Thoru Yamamoto works (partially found interactive media; 1990s)

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Zizi-vol-1.png

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.

Current

Some websites are still online, though all have not been updated in many years.

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