History of the PC Ascii Scene
As viewed by the eyes of one that lived it.
Text taken in most part from a previous article in
The Product 2, but I had to update quit a bit of it.
Ascii Art as an idea coalesced into existence bceause people wanted more.
They wanted more than just your standard Hercules display Atari or your
Monochrome Commodore 64. To meet this demand, one singular artist, whose
name is lost to the annals of history decided to take the plunge. Instead
of text, he or she had the ingenuity to use the characters /, , , -,
and whatever else came to mind to create words. An amazing idea.
And a perfect one. People latched onto this. Anyone that could display
text could display ascii art. It was fast, compact, independant of
platform type, and one group in particular set their sights on it the
most, the then-thriving Amiga scene. It was perfect for Bulletin Board
Systems, text-based adventures, for anything they could think of. Perfect
then, and to this day for file descriptions.
While ascii dominated the Amiga scene, the PC scene was giving birth to an
art medium of their own, ANSI. Colored blocks. Oh, the wonders. But there
were people that werent satisfied with ANSI, they had seen ascii art, and
it had captivated their imaginations. Some people believe that demand
creates supply, and because of this, ascii was tentatively introduced to
the PC scene as an art form.
Tinyz, a member of the Amiga scene warez group Katharsis, recognized the
demand, and started in on the supply. A one-man art group was created by
Tinyz, and this introduced what had long been Amiga-only art and
previously Commodore 64, but not to the extent of the Amiga scene into
the PC art scene. Katharsis!Ascii was implemented in March of 1994. Tinyz
soon found kindred spirits, and more artists joined Katharsis!Ascii, now
known as plain Katharsis, or KTS. Others tried to duplicate Tinyz and the
way he brought ascii art to the scene, but to no avail. Tinyz was the
first to establish a true ascii-only art group in the PC art scene.
Previous to Tinyz, there were only a few ascii artists that were as known
as Tinyz, one of those being Piromaniak of TRiBE. But no one had the grip
on the proverbial ascii testicles in the PC scene that KTS!Ascii did. No
one, that is, until Remorse rose out of the dirt and mooned Katharsis with
its hairy collective buttocks.
I, along with Necronite then of ex-Union, Shiver felt that our art
wasnt the quality KTS was looking for, so we decided to start our own
ascii art group, dubbed Remorse, and started in October of 1994.
Originally, it was meant to be in homage to Tinyz and KTS, but it didnt
quite turn out that way. Remorse quickly gained members that produced
quality art, and was KTSs first actual competition. Oh, RMRS and KTS
didnt realize it at first, but within a few months, Remorse spurred KTSs
release of THE-NME.TXT, which was one giant Im better than you
directed towards Remorse.
While the Remorse death/rebirth drama was being acted out Ill exclude
that from this -- you can find the history of Remorse elsewhere, several
groups decided to follow in the footsteps of Remorse and KTS. But it
wasnt until the year-long torpor of Remorse and the birth of Whodinis
love child, Trank, that any of these groups started to thrive. With Trank,
Whodini recruited most of the quality artists from the then-defunct
Remorse and several new faces. A few of the members of these new groups
started imitating the style of ts, K-Spiff, KXMode, Mr. Kite and Lord
Jazz. With this wide-spread imitation came a division to the ascii scene:
Newschool and oldschool.
Newschool was more than just the use of the standard /, , , -, and .
It didnt limit itself to merely an outline, it went a step further to add
filling and shading. Several artists arose that awed the scene with their
innovation. Artists such as Asphixia aka J. Hale, Killa Hertz,
Nuremberg, later on several artists from groups like s0ap Sons of Ascii
Prophets and Noname, artists like Mr. Self Destruct, Discyple, Cain,
countless others, all showing creativity and talent in the way they
designed their asciis.
Unfortunately, the times of the great ascii art era appeared to have
waned. Not many groups thrive still, Remorse is still around, being the
longest lived group, along with Odelay and a few other smaller ones. The
Amiga ascii scene also is not thriving as much as it once was, many of the
older, once highly-active artists are no longer participating as they used
to. The once deemed unstoppable momentum of the ascii community appears to
be slowly winding down to a halt.
But have faith. We will prevail. We were here before you, and we will be
here long after you. Ascii art has existed since before people used hard
drives, back when you had to plug your Commodore 64 into the TV. Its not
just an artform, its an expression, a style. The creative process can
never be stifled completely, and we will overcome.
Long live ascii.
Necromancer - necrom@remorse.org
Remorse Founder
ACiD Productions