The Berenstain Bears in the Dark is the second Berenstain Bears interactive Living Books PC game from 1996, and it was based on the 1982 book written by It is presented by Sister Bear.
Contents
- 1 Plot
- 2 Characters
- 3 Pages
- 4 Mini-games
- 5 Demos
- 6 Bear Country Locations
- 7 Songs
- 8 Trivia
- 9 Quotes
- 10 Voice Talent
Plot[]
The story opens in the library, where Sister Bear impatiently waits for Brother Bear to check out a book when she is at the check out desk. He finds a book titled The Case of the Crying Cave, and Sister remarks that it sounds scary, and by contrast, borrows a much more cutesy book. Once they get home, both start to read their books, but Sister looks at her storybook about three little kittens who are fighting about which is the cutest and she gets a little bored with hers, and begins reading with Brother. Brother begins to dramatize the book, and makes a howling noise that freaks out Sister.
When they go to bed that night, Sister begins to picture dark things as spooky, and has trouble sleeping. Brother then makes a wailing noise, which causes her to cry for help. She cries out "Mama, Papa, hurry! Come quick!". Mama and Papa rush into the kids' bedroom, tripping over each other, and Sister falls down on top of them. Mama and Papa try to convince her that there's nothing to be afraid of, but it doesn't do any good at all, and both siblings fight to determine who would sleep with the lights on or off.
The next morning, the Bear family is too tired to do anything due to their lack of sleep. Papa explains that her imagination has been taking control of her and making the dark look spooky. He takes her upstairs to the attic, and she tries not to let her imagination take her over. She soon begins to learn that she was only fooling herself and there was really nothing to be afraid of the dark. Papa proceeds to show her his old night light, telling her that even he was afraid of the dark once, which puts Sister Bear in disbelief.
That evening, she goes back downstairs and decides to finish reading the rest of The Case of the Crying Cave. She gets disappointed when the wailing noise heard in the book turned out to just be the wind, and remarks about this to Brother that night. The story has ended with Brother Bear feeling a little uneasy about the darkness, and deciding that maybe he's had quite enough mysteries for a while.
Characters[]
- Sister Bear, the main protagonist
- Brother Bear, the main deuteragonist
- Papa Bear, the main tritagonist
- Mama Bear, the main tetartagonist
- The Scouts (from The Case of the Crying Cave)
- The Firefly (running gag)
- Actual Factual (cameo)
- Frogs
Pages[]
- Introduction: "Being afraid of the dark doesn't just happen to you. It happens, sometimes, to little bears, too."
- 1. Brother Bear and Sister Bear visit the library.
- 2. Brother finds a book called, "The Case of the Crying Cave," and checks it out.
- 3. Sister becomes interested in hearing Brother's story.
- 4. When Brother reads the story to Sister, she becomes afraid.
- 5. Papa Bear and Mama Bear tuck the cubs in at bedtime. / Animals begin making noises outside at night.
- 6. Sister becomes afraid of the dark. / Brother decides to mess with her by making the Crying Cave sound.
- 7. Papa and Mama walk into the room to see what's wrong, and bump into the clothes rack. / Brother turns on the light, only to find the pandemonium he caused.
- 8. Sister can't sleep with the lights off, and Brother can't sleep with the lights on. / The Bear Family is tired next morning due to the lack of sleep last night. / Papa has an idea to help Sister conquer her fear of the dark.
- 9. Papa takes Sister up to the attic and tells her that it's her imagination that makes the dark scary. / Papa explains to Sister what imagination is.
- 10. Papa and Sister look through a trunk in the attic. / Papa gives Sister his old nightlight.
- 11. Brother and Sister finish the story, and find out what the spooky sound was.
- 12. Sister is no longer afraid of the dark and reveals that she was disappointed by the ending of the story. / Brother suddenly becomes afraid of the dark.
