History YMMV / LivingBooks

* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments: Found in the last page of ''The Tortoise and the Hare''. If you click on the Tortoise, he will congratulate the Hare before offer a handshake... and the Hare accepts the handshake and congratulates the Tortoise in his victory.

* GrowingTheBeard: The first two titles aren't quite as well remembered as the other games in the series, and most people point to ''The Tortoise and the Hare'' as the first game to show this.

* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: '''EVERYTHING.''' '''[[PunctuatedForEmphasis EVERY. SINGLE. THING. YOU. CLICK. ON.]]'''

* HeartwarmingMoments: Found in ''The Tortoise and the Hare''. If you click on the Tortoise, he will congratulate the Hare before offer a handshake... and the Hare accepts the handshake and congratulates the Tortoise in his victory.

* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: '''EVERYTHING.''' '''[[PunctuatedForEmphasis EVERY. SINGLE. THING. YOU. CLICK. ON.]]]'''

* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: '''EVERYTHING.''' '''[[PunctuatedForEmphasis EVERY. SINGLE. THING. YOU. CLICK. ON.'''

** ''Harry and the Haunted House'' and ''Ruff's Bone'' are both more well-known than the books, but this is justified since those were made to be Living Books.

** During the climax of ''Sheila Rae'', the title character lets out a few screams after taking her bravery a bit too far. Apparently the German dubbers didn't quite understand this, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJZB0OvMp98 because in that version she lets out the dullest possible sounding scream ever.]] Throw in the imagery that should look nightmarish and you get an unintentionally hilarious scene.

* FanonDiscontinuity: A fair amount of fans pretend ''D.W. The Picky Eater'' isn't a Living Book, saying the series ended with ''Arthur's Computer Adventure'' instead. Most of this results from it being outsourced to Media Station, a company previously known for producing generally cheaper quality ''Living Books'' clones and the ''VideoGame/DisneysAnimatedStorybook'' series.

* {{Narm}}: During the climax of ''Sheila Rae'', the title character lets out a few screams after taking her bravery a bit too far. Apparently the German dubbers didn't quite understand this, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJZB0OvMp98 because in that version she lets out the dullest possible sounding scream ever.]] Throw in the imagery that should look nightmarish and you get an unintentionally hilarious scene.

** Many of the ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' books are far more well known than their original iterations. In fact, some people have thought that the games were based off the show, despite being released several years beforehand.

* MostAnnoyingSound: In the helicopter minigame of ''Arthur's Computer Adventure'', you control a helicopter that can drop either water balloons or firemen on targets sitting on the ground to put out fires. The firemen put out the fires when they land, but then they cry for help until you pick them back up. ('''HEE-EELP! RESCUE ME!''') Over and over and over again. It gets worse if you drop multiple firemen as then you'll have to put up with everyone of them shrieking for help as you pick them all up. '''HEE-EELP! RESCUE ME!'''

* EarWorm:
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4GakWTYmnI The credits theme]].
** Sam-I-Am's song at the beginning of ''Literature/GreenEggsAndHam''.
** A lot of the songs in ''Sheila Rae, the Brave'' fall under this.
** "Alligators Are Unfriendly" from New Kid on the Block.

* VisualEffectsOfAwesome: Any time a camera-moving effect is done. Back in the day, this looked stunning.

* NoProblemWithLicensedGames: These were immensely popular with kids back in the day, and they were used a lot in classrooms.

** The first two games have hotspot scenes that are a lot more disturbing than later games. A glaring example is the flour sack in Arthur's Mom's kitchen: Its label is a circle, and if you click it, an arrow lands a bullseye and the flour sack stars coughing and moaning in pain, then its contents pour out ever so slowly as if it was [[BloodFromTheMouth bleeding internally]] and it falls to the ground in a puff of flour. How did this not get past the censors?

* NauseaFuel: The ice cream shop in ''Arthur's Reading Race'' has some...[[CordonBleughChef interesting ice cream flavors]] to say the least. Anybody up for some Frog Chip (which may or may not include a frog inside) or ''[[MachoistsMeal Toenail Crunch]]''? (And yes, the latter flavor is indeed depicted as having toe nails in it.)

* NauseaFuel: The ice cream shop in ''Arthur's Reading Race'' has some...[[CordonBleughChef interesting ice cream flavors]] to say the least. Anybody up for some Frog Chip (which may or may not include a frog inside) or ''[[{{Squick}} Toenail Crunch]]''? (And yes, the latter flavor is indeed depicted as having toe nails in it.)

* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs: Some of the click-points lead to some...trippy animations. And the characters rarely react to them. Possibly justified in the Dr. Seuss adaptations.

** Could also qualify as a FunnyAneurysmMoment -- in ''Sheila Rae'', on the page where she is hopelessly lost and crying, a click point triggers the trees feeling bad for their actions and attempting to cheer her up by singing [[TheSomethingSong the Ding Dong Song]]. It's supposed to be a goofy type of song that has nonsensical lyrics. Nine years pass, and a Swedish song [[NamesTheSame of the exact same name]] shows up. A ''pornographic'' one. If you are aware of what it's known for, the scene takes on a whole new OhCrap meaning full of UnfortunateImplications.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: When the games originally came out, almost nothing like them had ever been done before. A piece of software with the look and feel of a fully animated hand-drawn cartoon (rather than blocky looking sprite-based graphics) that you could actually interact with was seen as nothing more than a fantasy before these games came out. They also were one of the first very successful examples of an EdutainmentGame that found its perfect sweet spot, that is a game that really was educational without the players even realizing it. In fact, it was so successful that it was considered a KillerApp for CD-ROM drives as far as families and schools were concerned (keep in mind, CD drives were still hardly gaining a foothold back in 1992 when the first game was released; although it didn't affect CD drive sales as much as, say, ''VideoGame/Myst'' or ''VideoGame/The7thGuest'', it still says something that many parents and teachers reported buying them just for the sake of running Living Books games). Nowadays, with it establishing the "interactive storybook" subgenre and an onslaught of clones, plus plenty of other hand-drawn computer games coming out in the years down the line, it can be easy to write them off as dated and unremarkable by comparison, and in fact many contemporary players still lump them in as "just another one of those storybook games where you could click everything," neglecting to realize they essentially grandfathered the concept.

** In the same game (within a game), your character has a limited amount of air. Letting it run out causes [[FridgeHorror your character to float away off the top of the screen]] as a rather [[HellIsThatNoise horrifying]] ScareChord plays. (Bonus points if it was in the above-mentioned area.) Expect discussions about ''Arthur's Computer Adventure'' on videos pertaining to the game to include one person mentioning how badly the ScareChord scared them when they lost at Deep Dark Sea.

* FanonDiscontinuity: A fair amount of fans pretend ''D.W. The Picky Eater'' isn't a Living Book, saying the series ended with ''Arthur's Computer Adventure'' instead. Most of this results from it being outsourced to Media Station, a company previously known for producing generally cheaper quality ''Living Books'' clones and the ''[[VideoGame/DisneysAnimatedStorybook Disney's Animated Storybook]]'' series.

* AdaptationDisplacement: Some of the games are more well known than the books they were based off, which is a little jarring given that the games included the original books. Specific examples:

** ''Harry and the Haunted House'' and ''Ruff's Bone'' are both more well known than the books, but this is justified since those were made to be Living Books.

** Sam-I-Am's song at the beginning of GreenEggsAndHam.

* FanonDiscontinuity: A fair amount of fans pretend ''D.W. The Picky Eater'' isn't a Living Book, saying the series ended with ''Arthur's Computer Adventure'' instead. Most of this results from it being outsourced to Media Station, a company previously known for producing generally cheaper quality Living Book clones.

* NightmareFuel: The eponymous location of Deep Dark Sea, a bonus game included with ''Arthur's Computer Adventure''. Upon entering this area (only in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans), the already darkened screen becomes even darker, looking like a dimly lit room. That in of itself is pretty unnerving, [[https://youtu.be/xcUz4KkXhfw?t=16m49s but then you meet the]] [[https://youtu.be/xcUz4KkXhfw?t=21m5s creatures that inhabit the area]]...
--> '''Buster''': [[LampshadeHanging I-I don't think those are f-friendly fish...]]!

* TheyJustDidntCare: The Hebrew dub of ''The Tortoise and the Hare'' seems like it was put together in less than a day. It's glitch-ridden (the first bug shows up on the ''main menu!''), the voice acting is poorly done and often conveys the wrong emotion, and they cut corners several times. One particularly glaring example is how when individual words from the story are clicked, instead of playing a separate re-recorded line specifically for that word, it plays a tiny snippet from the actual reading of the story.
** The UK SameLanguageDub of ''Harry and the Haunted house'' is very sloppy compared to the one for ''The Tortoise and the Hare''. Not only do most of the characters sound way too similar, they frequently revert to their American voices, usually when two characters are speaking in unison.