The Tortoise and the Hare

The Tortoise and the Hare
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Released	March 22, 1993
Characters	Simon, The Tortoise, The Hare
Language	English
Pages	12
Previous	Arthur's Teacher Trouble
Next	The New Kid on the Block

The Tortoise and the Hare is the number third Living Books PC Rom Game. It is a more unique adaptation in the Living Books series, this time being based on the famous fable by Aesop. It is based on the 1993 book that was retold by Mark Schlitchting, and the CD Rom was released in 1993.

Plot

The story starts off with the male narrator, a purple bird named Simon Hosting, explaining how the Tortoise was a slow but steady person, while the Hare was busy and was "always on the move." One day, when they meet up each other twice, the Hare complains that the Tortoise never does anything, and that he could do "a hundred things in the time it takes [him] to go one block." Fed up with this, the Hare has challenged the Tortoise to a race. The Hare ends up so far away in the lead during the race that he starts wasting time elsewhere, choosing to eat after getting very hungry and sleeping after getting worn out. While he is sleeping, the tortoise slowly walked by very quietly, but still didn't stop. Just as the Hare wakes up, he sees the Tortoise approaching the finish line, and sprints for his life to try to catch the Tortoise. He's too late to the red finish line, however, and loses the race he thought he was destined to win. The story ended on the moral "slow but steady wins the race."

Pages

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12

Characters

• Simon the main protagonist and host of the game.
• The Tortoise the main deuteragonist of the game. He is voiced by Bob Marshall and is the first main deuteragonist to host a Living Books game. His real name is TJ Turtle.
• The Hare the main tritagonist and anti-hero of the game. He is a rabbit and has three younger brothers Daniel, Mark and Earl (who also appears in Harry and the Haunted House) and his real name is Joey Earwax. He is voiced by Joey Eastman.
• The dragonfly (running gag)

Trivia

• This is the first Living Books game for several things:
  • The first Living Book overall to not be adapted from an existing storybook, despite it being a retelling of Aesop's famous fable in general. It is confirmed in the free paperback storybook (which was packaged within the CD-ROM) that Mark Schlichting, the founder of Living Books, retold this Aesop's fable rather than adapting an existing book that previously retold the fable.
    • Though Schlichting's retelling of the story was not originally published outside of/before Living Books, it does not count as one of Living Books' three storybooks (the other two being Ruff's Bone and Harry and the Haunted House) not based on an existing book.
  • This is the first game in the series to start the trend of cancelling out the running gags after clicking them once, although the previous game had done this only once on the first page.
  • This is the first game to use a different The End screen, instead cutting back to Simon in his living room (despite him saying the usual "And that's the end of..."/"<insert goodbye phrase here>" line).
  • This is the first game in the series to use the Phone credits animation, but after this credits animation finished playing, the Wizard animation from Just Grandma and Me appeared again. Only one more credits animation at the time would be introduced in the Philips CD-i version of Little Monster at School, as the Cheering animation has not yet seen appearance until Stellaluna was made into a Living Book in 1996.
• As a result of this game being the first original Living Book to not be a book adaption (despite being a retelling of Aesop's fable), its three titular characters the Tortoise, the Hare and Simon the Crow became the popular stars of the Living Books series that they appeared in other Living Books media as follows:
  • Simon would later go on to host the Living Books samplers, which were sometimes standalone and sometimes included within the games, where you'd be able to try out the first page of each product released up to that point.
  • The Tortoise hosts the official 1996 Living Books website (including its "Living Books' Corner of the Universe" page), and appears on most pages of the site.
    • The Hare appears on some pages of the site as well.
• There was a preview for this game in the very first version/demo of Arthur's Teacher Trouble.
  • Strangely enough, the preview said on the top left corner: Aesop's Fables: Book One meaning that it was planned that there would be more of Aesop's fables as Living Books. Apparently, The Tortoise and the Hare was the only one that was made of the fables.
• On page 4, the word "hardly" was heard in high quality.
  • However, the entire line "The Tortoise could hardly believe that he was going to race." was heard in low quality.
• You leave the book when the Tortoise says, "OK, good-bye!", the same games as Arthur's Teacher Trouble and Ruff's Bone.
  • He is also the first main deuteragonist to ask you if you're sure you want to quit, the next being D.W. Read in Arthur's Reading Race.
• This is the first game to feature a preview for Ruff's Bone. This time the preview for said Living Book was in both versions, but slightly altered for V1.1. Towards the end, a line was changed from "Then get Broderbund's Living Book called Ruff's Bone!" to "Then get Living Books' Ruff's Bone!" due to the series turning into a joint venture with Random House.
• Alongside the Ruff's Bone preview, there are also previews for Arthur's Birthday and Harry and the Haunted House on both versions of the game. The only way these can be accessed is by editing the outline file. They're saved as PREV02.MAC and PREV03.MAC on the Macintosh version, and PREV02.IBM, and PREV03.IBM on the PC CD-Rom version.
  • The Hebrew version of the game had these two previews included in the actual program.
• Like the previous two games, this one originally had a slow fading engine in v1.0.
  • V1.1 gave the game an electric engine upgrade; the fading is faster on the Windows version, there is a loading cursor into the form of a running man.
  • This is also the first game to wait for sounds to finish before continuing animation. In the previous two games, sounds would get cutoff if they ran longer than the animation.
• The v1.0 demo was oddly missing the title screen, due to an error made in listing the files for the outline file. The v1.1 demo corrected this.
• This, The New Kid on the Block, Just Grandma and Me, and Harry and the Haunted House were featured in a Czech magazine advertisement for Living Books. However, none of the Living Books games have been released in the Czech Republic.

Quotes

Simon: That hare is moving so fast. He's not paying attention to where he's (part of the roof of the tortoise's house breaks) going! (Simon falls through the hole in the roof)

———————————————————————————————————————————————

Frog: Watch this one! (jumps and does a flip, then falls into the water) Ouch! (gets back out of the water)

Releases

• 1993: Original release. A challenge to find.
• 1994: Random House release. Medium-difficulty to find.
• 2002: PC Treasures re-release. This is the easiest version to find.
  • Uses V1.1.

Photos

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Video

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