Links

Links to related Sites. Text Art, BBS, Demoscene and more

You don't have to look here for links to sites where you can download tools to edit ANSIs or ASCII art. I have the most important tools available right here on my site. Check the download section for the list of tools that are available for download. What you can find here though are references to other online archives related to BBS, text art, demoscene etc. , other resources sites, official demoparty sites, homepages of other art groups, links to sites of ex-SAC members, online tools, forums and much more. You can also find HTML code that you can take and implement into your own website to link to RoySAC.com or SuperiorArtCreations.com via a nice and colorful 468x60 pixels banner ad. Cheers!

Scene Archives, Repositories and Preservation

Site Description
Scene.org - is a non-profit organization aimed at providing the 'electronic art scene' with a forum for communication and for sharing their work. FTP Access to Gigabytes of Demos, Intros, Ansi Art, Ascii Art, VGA Art and more.
TextFiles.com - online archive by Jason Scott with several subdomains has a huge collection of art pack, emags, cracktros, bbs logs, bbs lists, ASCII files, text files and a lot more. Often well sorted. Textfiles.com subdomains and spin off sites:
Jason Scott from TextFiles.com has the whole content of the Dark Domain DVD (by RaD Man/ACiD) and more online. You can browse the whole artpacks archive here. Most of the packs can be browsed and watched online via web browser at SixteenColors.net.

Year/Sect Notes Textfiles.com
File Archive
Browse/View at
SixteenColors.net
ACiD Packs All ACiD art packs Files  - 
iCE Packs All iCE art packs files  - 
1990  -  browse
1991 Aces of ANSI  -  browse
1992 First monthly artpacks appeared files browse
1993 files browse
1994 files browse
1995 files browse
1996 files browse
1997 files browse
1998 files browse
1999 files browse
2000 HiRes art becomes dominant files browse
2001 files browse
2002 files browse
2003 files browse
2004 files browse
2005 files browse
2006 files browse
2007 files browse
2008 files browse

Defacto2.net by Ben Garrett is a web site that is dedicated to the preservation of the computer underground counterculture, with a focus on the PC cracking scene.
Pouet.net - Information repository for scene releases, groups and BBS repository and networking site. Maintained by sceners for sceners.
Sixteen Colors Archive - Comprehensive online Archive of Scene Art Packs from 1990 until today with the ability to view them in your Browser (yes, the ANSI's and ASCII's). Login/Registration is required.
ASCIIArena.com is an online archive with browsable oldskool Amiga ASCII art by numerous artists, providing rating and ranking features to signed up members. Verified members can also provide comments to every release.
ASCII Cartel is an oldskool Amiga ASCII art style online archive with collections from various ASCII artists from around the world. It is currently hosted at Sapphire.no.
Graphic Zone (GfxZone.org) is a library of classic Commodore Amiga and PC pixel artwork, sorted by release parties and individual graphic artists.
The Text Mode Demo Archive exists as a depository for demos that run in plain text mode.
Old-Skool.net is an archive for oldskool Amiga and PC demos, music, diskmags and more.
4Sceners.de - Is a demoscene portal in German, which provides news and also has a huge demo archive, including tons of videos of C64, Amiga, PC DOS, Windows and Wild Demos. They also have an image gallery with contributions by many artists and more. Also a list with demo groups and contact information and web site URL is available. The content is well structured and sorted to make it easy to find stuff.

German demoscene site, news, party releases, demos, intros, pixel art images, videos for non-Windows 32 PC productions on machines like the Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, Amiga PPC, MS Dos, Dreamcast, Gameboy Advanced, Play Station 2, Xbox, Wild and some Windows Demos. Artist and Groups references.
The Amiga Demoscene Archive (ADA) is hosted by Untergrund.net and has a huge collection of downloadable Amiga demos in ADF or DMS format, ready to be used with your favorite Commodore Amiga emulator.
ExoticA at Exotica.org.uk is an Amiga demo/music (mods), retro-gaming, Commodore 64 demos & music, demo groups & parties repository in Wiki format. The site was started by Jools Wills aka "BuZz" in 1997.
Bitworld by Bitfellas.org is a large Commodore Amiga demos and intro database. It has many productions available directly for download. It also includes credits for each production with cross references for each group, member, pack disk etc. to additional entries within the repository.
Break's Amiga Demo and Intro Releases List is a huge repository for Commodore Amiga demos and intros by the Finish scener Mikko Nieminen aka "Break". He also made the file backup of his big repository available for download in 28 RAR archives (in total over 3 Gigabytes!) at this FTP Server (http://minie0.pp.fi/amiga_backup/).
The Commodore 64 Scene Database (CSDB) is a comprehensive repository and database for C64 scene releases, sceners, groups and their productions, including demos, intros, music disks, slideshows and much more.
Intro-Inferno.com is a file repository for intros across all platforms, including Commodore Amiga, C64, PC (DOS and Windows), PSP, SNes, MSX, Megadrive, ZX Spectrum, Linux and Atari systems.
The BBS Archive - BBS Software and tools available for download in a huge BBS Software archive at Archive.theBBS.org, including over 1,000 PPE's for the PCBoard BBS System by Clark Development.
deviantARTscene Search Engine - A Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) created by TimeWarrior, one of the last few remaining BBS sysops who refuse to die out. The CSE crawls deviantART.com, Sixteen Colors and my site to name some of its sources. Use it to find interesting artwork, especially ANSI and ASCII text art stuff.
 

