Open world
There is no consensus on what the earliest open world game is, due to differing definitions of how large or open a world needs to be. Ars Technica traces the concept back to the free-roaming exploration of 1976 text adventure game "Colossal Cave Adventure", which inspired the free-roaming exploration of "Adventure" (1980), but notes that it wasn't until 1984 that what "we now know as open-world gaming" took on a "definite shape" with 1984 space simulator "Elite", considered a pioneer of the open world; Gamasutra argues that its open-ended sandbox style is rooted in flight simulators, such as SubLOGIC's "Flight Simulator" (1979/1980), noting most flight sims "offer a 'free flight' mode that allows players to simply pilot the aircraft and explore the virtual world". Others trace the concept back to 1981 CRPG "", which had a free-roaming overworld map inspired by tabletop RPG "Dungeons & Dragons". The overworld maps of the first five "Ultima" games, released up to 1988, lacked a single, unified scale, with towns and other places represented as icons; this style was adopted by the first three "Dragon Quest" games, released from 1986 to 1988 in Japan.
Disney's Animated Storybook
The first full-length Disney animated film to be adapted into an adventure game was "The Black Cauldron"; it wasn't until Disney's Animated Storybook that Disney achieved a "stunning visual quality" that was comparable to the theatrical films, according to "Disney Stories: Getting to Digital". The Boston Herald thought the games were "beautifully produced", though did not consider them edutainment. "Daily News" felt the series offered "terrific" examples of the interactive storybook genre, which read as pages out of a printed children's book. Coming Soon Magazine felt the series "has many things to attract young children like animal characters and great artwork". Beth Kljajic from Adventure Learning Club said the games were "very poorly written". Entertainment Weekly said the series offered stripped-down bare-bones retellings. "The Mirror" called the series"delightful", "film-quality", and "colorful", while suggesting that young players would be "entranced" by the animated storybooks. "Knight Ridder Tribune" said the games' "lush animation" succeeded in "capturing the warm and fuzzy texture" of the source material. "The Columbian" writer Mike Langberg wrote that the games "faithfully reproduces the story, visual style, voices and music" of the original. A "Knight Ridder Tribune" article written by John J. Fried and William R. Macklin commented that while "Pocahontas" was "beautifully rendered", it was "poorer" than "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree" due to not featuring any songs. 
"Entertainment Weekly" commented that "Disney's Animated Storybook" contained "all the familiar scenes" from the movies they were based on, albeit augmented by entertaining point-and-click activities. When comparing the "Hunchback" and "Dalmatians" Storybooks (which were released around the same time in 1997), a writer from the Sun-Sentinel said "the "Hunchback"'s tale is deeper, more lustrously animated and gives kids more to do than "Dalmatian"". Meanwhile, a reviewer from "Technology & Learning" described the two games as "appealing" and "beautifully rendered". "The Austin Chronicle" noted that the style elements of the originals are "vividly woven in". "The Washington Post" said the illustrations are "nothing short of excellent" "AllGame" reviewer Brad Cook commented that the games brought the films they were based on to life. Super PC noted that the game could only work properly with a 16-bit sound card, and with a graphics card that could handle the .AVI files; the newspaper felt it was unreasonable to require a high-end PC for a children's educational game, and noting the wasted space on the CD thought it would be better to have released a less-quality game that could work with normal configurations. Mark Manarick praised the games for the cartoon graphics, characters, and sound taken directly from their movies. Dayton Daily said the games has "terrific and friendly voice-over work. Working Mother felt games were "absolutely addictive" deeming the audiovisuals "fun" and "zany". "The Lion King animated storybook: A case study of aesthetic and economic power" felt the Lion King animated story book was inferior to other companies' animated story books in technical detail. The Chicago Tribune felt that the "Dalmatians" CD-ROM was very successful "in seamlessly guiding players into and out of each screen" due to their entrances and exits integrated into doorways. The paper felt that in "Tigger Too"'s case "the quality animation and sweetly familiar characters will give the program a lot more mileage among youthful Pooh fans than it otherwise deserves". Video Business favourably compared the series' animations positively to 1996's . Reviewing "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too" - the last game in the series - "The Washington Post" criticised its "charmless[ness]" and "leadenness", adding that its "jerky, disjointed narration are confusing to follow because characters move abruptly from scene to scene without much of a connecting theme". In 1997, The Times London deemed 101 Dalmatians as "Just about the best Disney Interactive title to date". Consumer Reports noted that the quality of the series fluctuates between games, praising 101 Dalmatian while finding fault with Hercules' writing and Toy Story's user friendliness. The Seattle Times suggested that "While the content of these products is fairly shallow, Disney sets high standards for the graphics and animation".