Textmode Field Guide

ASCII Art Gallery

Explore ASCII and plain text artwork from the textmode scene, with artist, group, release, and historical context.

ASCII art builds images from printable characters and spacing rather than terminal drawing commands. Scene artists stretched that constraint into logos, portraits, advertisements, information files, and elaborate monochrome compositions.

82,203Artworks

9,166Artists

902Groups

5,078Releases

1990–2026Release span

ASCII art without terminal control sequences

Unlike ANSI art, plain ASCII generally relies on the order and spacing of characters already present in the file. That makes the typeface, character width, line endings, and intended terminal columns important to the final appearance.

The archive separates plain ASCII and text-oriented works from ANSI when the underlying parser, SAUCE metadata, and file evidence support the distinction.

More than seven-bit typewriter pictures

BBS-era ASCII frequently used extended DOS glyphs alongside ordinary punctuation and letters. Those works are still structurally plain text even when their character set extends beyond strict seven-bit ASCII.

Information files and FILE_ID.DIZ descriptions also belong to the broader textmode record. They document releases, credits, and the language surrounding the art scene.