Groups and Individual Sceners

Site Description
ACID.org - Official Homepage of the Ansi Art Group ACID - Ansi Creators In Demand.
Insane Creators Enterprises ICE.org - Official Homepage of the Ansi Art Group ICE - Insane Creators Enterprises.
Chemical Reaction (cRO) - Official Homepage of our fellow german Scene Art Group Chemical Reaction (cRO) at chemical-reaction.org. Hi Radi :).
Blocktronics (now at Blocktronics.NET, because the domain Blocktronics.org expired) - A new generation ANSI art group, which was founded in 2008 by some kids who are for the most part second or third generation text artists, primarily using the Windows ANSI editor PabloDraw and creating amazing elaborate and innovative new ANSI art that is definitely worth checking out. They are active, so they might also be the right source to contact, if you happen to need getting an ANSI done for your group, site or project.

Blocktronics also maintain a YouTube video channel with provocative and educational videos about text art and an artist profile page at the social network for artists called deviantART.com.
Official Homepage of Joan G. Stark aka Spunk or JGS, author of the "History of ASCII (Text) Art" article and fellow ASCII artist of the public-domain text art scene. ASCII-ART.com is the splash page for geocities.com/SoHo/7373/ or geocities.com/spunk1111/. The text version of the site can be found at geocities.com/joan_stark/.
"Cleaner" Home Page - ASCII, ANSI Artist, Sysop and Demoscener with a nice collection of online viewable Text Art and Demoparty Photographs.
 

Scene Music (Tracker and SID Music)

Site Description
Amiga Music Preservation Project or AMP at AmP.DASCENE.NET has a huge collection of scene music in its original MOD (MODULE) format and information about individual musicians of the scene, such as their group memberships, alternative handles and for many of them also pictures and interviews. The name of the project is a bit misleading, they do also preserve modules from PC trackers like Fasttracker, Screamtracker, Digitracker and X-tracker and not only modules in Amiga Soundtracker and Protracker format.
The MOD Archive - is a tracker music (MOD) preservation project and archive for MOD's from the Commodore Amiga, MS DOS PC and Atari Computers. The site catalogs tracker music in MOD, XM, IT, S3M, MTM, 669, STM, AHX, HVL and MED format sorted by musicians, but also has a good search feature to find specific songs quickly. It has a support forums and allows users who created an account at the site to rate and review any of the available music files. Based on the popularity of songs during a certain times are charts generated. From time to time are old-school tracker musicians and their work high lighted in an article published on the web site as well. Check it out at ModArchive.org. A dump of the whole content of the archive (over 23 GB zipped) is available for download via torrent. See details here.
High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC) is a constantly expanded collection of Commodore 64 SID music files that are available for download in a single package. The collection is also availble for download in PSID64 format for playback on MMC64, 1541 Ultimate, MMC-IEC, SD-IEC and similar devices.
Stone Oakvalley's Authentic SID Collection (SOASC) is a huge collection of Commodore 64 SID Music files that can be downloaded in original SID format or in Mpeg 1 Layer 3 (MP3) format. There are three different MP3 versions available for each song, a recording via CSG 8580R5, MOS 6581R2 and MOS 6581R4.
AMC - Amiga Music Collection. tracker tunes, ripped from various Amiga cracktros and other Amiga related music. Full List of Tunes.
 

Retro-Remakes / Recreation

Site Description
OSDM (Oldschool Demo Maker) forums and tools download. Check out my user profile at the Forum.

OSDM is a tool for Windows 32 to create old-school style intros or cracktros without the need to know how to program. All it takes is some understanding of design and what looks good and to learn the not so intuitive user interface of the tool. OSDM was developed by Volker [Peace] Stepprath of Testaware and it is free to download, use and share with others.
Flashtro.com - Hundreds of (mostly Amiga) cracktros recreated in Macromedia Flash. Access to most flash versions of the Cracktros requires unfortunately an active Flashtro.com account, which is free, but not instantly activated after sign-up.

