#ascii corporation

[the2dvgstages]

"Mining Town" (on fire) - Ardy Lightfoot

[the-monkey-ruler]

Professional Mahjongg Gokuu (1986) プロフェッショナル麻雀悟空

Date: December 25, 1986

Platform: MSX  / Famicom Disk System / Sharp X68000 / FM Towns / NEC PC-8801 / NEC PC-9801 / FM-7

Developer: Chat Noir

Publisher: ASCII Corporation

Genre: Trivia / Board Game Franchises: Mahjong Gokū

Type: Crossover

Summary:

Play riichi mahjong against characters from the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West in this game for the Famicom Disk System and Japanese computers.

Source: https://www.giantbomb.com/professional-mahjongg-gokuu/3030-33870/

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfnZtJEhXEU&ab_channel=TheVideoGamesMuseum

[z2z-gaming-and-random-art-ai]

Console Fighting Games of 1998 Fighter Maker

Fighter Maker is a 3D Fighting Game developed by ASCII Corporation for the PlayStation and released in Japan on the 30th of July 1998, with a US release the following year. 

Fighter Maker as you would expect by its name has an extensive array of options for creating your own fighters with martial art style, changing the frames of animation and editing your fighter's arsenal of moves with over 800 available to choose from.

In addition to the fighter creator mode, Fighter Maker has an exhibition mode for fights against AI-controlled opponents and a VS mode for two-player fights.

Fighter Maker is the first 3D version of Fighter Maker having previously been 2D games with 2D Fighter Maker 95 and 2D Fighter Maker 2nd. A 3D sequel to Fighter Maker was released in 2002 on the PlayStation 2 releasing in Japan and North America. 

1. Intro 00:00 

2. Games Intro 00:10 

3. Gameplay 02:05 

4. Outro 08:56 

 Twitter (Gaming & AI Art) 

https://twitter.com/zero2zedGaming 

Instagram (AI Art) 

https://www.instagram.com/random_art_ai/ 

For more fighting game videos check out the playlists below. 

Console Fighting Games of 1993 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJOZYl1h1CFcKSo9Eglrv2NFDHAqNDRi 

Console Fighting Games of 1994 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJOZYl1h1CF-R5w4NujQcYo8cCcOMHYv 

Console Fighting Games of 1995 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJOZYl1h1CEUiZn8FlwHoMcwoOzUqchX 

Console Fighting Games of 1996 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJOZYl1h1CF0j9K_v7UqS3dxjwh6XIIM 

Console Fighting Games of 1997 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJOZYl1h1CFm1r27Q5PvbO_4CjYYsj4- 

Console Fighting Games of 1998 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJOZYl1h1CHG7kROLoO-HAXmmzib8cd4

[smbhax]

Capcom vs. SNK ASCII Stick FT (DC)

[byruit]

Sony HitBit HB-101 (1984)

The HB-101 is part of the MSX standard, a unified home computer architecture developed by Microsoft and ASCII Corporation.

- CPU: Zilog Z80, running at 3.58 MHz

- RAM: 64 KB

- Video: Video Display Processor (VDP) with a maximum resolution of 256 x 192 pixels, supporting up to 16 colors

- Sound: Programmable Sound Generator (PSG) for audio

[mallowmaenad]

emoticon: forum oldhead or anyone who abhors any computer made after 2006 making a little smiley face with a nose or aesthetic blogger consulting an archive of kawaii ascii art to find the best way to express their absolute squee over the lolita dress they wore to Cherryblossomcon, Lansing in 2017.

emote: hypercompressed png of a random dude's face making an expression that could be described as "anguished contentment" everyone calls it jeggledarn and when you go to look up why you find a 20 hour video on the history of No One Can Stop Mr. Domino speedrunning and how Jegglemire114 now does yugioh tournament commentary sponsored by little caesar's and looks fucked up now due to divorce and pills

emoji: the apple corporation is forcing every tech company out there to adapt to their new plastic looking piece of shit "eyes closed waggling smirk" that will inevitably get lost in the sea of nearly identical ways to make a basic ass smiley face look odd or unpleasant. apps everywhere now make it impossible to type ;-} without making the whole page seize up to forcibly corporatize your choice of keystrokes

