Title screen from Yaakov Kirschen’s 1985 program “Mom and Me” for the Atari ST
I rescued “Mom and Me” for the Atari ST! (though I guess I’m about a month late for Mother’s Day)
You may recall that two years ago I blogged about two old Atari ST programs I remembered from my youth – “Mom and Me” and “Murray and Me” by the cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen.
The programs were published by Antic Magazine, and billed as the first “biotoons,” a sort of artificial intelligence cartoon. They were even reviewed in both the New York Times and and the Los Angeles Times in 1985.
Anyway, two years ago I assumed someone out there had archived disk images of these programs. But I was completely unable to find any.
I had copies on old floppies myself, but those floppies stopped working reliably in the 1990s on my Atari 1040 STe. I assumed they were still no good.
Tonight I pulled them out, dusted them off, and gave them a try in my Mega STe. I had mixed success!
I was able to load “Mom and Me” and play the simulation. Even better, afterwards I successfully duplicated the disk and transferred a copy to my Mac.
Screen capture of Mom talking in Yaakov Kirschen’s 1985 program “Mom and Me” for the Atari ST
Want to try it yourself? Download “Mom and Me” as a ZIP file.
As for “Murray”, I got the title screen to load, but couldn’t get him to actually play.
Title screen from Yaakov Kirschen’s 1985 program “Murray and Me” for the Atari ST
I tried copying the disk, but at least one file (“CSFACE.RAS”) failed. After a few more minutes, the Atari wouldn’t read the disk at all anymore. Oh well. I’ll have to try again later.