Possibly lost media, "Kirin (demo)"

[alectrona2988]

So I was talking to my former japanese teacher about a story she told, where she had used her dad's old Macintosh computer (she mentioned it was an SE?) with a program called Kirin. More specifically, a demo version from an unknown disk. I did this over e-mail, so here's what she had to say:

Hello！It's nice to hear from you!

The program that I remember was called "Kirin Demo." It was a demo disk for Kirin, which was supposed to be some sort of educational software.

A few years ago I tried searching the internet for this program, just to make sure that I hadn't completely hallucinated it. I couldn't find any trace of its existence! I even spent hours scouring https://www.macintoshrepository.org/ and I absolutely could not find it. It's possible that I couldn't find it because it was one of many programs on something generic like a "games demo CD." I honestly have no memory of where this program came from. I just remember that one day, it was on my dad's computer.


I remember that when you booted up the program, there was a robotic-sounding voice that said "Welcome to Kirin." Then the screen would show you simple math problems with multiple choice answers. If you chose the correct answer, the screen would show a smiley face and the same robotic voice would say "That is correct." If you chose the wrong answer, the screen would show a frowny face and the robotic voice would say "I'm sorry. That's wrong." The voice sounded really unnatural and flat. My sister and I thought that the robo-voice was the funniest thing about the program. We would deliberately get problems wrong just to hear the robo-voice say "I'm sorry. That's wrong." without any intonation whatsoever. Something about the flat robo-voice combined with the image of the cartoonish frowning face was just really, really funny to us.

If you find any evidence that this thing exists and it wasn't just a fever dream that my mind made up, I would love to know about it!!

Sensei

I am curious if anyone here knows about this program or has ran into it. I'm also asking her about the computer, but I'm fairly certain it doesn't exist anymore. If it did, I'm sure the internal hard drive (if it was even in there) has long since fallen to death. Even then, it would need a lot of work since it's probably 35 years old.

Any help would be appreciated. I'm sure she would be delighted had someone found it.

 

[gingerbeardman]

Yo!

I have a collection of 500,000+ files in my Macintosh Magazine Media collection:

https://www.gingerbeardman.com/mmm/#きりん

Close matches:

CD-ROM MACLIFE7:特集I:通信:ログ管理:きりんさんver0.5.sit
12月号付録／まーぱろむ:体験版:教育:キッズパズル機能制限版:キッズパズルフォルダ: 1.どうぶつ: 6.きりん

Translated:

CD-ROM MACLIFE 7: Special feature I: Communication: Log management: Kirin-san ver0.5.sit [email/message manager]
December issue appendix / Maparomu: Trial version: Education: Kids puzzle function limited version: Kids puzzle folder: 1. Animal: 6. Kirin [jigsaw puzzle]

Feel free to search for some other terms, きりん is kirin and means giraffe in Japanese. Both the above apps have giraffe icons.

It's possible or even likely what you're looking for was HyperCard Stack, which would sadly make it more difficult to find as there isn't a good single source of Japanese stacks.

I don't check here very often since the big forum data loss, but I should get notifications of any reply to this thread, or DM. Otherwise I'm on twitter @gingerbeardman