Mini-games[]
- Sister & Papa's Animal-Cave Match
- Brother's Picture Jumble Game
Demos[]
- Stellaluna
- Green Eggs and Ham
- Sheila Rae, the Brave
- Dr. Seuss' ABC
- The Berenstain Bears Get in a Fight
- Harry and the Haunted House
- Arthur's Birthday
- Little Monster at School
- Ruff's Bone
- The New Kid on the Block
- The Tortoise and the Hare
- Arthur's Teacher Trouble
- Just Grandma and Me
Bear Country Locations[]
- The Tree House
- Bear Country Library
Songs[]
- "I Love Books"
- "The Great Big Fat Frog Song"
- "Do What Birdies Do"
- "The Teddy Bear Boogie"
Trivia[]
- This is the first Living Books game for several things:
- The first title to use a 640 x 480 resolution, in comparison to the 512 x 384 resolution of the previous titles.
- The first Living Book to use the current Living Books intro. Some of the animation was done differently in this intro in contrast to other games: "Books" pushes to the left in motion-blur, and the Living Book's face opens up differently in the style of an inflating balloon.
- While The New Kid on the Block and Dr. Seuss' ABC are monolingual for obvious reasons, this is the first Living Books game to drop the feature of dubbing the story into any foreign languages (i.e. Spanish) for unknown reasons.
- This was likely done to avoid consuming disk space in order to make way for the activities and all the sampler demos. However, the Brazillian Portuguese version of Stellaluna has both American English and Portuguese included, in the spite of featuring activities and/or the sampler demos. The same goes with the Portuguese version of Arthur's Birthday V2.
- This demo version can be featured in Green Eggs and Ham, Stellaluna, and Arthur's Reading Race.
- This is the last Living Books game to use the original cover art packaging design, and the only one to have the current Living Books logo (with the company name positioned entirely beneath the anthropomorphic book) on this type of cover design.
- A prototype of "Stellaluna", and the "" demo appears on this disc, due to it not being released at the same time. It even includes a click point that didn't make it into the final.
- A fair amount of the three animations are reused from The Berenstain Bears Get in a Fight, including the "The End" screen (where the whole Bear family says goodbye), the Options screen (where Mama Bear is the only tetartagonist who tells you if you want to play inside a certain page), and the Quit screen (where Papa Bear is the only tritagonist who asks you if you're sure you want to quit).
- The "paint pictures, make up poems, invent inventions" when clicking on Sister three times is mentioned in the book.
- Not counting Arthur's Birthday V2, this is the fifth and final game to use the wizard animation in the credits.
- You leave the book when Papa Bear says "Well, if you say so. Bye." (if "Yes" is chosen) but you might want to keep on playing if he says "Okay." (if "No" is chosen). He's the only tritagonist in Living Books games who asks you if you want to quit. Also like the other Berenstain Bears game, the "No" character is the deuteragonist Brother Bear while the "Yes" character is the main protagonist Sister Bear.
- When the game was re-released for the iOS, the two mini-games are removed. However, the click points for the two mini-games' buttons are erroneously left in (though invisible however), and clicking them just restarts the main screen.
- Like the other Berenstain Bears title, this, too was once one of the most elusive out-of-print titles in the Living Books series to find on any auction site, until it was re-released for the iOS as part of the Wanderful Interactive Storybooks line in 2013.
Quotes[]
Mouse: who's slipping those drawers open? That does it! I'm outta here!
Kitten #1: I'm cuter than you are.
Kitten #2: No, you're not. I'm the cutest.
Kitten #3: No. I'm cutest.
Sister Bear: Stop! That's enough!
Sister Bear: Stop it! Stop it!
Brother Bear: Whoooooooooooo!
Sister Bear: Augh! Mama! Papa! Hurry! Come quick!
Brother Bear: Cut that out!
Slipper 1: We'll never get used.
Slipper 2: Yeah. They're always walking around in their "bear" feet.
Voice Talent[]
- Narrator: Joanne Greene
- Sister Bear: Imogene Tondre
- Brother Bear: Mark Engberg
- Papa Bear: Hank Bassior
- Mama Bear: Prakash Capen
- Extra Character Voices: Sam Comstock, Alana Guy, Bob Marshall, Don Albrecht, Erika Luckett, Kim Kerr, Mark Schlichting, Mark West, Michael Dashow, Olivia Raymond, Philo Northup, Robert Hoffman, Ron Seawright, Tami Tsark, Susan Adams-Graves, Lisa Hanou, Jo Carol Block, Trevor Marcam, Mikey Greene, Danny Greene, Esther Suzuki Arnold, Jayne Miller