Animated Storybooks and Activity Centers

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.