GameFAQs ASCII Art

Named for the characters used in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, ASCII art began to develop at the tail end of the 20th century, its heyday tied to BBS forums and Usenet groups. With these proto-social media falling into obscurity, so too did ASCII art. But the image restrictions of GameFAQs on both FAQs and message boards created a fork for ASCII art (henceforth simply referred to as ASCII) that enabled the hobby to enjoy an extended Renaissance. From there, another fork formed between the FAQs and the boards. That is to say, the ASCII you see on this blog was not posted on the titular FAQs, but the message boards they accompanied. While FAQ art only used the fixed width font Courier (fixed meaning it could be posted anywhere that uses Courier and it would maintain its shape), message board art used the variable width font Arial, size 10. Interestingly, AOL chatrooms used this same font and size in their ASCII (colloquially known as Macro art), which may be how GameFAQs users picked it up so quickly.

Patamon was a user of the boards, and one of the pioneers of the board-specific ASCII that became popular across the site and even other sites. Working within the formatting limitations of the boards--the aforementioned Arial 10 as well as no double single spacing or full spacing, which meant empty space had to be filled with periods/ellipses--he and others created ASCII that could be posted in any topic/thread. His most famous work, which you may have seen at some point, Mario riding Yoshi, later nicknamed LUEshi due to its temporary domination of the board Life, the Universe, and Everything.

[Image Description: A screenshot of 27 lines of text containing a variety of text characters. The characters are arranged to form an image of Mario riding Yoshi. Mario and Yoshi are looking at each other and smiling. End I.D.]

Or such was the case before it became TOO popular and had to be relegated to specifically named "***ASCII***" topics to avoid being moderated for "disruptive posting." At the same time, new art was created and shared on the message board for the game Alphabet Zoo for the Commodore 64. This art would make its way to the more popular boards, often edited for additional humor such as the ever unexpected Jinjo, sombreros, top hats, face swapping, and more. All this occurred in the early 2000s. Unfortunately, you won't find many of these posts due to board archiving not being introduced until 2008 (there's that GameFAQs antique aesthetic again.) There used to be an exhaustive archive of GameFAQs ASCII, but much of it is also lost to time.

By the time I even knew about ASCII art around 2007 or so, the party was over. Patamon had long left, as did many of the more prolific artists. The ones who hadn't left simply didn't have the desire to keep up with it, what with image sharing becoming easier. Perhaps most importantly, the format of the boards began to discourage it in order to favor mobile displays. In 2014, an update banned strings over 80 characters, which was the final nail in the coffin. My decision to keep making ASCII in the Arial 10 style is purely traditional; there's no longer a popular site to post these variable width ASCII unless in screenshot form. I think the Japanese Discord I used to lurk said it best:

[Image Description: A screenshot of a Google Translate translation made up of two columns of text. The text on the left is in Japanese and reads, "Komyuniti ga shimetsu shita nochi mo ikinokotte AA o tsukutte kita seikimatsu no bakemono-san mitaidesu o." The text on the right is in English and reads, "It's like the end-of-the-century monster who survived the death of the community and made AA." End I.D.]

ASCII at large isn't dead though. Traditional fixed-width ASCII is still regularly made by small but dedicated users on various platforms, often tagged as #ASCII or #ASCIIart. A fellow GameFAQs user who made ASCII for the FAQs has come out of hiding and can now be found on Twitter. Sixteen Colors is a regularly updated art gallery for ANSI/ASCII/other antique Internet art. "Braille" ASCII has taken off due to its fixed-width and small size being ideal for Twitch memes. There is also the Japanese cousin of ASCII, Shift_JIS (SJIS) art/"AA", which still boasts a large output on dedicated image boards like 2chan. You can usually find these under the tag #アスキーアート, or at the sites Yaruyomi, AA Hub, and UTF8 Art.

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