Disney's The Lion King Animated StoryBook (1994) Playthrough【Longplays Land】
23Disney's Animated StoryBook was a series of point-and-click video games released by Disney Interactive for the PC and Mac. The games included both Disney and Pixar licenses. They were generally created on very tight budgets and had tight schedules. For example, Disney's Animated StoryBook: The Lion King was released "an astonishingly short six months after the movie's release, just prior to Christmas". They have the same plots as their respective movies, albeit abridged due to the limited medium.
The Lion King was the very first film to be given as "interactive story life". Mare Teren, VP of entertainment for Disney Interactive said the games would be animated by Disney animators. He said on games like Disney's Animated StoryBook: The Lion King, his team "worked hand in hand with the group in feature animation", and added that the film's directors and producers worked with the games' designers and artists. In the early days of Disney Interactive, the StoryBook games were originally outsourced to third-party developers.
By 18 Feb 1995, Disney's Animated StoryBook: The Lion King (released in November 1994) had sold over 200,000 copies. Disney Stories: Getting to Digital notes that it wasn't until this title that "Disney achieved its stunning visual quality in an interactive digital story on par with that in the animated films".
While the majority of the storybooks were in a traditional animation style, the Toy Story had similar CGI graphics to the movie. It consisted of a 15-page electronic book. Its advertising campaign said: "with hundreds of clickable gags and five mind-challenging interactive games, your eyes won't believe what your hands are doing".
There are a series of icons that the mouse turns into when it runs over objects, depending on how one can interact with them - for example if there is a minigame, or if it just does a little animation. The method of going from page to page is often very creative and unique to the storybook, for example in the 101 Dalmatians one where there are a series of inked feet leading to the exit (a reference to when the dogs roll in soot to evade Cruella De Vil).