Q: I just downloaded Mountain Lion and of course lost all my old appleworks programs or at least access to them. Is there an app for recovering these or a program or technique to recover them?

Pages, Numbers and Keynote can open the corresponding types of AppleWorks files. I believe there's something that opens the drawing files, though I don't recall what that might be... try Googling that one. Unfortunately, when it comes to AppleWorks databases, there's nothing else that can open them.

You would have to erase your hard drive and reinstall an earlier version of OS X that was compatible with those Apple Works programs and then iinstall those Apps and documents from your backup drive where you have backups of them.

Hope this helps

Please see this thread

https://discussions.apple.com/message/19797645#19797645

which give more details on compatibility and offers a possible solution which doesn't involve reformatting your drive.