See the sky

Thoru Yamamoto (Japanese: 山本徹 or とーるやまもと), born 1955, is a Japanese multimedia artist. Over the years he has released work in many formats including, but not limited to: magazine illustrations, HyperCard decks, interactive CD-ROMs, printed books, websites, digital stickers, and videos. He is perhaps best known for his story books distributed as HyperCard stacks and his unique 1-bit art taking advantage of the limitation imposed by early Apple Macintosh computers.

See the sky is one such story book, a festive-themed Christmas present released for Apple Macintosh in 1992 as a series of HyperCard stacks. In 1996 it was re-released in a remastered form: as an interactive CD-ROM, produced using Macromedia Director, which added ambient music and navigation to the original images. Also released in 1996 was a printed book of the story, presented as 3 images per page. Finally, in 1999 a CD-R of the combined HyperCard stacks was released.

This is a new version of "See the sky" for Playdate, which adds chapter navigation similar to the CD-ROM version.

Whilst the original Macintosh resolution of 512×342 does not match the Playdate's resolution of 400×240, it still works on this device as every screen has been manually repositioned to keep the important elements in view, a process similar to the "pan and scan" adaptation of movies for 4:3 TVs.

Notes

• 500 screens
• 10 chapters
  
• ~ 1 hour experience
  
• Quick navigation menu unlocked as you go
• Position is remembered between launches
• Settings for sound and crossfade speed

• A/right/down/crank = next
• B/left/up/crank = previous
• Menu = options & progress

Credits

• Created by Thoru Yamamoto
• Edited by Matt Sephton
  
• © 1992 Thoru Yamamoto 

Links

• Thoru Yamamoto: Lost Media Wiki
• Thoru Yamamoto: See The Sky for Macintosh
• Thoru Yamamoto: HyperCard stack collection
• Blog post about how this new version was made