Ariel's Story Studio

''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 animations and Pixar films that were released throughout the 1990s. They were published by Disney Interactive for personal computers (Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh) for children ages four to eight years old. Starting from 1994, most of the entries in the series were developed by Media Station. They have the same plots as their respective films, though abridged due to the limited medium.

Titles

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 Mega Drive 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, 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