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BBS ads: a tour of ASCII and ANSI art from the 80s and 90s - Part 1

Date/Time Permalink: 04/29/06 01:13:37 pm
Category: ANSI art


Black Dog Towers

A rainy Friday evening's entertainment may be had by downloading the BBS section tarball from textfiles.com. I found myself engrossed in the ASCII and ANSI art banners from these bulletin boards of yore. I decided to render some of them and make screenshots to post here, both in the interest of further preserving this bit of history, and to offer a highlight tour to those who lack the patience and resources to view them directly. Click on any thumbnail to see the fullsize image.


Retaliators Place


Elite


Hackers Party


Coffeeshop Zombies


Turmoil

The experience of browsing the entirety of the BBS ads feels like exploring an abandoned urban city by night and viewing the graffiti by flashlight. The ads range from breathtaking works of art to truly horrible (and unreadable) scribble. Take the outlandish over-machoism of a trash-TV wrestling show and the innocent naivete of a child, and toss in a healthy dose of cyberpunk anarchism - and D0N'7 4GeT YoUr 13375p33k! - and you have the makings of many BBS ads. You wade through every imaginable variety of ugly ASCII font and endless braggadocio of 13-year-olds with delusions of grandeur, only to stumble upon an occasional buried treasure that leaves you gazing in wonder for many minutes. The fact that much of this was done with technology a decade or two more primitive than what we enjoy today makes this work doubly impressive.

The whole ANSI-Art tour:
Can I play too?
Part 8
Part 7
Part 6
Part 5
Part 4
Part 3
Part 2
Part 1

13 feedbacks

Comments:

Comment from: Kevin McLeod [Visitor] · http://deafscribe.livejournal.com/50425.html
Got another BBS screenshot for you - I ran The Abbey back in the early 90's, after being active in the BBS scene since 1984. See the URL for the screenshot and the story.

- Kevin McLeod, aka Lazarus
04/30/06 @ 17:54
Comment from: John Edwards [Visitor] · http://www.calcoin.com/
Funny how this stuff is popping back up! I sold my Apple // BBS (ProBOARD II) to the same guy ($500)who runs textfiles.com for his computer museum in Boston. The ProBOARD II was the GBBS SysOP Support Board and ran from 1985 till 1995, the days before the web and we all had to hack to get into the internet. But I had SysOPs from as far away as Johanesburg South Africa and Duhran Saudi Arabia (during the first bush war) calling (at 2400 BPS) for my mods and stuff. I wrote TimeGrapher if anyone remembers that, co-designed and developed ProTERM, I'm sure someone remembers that one (Greg Schaefer) it was the best TERM-Prog ever! I'm wondering if some of the old ProBOARD ][ ANSI and PTSE (ProTERM Special Emulation) Menus in there, I know he has them. If Not maybe I can dig them up off my first Power PC Mac still running over at moms.

The Apple//e was originaly owned by none other than Bob Hardy who wrote Zork Zero and some other cool games on it before I bought it ($50). He later worked for Electronic Arts (PGA GOLF) and is now the CEO of SEGA North America btw. That Apple//e is the one that is in the computer musuem in bean Town btw. Thanks for the memories! -Jpe@gopaso.com
05/01/06 @ 01:22
Comment from: Wao [Visitor] · http://www.waotoyz.com
/----/ /----/ /----/ /--------------/ /--------------/
/----/ /----/ /----/ /----/ /----/ /--------------/
/----/ /----/ /----/ /----/ /----/ /----/
/----/ /----/ /----/ /--------------/ /----/ /----/
/----/ /----/ /----/ /--------------/ /----/ /----/
/----/ /----/ /----/ /----/ /----/ /----/ /----/
/----/-----/----/----------/ /--------------/ /--------------/
/------------------------ -/ /--------------/ /--------------/
/_____________________________________________________________________________/
*******************************************************************************************
*******************************************************************************************
__________
wao true ninja squad / O / O /
/ / /
/ L /
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
S / ___ / S
S / / S
SSSSSSSSSS
WAKE IS WAKE

05/01/06 @ 05:05
Comment from: Penguin Pete [Member] · http://www.penguinpetes.com/
Uh, Wao?



            Your fine ASCII art

         will be a pile of letters...

            without the pre tag.
05/01/06 @ 05:32
Comment from: Hipoonios [Visitor] · http://www.hipooniosamigasite.org
Wow.. Don't forget to check out my old Amiga BBS. Connection details on my website =)
05/13/06 @ 05:33
Comment from: laura_glow [Visitor] · http://www.divagues.com.ar
I love the old times feeling, I'm a big fan of the BBS era. =) take a look at my website to see a reconstruction of a message board with the feeling of a bbs. It's for the ones like me too lazy to connect to telnet bbs's. =)

http://www.divagues.com.ar
07/10/06 @ 17:24
Comment from: AMPro [Visitor] · http://www.amprosoft.com/Gallery/Art/ANSi/
I made a lot of ANSi Art back the days. Some of the better ones are archived at the link posted.

:)

-Alex
11/24/07 @ 22:23
Comment from: amir [Visitor] · http://www.compwrite.com 


      .___.

     /     \

    | O _ O |

    /  \_/  \ 

  .' /     \ `.

 / _|       |_ \

(_/ |       | \_)

    \       /

   __\_>-
07/02/08 @ 05:53
Comment from: amir23 [Visitor] · http://www.compwrite.com
.___.
/ \
| O _ O |
/ \_/ \
.' / \ `.
/ _| |_ \
(_/ | | \_)
\ /
__\_>-
07/02/08 @ 05:54
Comment from: seoblogcentral01 [Visitor] · http://www.seoblogcentral.com
Your explantions is realy good.
and the Ansi Art is also nicely. And these are interesting matter which are must to know.

seoblogcentral - vbulletin,jelsoft,forum,bbs,discussion,bulletin board,message board,blog,discussion forum
05/29/09 @ 04:50
Comment from: seoblogcentral01 [Visitor] · http://www.seoblogcentral.com
Your explantions is realy good.
and the Ansi Art is also nicely. And these are interesting matter which are must to know.

seoblogcentral - vbulletin,jelsoft,forum,bbs,discussion,bulletin board,message board,blog,discussion forum
05/29/09 @ 04:52
Comment from: Edward [Visitor] · http://www.picktorrent.com
who could have ever thought that it's possible to paint, create true pictures with simple 1 and 0:) or with dots and lines. bravo!
12/14/09 @ 01:40
Comment from: Karen T [Visitor] · http://occhealthnews.com/
One of these days, images like this will be appearing in a modern art gallery (if it hasn't already)!
01/25/10 @ 11:43


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