Also see my blog post Retro Cracktro Remakes Collection Volume 1 to download a collection of remakes.
Retro-Remakes.net - is a site dedicated to re-create old-school Commodore Amiga and Commodore 64 (C64) intros and cracktros for Microsoft Windows 32 operating systems like Windows XP and Vista. They already re-created over 400 cracktros so far. No emulator needed to watch them.

Also see my blog post Retro Cracktro Remakes Collection Volume 1 to download a collection of remakes.
Doc Snyders retro Commodore 64 intro/cracktro remakes in Macromedia Flash format at DocSnydersPage.de. The german scene enthusiast Doc recreated over 100 classic C64 crack intros from well known cracker groups like TRSI, Triad, Genesis Project and others and made them available for viewing on his web site.

The only thing that I don't like is the fact that he sometimes added his signature/logo within the cracktro itself and in every case did not use original text content for the scrollers, but his own writings (mostly crediting himself). This remake credits belong into the loader or end screen of the intro. The text content itself is a little piece of history. If you try to make authentic remakes, keep them as authentic as you can and add your non-authentic stuff somewhere around it and not into it. But that is just my personal opinion.
 

Archives in Alternative Formates Such as Video

Site Description
Demoscene.tv - Oldskool and current Demo's Video Streaming.
Defacto2 Cracktro Videos - Large number of PC Cracktro videos at the YouTube.com account of Ben Garrett, who runs the scene archive at Defacto2.net.
SAC Releases on YouTube - This is my YouTube account where I upload SACtros and SAC crack intros, which I captured and/or improved based on existing captures by Hetero and other sources. The videos will become available directly from this website eventually, but until then, check out "sacreleases" at YouTube.
NewDawnFadez on YouTube - has over 600+ videos up, mostly demos and intros PC DOS, new Win32 productions and oldskool Amiga and C64 releases. Constantly adding more videos.
Hetero/SAC^Razor1911 Cracktro Videos - Hetero's online archive of his cracktros in video format at his LKCC YouTube.com account. He also has a few cracktros by other codes available as video.
 

Demoparties

Site Description
Assembly Demo Party - Official Homepage of the Assembly Demo Party held annually during summer in Finland. Since 1992.
The Gathering Demo Party - Official Homepage of the The Gathering Demo Party held annually during spring in Norway. Since 1992.
Revision Demo Party Revision Demo Party - Official Homepage of the The Revision Demoparty held annualy in Germany since 2011 as continuation of the now past Demo Party "Breakpoint" (new and old organizers, but main old organizer of Breakpoint called it quits).
Breakpoint Demo Party - Official Homepage of the The Breakpoint Demoparty held annualy in Bingen, Germany between 2003 and 2010. Breakpoint developed out of the Mekka & Symposium demo party, which was held in previous years in Fallingbostel, Germany. The party continues but since 2011 as "REVISION".
Great Demoparties from the past that were discontinued: The Party held between 1991-2002 between Christmas and New Year in Herning and Aars, Denmark; Mekka & Symposium held between 1996 - 2002 in Fallingbostel, Germany. More a list of Demoparties see this article at Wikipedia.
 

News Sites, Broadcasting, Directories

Site Description
Bitfellas.org - Demoscene news and updates. Also available a demoscene radio that plays old mod files and sountracks from demos and intros. The scene news site Diskmag.de and its tons of scene related articles and interviews was merged with Bitfellas in 2007.
PC Demo Fanclub by Jeremy Williams. Upcoming V5 (expected in 2008) will be available at jerware.org/fanclub/
NForce.nl (Note: Moved to NFOHump.com) - Shows the lastest scene releases, what, who and when; PC software, Game Consols, Video. A RSS feed is also available.
Dmoz Ascii Links - Ascii Art Links at the ODP - Open Directory Project Website Dmoz.org.
ASCII Arts Directory - List of ASCII art related sites, mostly individual ASCII artists.
 

