disney Software's first two CD-ROM based computer games: The Lion King Animated Storybook and Aladdin Activity Center, the latter of which focused on games and learning activities rather than stories. Disney chose Media Station as its third-party developer for the game; due to the announcement, Media Station only had five months of development time. The Lion King Animated Storybook more closely followed the narrative and art style of the film it was based on than Aladdin Activity Center, released November 1994, did to Aladdin. For The Lion King Animated Storybook, the written text of the game is excerpted from Disney Publishing Group's The Lion King storybook, which reproduces the film's narrative in a truncated version. Disney spent over $3 million on promotion for the animated storybook game, and released the first version of The Lion King Animated Storybook on November 18, 1994, and its success prompted the company to turn WDCS into a full game developer, renamed Disney Interactive, with a line of animated storybooks to follow entitled Disney's Animated Storybook. The Lion King Animated Storybook was later accompanied by a CD-ROM, The Lion King Activity Center, in 1995, which started a trend that continued throughout the series. Pixar developed both Toy Story Animated Storybook and Toy Story Activity Center simultaneously in 1996, while the Winnie the Pooh in the Honey Tree Animated Storybook would be met with a companion, Winnie the Pooh Activity Center, in 2000. The Lion King Animated Storybook became Disney Interactive's second release on the Macintosh after the Aladdin Activity Center.
Media Station employee Newton Lee became one of the lead software and title engineers for The Lion King Animated Storybook. As he recalled in the book Disney Stories: Getting to Digital, "Media Station used a number of 'proprietary strategic software technologies' that made it easier for the developer to create large animation multimedia and the user to play it back, impossible until that time". A playback engine was created to provide high quality playback from a CD-ROM of large animations. WinToon, which Media Station previously developed for Microsoft, aided the projects by "reduc[ing] the amount of data actually required for larger animation playback". The software improved performance of playback in Windows by reducing the amount of data that was required", arguing that it was necessary because "unlike other interactive storybook developers who used a palette of 256 colors throughout the entire title, Media Station used 256 colors per screen; this resulted in very large animation files". In 1994, Lee created an object-oriented scripting language similar to Macromedia's ActionScript that allowed developers to create interactivity for animation quickly and easily, and a cross-platform multimedia compiler to allow the software to run on both Mac and Windows. Media Station also used a cross-platform language, Interactive Media File Script, Title Compiler, and Asset Management Systems, which allowed production for a Disney's Animated Storybook game to be between three and six months.
Release of The Lion King storybook (November 1994)