Disney’s Beauty and the Beast

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast for DOS brings together five Infogrames activities in the Beast’s castle. Chip accompanies the presentation, and the servants take part in the preparations for a ball. The preserved copy is in English. The PC box art uses the name Be Our Guest, while the program’s title screen shows Beauty and the Beast.

The castle’s stained-glass window is used to choose an activity. Its pictures represent the rooms and their characters. You can move the cursor with the mouse or the keyboard arrow keys. The left button and the spacebar let you select. The gallery shows the stained-glass window as it appears when this copy is run.

Choosing the difficulty and entering the castle

The first panel belongs to the Infogrames launcher. F1 selects Game, and Enter lets you start with the preserved configuration. After the presentation, two windows with roses appear for choosing the difficulty. Select one and wait for the approach to the castle to finish. Space lets you advance through the dialogue.

Cogsworth, Lumière and Mrs. Potts appear together on the menu. In the tested session, Cogsworth opened the practice activity selection. His reply invites you to choose a picture in the stained-glass window. Lumière’s show opens from the upper-left window. Before it starts, an introduction shows the stage and the cake.

Lumière and the cherries on the cake

In the show, you have to direct Lumière while the stage’s cutlery moves around. The cherries appear on the cake. The counter in the upper-left corner records the ones you collect. The test for this page includes moving to the right, collecting the first cherry, and the next one appearing.

With the keyboard, hold down an arrow key and Space to move. In the tested game, moving right made it possible to reach the cherry on the first tier. After collecting it, a red mark appeared on the indicator and a new cherry appeared on the left, at another point on the cake. The two gameplay screenshots show that change.

It is best to wait for the stage introduction to finish before you start moving. When the activity begins, the cherry indicator appears. Watch Lumière’s position and the cutlery before choosing which way to go. If he stumbles, the character comments on the attempt and sets up the scene again.

The other tasks in the castle

The original manual also describes the laundry room, the garden, the kitchen and the library. Their exercises use color combinations, pairs of flowers, routes for eggs and sequences to remember. Each has its own area in the stained-glass window. In the menu you can choose between practice and adventure.

P lets you interrupt an activity. In the tested show, Chip appears in the lower-left corner. Selecting him returns you to the stained-glass window. To continue the show from that pause, click elsewhere on the screen. These options let you stop the scene and go back to the room selection.

The player adds its own controls for pause, sound, fullscreen, capture and reset. The mouse on this page uses pointer capture. Click on the game to control it and press Esc to release the browser cursor. The game’s instructions and the dialogue in this copy remain in English.

The download keeps the sixteen files of the collection. The browser package adds a DOSBox configuration and a launcher for beauty.com. The background of this page comes from the game’s stained-glass window. The photograph of the box keeps its original design and labels.