Thoru Yamamoto works (partially found interactive media; 1990s)
Title screen of ZiZi Stories Vol. 1
Status: Partially Found (Multimedia content)
Partially Found (HyperCard stacks)
Found (Other software)
Thoru Yamamoto (山本徹 or とーるやまもと),[1] born 1955, is a Japanese artist. Over time he has released art in many formats, including magazine illustrations, HyperCard decks, CD-ROM, printed books, websites, digital stickers and videos.
Websites
Over the past 30 years, Thoru Yamamoto has had many different online homes.
Historical
Below is a list of those that have been found so far, in roughly chronological order judging by the contents.
- 1992: NIFTY-Serve HFC01543 & CompuServe 101152,1543
- 1997: http://mtlab.ecn.fpu.ac.jp/Yamamoto/works.html
- 1998: http://www.bekkoame.or.jp/~thoru/
- 1998: http://www.tky.3web.ne.jp/~thoruman/index.html
- 1999: http://www.e-vlab.com/
- 2002: http://homepage1.nifty.com/okuji/contest.html
- 2002: http://www.eggegg.co.jp/~tango/index.html
- 2004: http://www.thoruman.com/tyhp/works/work.html
- 2007: http://web.mac.com/thoru/thoruman/top.html
- Unknown and unarchived: http://www.softmaterial.com/tb/
Current
Some websites are still online, though all have not been updated in many years.
- 2004: http://pickle.cc/jp/
- 2004: http://www.languagegame.org:8080/zoo/1
- 2008: http://www.youtube.com/user/thoruman
- 2016: http://thoruman.web.fc2.com
- 2023: DriveToWeb
Multimedia content
A list of known multimedia content is below, in roughly chronological order.
Release Year | Name | Media Type | Status |
---|---|---|---|
1994 | Pickle's Book | CD-ROM | Found |
1995 | Cookie & Ginger | CD-ROM | Found |
1995–1997 | Mole Hole / Pumpkin House / Explore | Interactive Website | Found |
1996 | Crouton | CD-ROM | Found |
1996? | Penny | CD-ROM | Lost |
1996 | See The Sky | CD-ROM | Found |
1996 | See The Sky | Printed Book | Found |
1997 | Trash | 2HD Floppy Disk | ref Found |
1998 | bonvoyageCHAI | CD-R | Found |
1999 | See The Sky | CD-R | Partially Found |
2003 | Play with Squeak | CD-R | Found |
Note: a port of Pickle's Book remains available for iOS[2] but this differs in a number of ways to the older personal computer CD-ROM version, which would install icons to your desktop as you played.
HyperCard stacks
HyperCard is a software application and development kit for early Apple computers, most notably the Macintosh. It gave users of any skill level the ability to put together interactive information.
A list of Thoru's HyperCard stacks can be found on the website of Motoyuki Tanaka, where they were hosted.[3] These were a mix of animations and interactive scenes and are listed alphabetically below. Out of a total of 32 stacks only 22 were present in the Wayback Machine archive of the aforementioned website. The rest were sourced from elsewhere. Found files have been uploaded to the HyperCard Stacks collection at Internet Archive.[4]
Release Year | Name | Status |
---|---|---|
1992 | See The Sky (Vol. 1-6) | Found |
1993 | Drug Store | Found |
1993 | Happy Man | Found |
1993 | Meet The Moles (Mid Night Gig) | Found |
1993 | Welcome Menu (Drug Store/HappyMan) | Found |
1993 | Welcome Menu (See The Sky/MidNightGig) | Found |
1993 | ZiZi Christmas! | Found |
1993–1996 | ZiZi Stories (Vol. 1–16) | Found |
1994 | CHAI | Lost |
1995 | A Little Tree | Found |
1995 | Hand to Hand | Found |
1996 | ZiZi on the Web | Found |
2003 | See The Sky (Combined) | Found |
Note: all ZiZi are still available online as HTML,[5] but these versions lack the sound, animated transitions and frame pacing of the equivalent HyperCard stacks.
Shockwave animations
In the archive of Thoru's website at eggegg.co.jp/~tango, there are 65 Macromedia Director animations. There are also another ~40 from other locations. These include elements of lost characters like Penny, Trash, Chai and more.
Until they can be archived in a better way, here are two text lists.
Other Software
The following were mostly Shareware.
Macintosh
Release Year | Name | Status |
---|---|---|
1998 | Pickle's Pocket | Found |
2000 | AsistantPickle (+ character variations) |
Found |
PalmOS
Release Year | Name | Status |
---|---|---|
2000 | PalmPickle | Found |
2001 | Pickle's Dance | Found |
2001 | Coconuts World | Found |
References
- ↑ http://nobi.com/jp/mac/entry106.html
- ↑ https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pickles-book/id794738212
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20050310003241/http://mtlab.ecn.fpu.ac.jp/Yamamoto/works.html
- ↑ https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Thoru+Yamamoto%22&sort=titleSorter
- ↑ http://thoruman.web.fc2.com/zizi/zindex.html