Disney's Animated Storybook: Mulan

Conception

The vision of Marc Teren, VP of entertainment for Disney Interactive, was to create games with a "true and fair representation of the original property", and aim to capitalise as "ancillary products to successful theatrical and home video releases". To achieve this, Teren helped ensure the games were animated by Disney animators. From December 1994 to February 1995, the company had hired 50 new employees. Children's Business suggests the series came into fruition because in the contemporary entertainment market, it was "customary now for entertainment companies to release CD-ROMs to support a film or TV show".

Development

Disney and Media Station collaborated to create more than 12,000 frames of digital animation for each game, as well as 300 music and vocal clips. Digital music and sound effects were composed, orchestrated, arranged, edited, mixed and synchronized at Media Station. The games had hundreds of clickable hotspots that produced animated gags, as well as many mind-challenging interactive games. The voice cast sometimes consisted of actors from the films reprising their roles; meanwhile, at other times voice soundalikes were used. This game was targeted toward a young female demographic ages four to nine.

Gameplay

The animated storybook contains more gameplay than other titles within the series; players look for scrolls across locations such as Mulan's house, the army camp, Tung Shao Pass, and the Imperial City. After the player finds all five and gives them to the emperor, they are made an official Imperial Storymaker, and are then given the ability to create original scrolls; their own animated storybooks using the software.

Commercial performance

According to PC Data of Reston, Mulan Animated Storybook Disney was the top-selling home education software at 11 software retail chains, representing 47 percent of the U.S. market, for the week ending July 25.

Critical reception

The game received mixed reviews from critics.

AllGame reviewer Brad Cook gave the computer version of Mulan a rating of three stars out of five, commenting that it brought the film it was based on to life. David Bloom of Daily News said the game was "well-done", and thought the "greater strength of the program" was the inclusion of additional activities and games beyond the storybook, such as a dress-up room for Mulan to try on traditional clothing. Meanwhile,The Boston Herald thought the game was a mixture of "absurdly simple tasks" and "practically impossible ones" while finding the dialogue "repetitive" and "irritating". Joseph Szadkowski of The Washington Post's favourite part of the game was the printable and customisable calendar. Another reviewer from that newspaper wrote that the animated storybook video game was "thoughtfully designed product marred by a few miscalculations that lessen its impact."

Tara Hernandez of AllGame gave the PlayStation version a rating of 3.5 stars, praising the graphics, sound, and characters; the site noted that achieving the title of Imperial Storymaker requires both "imagination and creativity" from the player. IGN gave the game a rating of 7.7, deeming it "curious" that Disney broke away from its previous platformer formula for its console games.