ASCII Art
| Tropes and genres | |
|---|---|
| Related tropes/genres | Typewriter Art |
| Related articles on Fanlore. | |
ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computer characters to create visuals pieced together for use in email, ezines, BBSs, mIRC, MUDs, and text-only webpage development.
Fans used ASCII art on early communication, often as part of a message footer.
An example of fan's 1995 parody of an X-File's episode "told" in ASCII is x-files!.
When online access was pricey and time-consuming, ASCII art had to be judiciously shared. A fan remembers: "You were entirely welcome to write long posts -- people were far more willing to read long posts then, in fact -- but you pissed people off if you quoted too much of the material you were responding to, posted something off-topic, posted spam, posted "me too" (especially if quoting the entire original), had giant ASCII art at the end of your post, or otherwise took up space to no purpose." [1] Also see Fandom 1994-2000-ish/Part One.
ASCII art was a staple of fan-made video game strategy guides from the 1990s to approximately the 2010s, back when embedded image features were largely unavailable or impractical. GameFAQs is particularly well known for hosting these guides.
Gallery
the Starship Enterprise
ASCII art-fusion with a .sig
Further reading
- ASCII Art Converter "Printer pictures" go hi-res by Paul Tupaczewski (1987)
- Disruptive Posting: A rough retelling of GameFAQs ASCII art.WBM
- Remember how great ASCII art used to be in game guides? By Alice Bell (2020) on Rock, Paper, Shotgun
- Board8 ASCII Archive (partially captured on WayBackMachine in 2014)