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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

Why the focus on warez? There was a lot of ASCII/ANSI art making that had nothing to do with illegally ripping off copywritten software. For example, any BBS sysop would've had an opportunity to show off their custom ANSI art as part of the BBS itself.

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There was a brief period after the precipitous crash of BBS popularity where exposure to ANSI art was mostly through warez intros and crackscene tools.

Anyone who was a teen in the 90s is more likely to reminisce about the warez scene than the BBS scene, which was popular when they were rather young kids.

I think it's also a lot more interesting that cracking teams usually had an artist.

ANSI artists and MOD trackers! Such an incredible wealth of cultural artifacts from that scene.

I think it has more to do with the type of audiences. I was lucky enough to have access to my dad's Atari 8-bit computer, as well as a 286, both that allowed me to connect to BBS systems. I was exposed to the ASCII/ANSI art early on. Most of my friends did not have PCs until the late 90's or early 2000's. Their experience with the art was through .NFO files in warez. I imagine how old you are, and when your first experience with computing, dictates your connection to the art scene.

True. But having seen both I think the ones who were the best at it tended to team up with the warez distributors.

Yeah, I remember a lot of shareware games I used to play would show a big ANSI art thing to promote their BBS and how to buy the game.

I googled and found a lot of ZZT screenshots as well, not really the same but it could be used to create ANSI art.

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