As Mother’s Day approached, I suddenly remembered two very old programs for the Atari ST which I had fooled around with as a kid.

“Murray and Me” and “Mom and Me” were written by Yakov Kirschen, who called his creations “biotoons.”

I thought it would be cool to find a disk image of “Mom and Me” online, run the program again, and make some screen captures if there was any funny dialogue. Then I could use the screenshots to make my own Mother’s Day card for my real-life mom.

Alas, I have been unable to find any disk images of “Mom and Me.” If you have a copy of this program, please get in touch. I’d love to try it again.

While I couldn’t turn up the program itself, I did find some old mentions of it in magazines and newspapers.

Antic published them both in its “Antic Catalog.” Check out this ad from the 1986 issue, which describes “Mom” as “An Electronic Jewish mother created by a former Playboy cartoonist!”

The ad goes on to gush “Here are the first two titles in a whole new generation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs.”

Kirschen received good publicity for his creations in 1985.

The Los Angeles Times wrote “Kirschen emphasized that his characters’ responses are not programmed. They depend on the intricacies of the computerized personalities he has created and the user’s input. He said he does not know how many different conversations might be possible with Murray or Mom.”

The New York Times noted “How long one can converse with Murray or Mom without getting bored is not clear, since Mr. Kirschen has added so much material to their personality files in the last two years of development that even he no longer knows exactly how they will respond.”

I found these programs funny as a kid. If YOU remember them, or if you still have copies of the software, please get in touch!