Text art history, FAQ, Tutorials and Forums

Site Description
Computer Art Scene History An Abbreviated History of the Underground Computer Art Scene by Napalm, 11/10/1998, The History of Art and Technology. Stored at the cd.textfiles.com online archive by Jason Scott, taken from the Dark Domain scene art DVD by Rad Man/ACiD.
100 YEARS OF THE COMPUTER ART SCENE Presented by Jason Scott and RaD Man (ACiD), Notacon Conference - Cleveland, Ohio, USA, April 23-25th, 2004 . Link points to my backup at Amazon S3, because the original URL at "http://www.cow.net/conned/notacon/artscene/notacon-100artscene-transcript.txt" is not woring anymore.
Online Software Piracy of the Last Millennium (Note: Link points to my backup copy of the document at Amazon S3, because the original link at http://www.defacto2.net/web.pages/Online%20Software%20Piracy of%20the%20Last%20Millennium%201.0.pdf does not work anymore, Roy March 12,2010) PDF - History of the Scene : The beginnings of the IBM-PC Underground. Written by Ben Garrett aka Ipggi (operator of Defacto2.net).
History of the Scene The beginnings of the IBM-PC Underground by Ippgi - 4/20/1999. Located at the artscene.textfiles.com archive by Jason Scott.
Introduction to the Demoscene original written by Adok/Hugi for the Hugi eMag at www.hugi.scene.org, which does not exist anymore. The link goes to a preserved copy (snapshot) of the original page. The navigation links to pages that don't exist.
PC Demoscene FAQ PC Demoscene FAQ, an introduction to the PC demoscene, written by Thomas Gruetzmacher (aka Tomaes)
The Shadow Internet four page article about "the scene" by Jeff Howe for Wired Magazine. Published in January 2005 in Wired Magazine Issue 13.01.
Ascii-Art.de Ascii Art Dictionary created by Andreas Freise
the scenery project guide to groups, parties and releases on the c64/amiga demoscene (pc is in development)
The Hacker Demo scene and
 it's cultural artifacts
by George Borzyskowski, School of Design, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia. The paper reports on a study undertaken into vernacular forms of multimedia production referred to as "demos" or "intros" and variants of these terms among adherents of a computer oriented subculture identifying itself as "the scene". Published at OJuice, the Article.
The Hacker Crackdown Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier by Bruce Sterling
ASCII art article at Wikipedia about ASCII art
ANSI art article at Wikipedia about ANSI art and the computer text art scene.
Acheron.org Seems to be down. Not sure if only temporary (Roy March 12, 2010). Acheron ANSI, ASCII and RIP art forums and portal at Acheron.org was discontinued in 2004 and is now part of the Sixteencolors.net site, specificallly the Sixteencolors.net Wiki at http://wiki.sixteencolors.net/.
Thuglife PC ASCII Scene Board and Forums at Thuglife.org. Also covers PC Demoscene topics.
Hacker's Wisdom Collection of Links to Articles and Books about Hackers, Hacking and Hacker Code, compiled by luis fernandes.
 

ASCII/ANSI Related Online Tools

Site Description
ASCIImator at ASCIImater.net is a funny online tool to create simple ASCII animations (ASCIImations) with community site attached to it to publish and share your creations as registered user or guest. I created this little fun animation as a guest hehe.
Photo2Text.com is a nice and easy to use image to ASCII converter with a number of converter options, such as specification of the character set used and a cool feature that lets you adjust the "brightness" of the ASCII result. I wrote a blog post to this image to ASCII converter at my blog where I also show some examples of how the results actually look like.
Unicode Charcter Reference at FileFormat.info lists all Unicode Characters in an A to Z Index. It provides for each charcter tons of information in the details from the name over encoding and JAVA data to Microsoft .NET properties.
ASCII-Art.LAP.HU a web page in Hungarian that lists tons of ASCII art related resources, tools, sites and more. Basically, if I don't link to it from my site, he might does. Nobody is perfect, right? :)
VideoLan (VLC) Media Player The VideoLan VLV media player is an open source player for most poppular video and streaming formats, which has an interesting advanced output option for video images to colored ASCII Art text (ANSI). This little and nifty feature is well hidden within the advanced settings of the player. I wrote a blog post about VLC and its video to ASCII art real-time conversion capabilities, which also contains a step by step guide for how to enable this feature.
 

Links to Current and Ex SAC Member Homepages

>>
Official SAC Homepage (currently under construction, sorry)

Site Description
Hetero Homepage of Hetero. 2nd Founder of SAC. LKCC and Razor1911 Member. "http://www.textsure.net/~hetero/" and "http://www.lkcc.org/hetero" are both down :( (Coding, VGA, ANSI and ASCII)
Rainer Homepage of Rainer/ex-SAC. MOD Musician (S3M, XM).
Asphyx deviantART Homepage of Asphyx (VGA Pixel Art and ASCII).
Dipswitch Dipswitch/SAC Homepage at Underground.net (MOD music and ANSI art)
Grymmjack evolv3 the Homepage of Grymmjack (ASCII artist). Former homepage at "evolv3.funklabs.org" is down :(
Webpige0 Homepage of Webpig0 aka w0 at Kung-Fu.nu (VGA artist).
PaniqKrypt.org Homepage of Nerv/SAC (ASCII and some organizing). Site at "PaniqKrypt.org" is down :(
SNS.Planet-D.net Sensers web homepage (ANSI & ASCII art)
Exocet Ex0cet's (Ex0) homepage at Untergrund.net (ANSI/ASCII)
Chip-On! The web project by the former SAC musician Svenzzon (tracker MOD musician)
 

Link to Superior Art Creations and/or Roy/SAC

Link to SuperiorArtCreations.com or RoySAC.com! Grab the code below, which will render the code as you can see above. Thanks.


















 

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