Abstract
By 1994 The Walt Disney Company had been producing children’s video games for 13 years. Since the release of its first video game, Mickey Mouse, for Nintendo’s Game and Watch handheld game systems in 1981, the company had licensed its characters and established development and publishing alliances with leading interactive gaming companies, first with Nintendo Entertainment Systems (NES) and then with Sega, Capcom, Square Enix, Sierra On-Line and others. Disney characters featured in platform games, puzzle games, and racing games, among others. Mickey and friends ran, jumped, juggled, collected, raced, got into scraps, danced and taught kids their ABCs and numbers across multiple platforms.
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- 1.
Mickey Mouse ’s first game appearance was on Nintendo’s Game and Watch, a handheld system made between 1980 and 1981. It was released October 9, 1981, featured a single game, and had a clock and an alarm. Mickey’s handheld excursion finds him trying to collect eggs from a hen house as they roll down chutes. Mickey normally receives one full miss for every egg he drops, but if Minnie is present in the top left corner of the screen, he only gets a half miss. The game ends when Mickey has three full misses. There is an A and a B game. In Game A, the eggs fall from three chutes. Which three? It’s random and changes after each miss. In Game B, the eggs fall from all four chutes, adding more of a challenge. Nintendo’s Game and Watch : http://www.sydlexia.com/who_watches_the_watchmen.htm; http://forums.dashhacks.com/f120/some-old-games-from-nintendo-game-watch-t261823/.
- 2.
The 1984 Winnie the Pooh adventure game used both text and graphics to engage children in the search for lost objects. Photo of the 1984 Winnie the Pooh adventure game: http://www.dosgamesonline.com/index/game/576/Winnie_the_Pooh_in_the_Hundred_Acre_Wood.html.
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The Black Cauldron graphics were advanced in comparison to games such as the Dark Crystal. Photos of The Black Cauldron : http://www.mobygames.com/game/black-cauldron/screenshots Photos of The Dark Crystal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Crystal_(video_game).
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Grandma and Lil Critter leave the house and walk down the road to catch the bus. As they stand there waiting for it, children can “make things happen” by clicking on different objects. Screenshots of Just Grandma and Me : http://www.mobygames.com/game/just-grandma-and-me/screenshots.
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The Lion King was the first of the Disney movies made into an Animated Storybook with a companion Activity Center CD-ROM . Photos of Disney’s Animated Storybook: The Lion King and Activity Center: http://www.smartkidssoftware.com/cddsn1.htm; http://www.smartkidssoftware.com/cddsn1b.htm.
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Disney movies now had a new avenue for their stories, one that gave children the opportunity to participate in the action. Photos of Disney’s Animated Storybook: Winnie the Pooh and Activity Center: http://www.allgame.com/game.php?id=23426&tab=screen
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© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
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Lee, N., Madej, K. (2012). Animated Storybooks and Activity Centers. In: Disney Stories. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2101-6_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2101-6_10
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Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
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Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-2101-6
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