Category: Kirschen

  • Bringing dry bones back to life: The Kirschen software collection

    Bringing dry bones back to life: The Kirschen software collection

    It’s time to bring some dry bones back to life. In coming days, I will publish a curated collection of lost software developed by the Israeli cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen together with programmers from Gesher Educational Affiliates as well as from his own studio, LKP Ltd. The collection includes 12 games, demos, and experiments in artificial…

  • Unearthed: Kirschen’s Apple II games for Gesher

    Unearthed: Kirschen’s Apple II games for Gesher

    Ever wonder what the Jewish version of Pac-Man might look like? In the early 1980s, video games were exploding in popularity with kids and microcomputers were becoming available Israel. The Gesher organization saw potential in developing educational software specifically for Jewish students. From 1982 to 1984, Yaakov Kirschen worked with them on four games: “Aleph…

  • Unearthed: Kirschen’s independent Apple II projects

    Unearthed: Kirschen’s independent Apple II projects

    Is “Doc Possum” a lost Learning Company game? After the end of Yaakov Kirschen’s partnership with the Gesher organization, he had an idea for a secular educational game for the Apple II, which he pitched to The Learning Company. Around the same time he also made a few independent demos and experimental software. “You and…

  • Unearthed: Kirschen’s Atari ST projects

    Unearthed: Kirschen’s Atari ST projects

    The artificial personalities “Murray” and “Mom” were among the very first entertainment offerings for the Atari ST computer. They were also the first products released by Israeli cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen’s new “LKP, Ltd.” software studio in Israel, in partnership with his American firm, “Just For You, Inc.” “Murray and Me” (monochrome, 1985) “Murray and Me”…

  • Unearthed: Kirschen’s “Music Creator” for IBM PC

    Unearthed: Kirschen’s “Music Creator” for IBM PC

    Decades before the debut of DALL-E, Israeli cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen was developing an “artificial creativity” system to let computers compose their own music, by extracting components of existing songs and combining them in new ways. The software was originally written for the Amiga, but business changes led them to abandon that platform and port the…

  • Talking about Kirschen’s software at Arch Reactor

    Talking about Kirschen’s software at Arch Reactor

    This Sunday I spoke about my retrocomputing hobby and digital preservation work at Arch Reactor, a hackerspace/makerspace in St. Louis. I was honored to be invited, and I had a blast sharing some of the things I’ve learned as I researched (and rescued) the lost 1980s software of Ya’akov Kirschen. I recorded the talk, and…