If you use a Gemini browser, you can visit gemini://ansi.hrtk.in/list/ and render 50k+ ANSI/ASCII images as if you are downloading them on a modem. It's terrific.
I have a folder of .ANS files I’ve collected from this site, and when my terminal opens it loads a random one from the folder. It’s a silly little things but it gives me that “connecting to a BBS” nostalgia feeling every time I open the terminal.
TheDraw, ACiDDraw and PabloDraw were the most popular ANSI editors in the BBS era, with modern alternatives like Moebius and SyncDraw still used today.
Durdraw is a modern and powerful ANSI editor for Linux/Unix/MacOS/WSL. Unlike other ANSI editors, it supports Unicode/Utf-8 encoding and 256 colors. Frame-based animation with custom speed control, too.
Unrelated, I asked Grok to "Generate ANSI art of the cover of the first issue of Iron Man War Machine" (I did this back in the BBS days for a friend's welcome screen) and it repeatedly outputs:
|_______|\n
|_______|\n
It's been going for a minute and still going as I submit this comment
There's a program called `durdraw` for Linux that works well for 'playing' the files. But it won't leave it on the screen afterward as far as I can tell. Also look for the Perfect DOS VGA 437 font.
16 comments
[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 68.9 ms ] threadhttps://16colo.rs/pack/blndr2025b/BLENDER2025B-2STONED.ANS
https://durdraw.org
Other modern editors are Moebius and IcyDraw (part of Icytools).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitchX
Here are some examples:
https://16colo.rs/pack/acid-100/ANSI-100.ANS
https://16colo.rs/pack/sense-19/logos-19.ans
https://16colo.rs/pack/awe-20/MID-BX.ASC
And a little video on youtube that made me rediscover this nostalgia recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHgcrdv8zpM
|_______|\n |_______|\n
It's been going for a minute and still going as I submit this comment
durdraw -p file.ans