[gmlocg]

31.) Rogue

Release: 1980 | GGF: RPG, Roguelike | Developer(s): A.I. Design, Greenwood Software, Icon Design Ltd. | Publisher(s): A.I. Design, Epyx, Inc., ASCII Corporation, Mastertronic Ltd., YTMTsoft, Greenwood Software, Pixel Games UK | Platform(s): Mainframe (1980), DOS (1984), Macintosh (1985), Amiga (1986), Atari ST (1986), PC-88 (1986), PC-98 (1986), TRS-80 CoCo (1986), Amstrad CPC (1988), Atari 8-bit (1988), Commodore 64 (1988), ZX Spectrum (1988), GP32 (2005), Linux (2005), GP2X (2009), Android (2012), Roku (2012), Antstream (2019), Windows (2020)

[girleboy]

my corporate cosplay summer was really so fun i became friends with these girls and we'd spend all day visiting each other's desks (all our managers were sick of us). we had a teams group chat and played ascii connect 4 all day and if anyone was wfh we'd zoom each other. we went out for lunch and sometimes dinner and we'd go for bubble tea after work and wander around gift shops. they all had smiskis on their computer stands lol.

[centrally-unplanned]

I played silly 90's eroge game VR-DATE Simulator May-Club, which some lunatics made a browser port of, as I saw people mentioning it on the dash. First off, these old eroges occasionally get remasters, and I just don't understand why they toss out the aesthetic of these things when they do:

You got rid of all the bold pixelation highlights! My dithering! You got rid of the framing box UI!? Look at how they massacred my boy -_-

Seriously those UIs are one of the greatest legacies of the PC-98 era, I am curious as to why they were so common (probably due to limitations on resolution flexibility, so they wanted to keep the main screen defined in scale, but I am just guessing). All ports should preserve them, but I do think there is a development limitations there; modern VN engines aren't quite built for it.

I found the game charming because it is a very comedic game - the main dude wants to bone before starting his corporate wagecuck conglomerate job, and finds a VR world where people date anonymously. So hijinks ensue and you spend tickets to go spin some plates, but half the time you meet up with girls you talk about gender discrimination in the corporate workplace? The difficulties of work-life balance? Handy tips on how to double-tap your company expense accounts for some light financial fraud at hostess bars? And those things are also played for laughs, it just isn't what I expected to find given the tone.

Early dating sim games are often funny this way because they were incredibly expensive - I don't have a price source for this one specifically, but they could approach ~$100 USD and that is in 1990's dollars. Which meant that their market was mainly just working adults, this wasn't primarily teens slipping lunch money over the counter. So the work is full otaku, but a niche of otaku such that you get a certain kind of blend of silly tropes and more adult jabs.

By the way, the game was actually localized to the US, in the 90's? I don't have a rock-solid source but apparently the explicit scenes for two of the routes were removed due to the designs of the characters in question. Which uh:

Yeah, not shocked at that choice.

I found it weird that this "VR world" just looks like the regular world?

Explicitly so, our main dude comments on it. Which you would think, okay, its a budget thing right? This way you get to portray the real world and the VR world with the same assets as you walk through both. But you pretty-much never do that; 99% of the game is in the VR world. So why have that plot detail at all? It made me notice it, and now I am questioning why they went with something so un-VR-like for the setting.

It really doesn't do much with the VR setting alas, though I didn't do all the routes. I love 90's era "the future will be virtual" stuff, but this one didn't deliver on much of any vision for what that would be.

I also can't check out all the routes quickly as I could not find any cohesive Let's Plays of the game. Normally that is how you experience all of these games these days, given their propensity for padding and difficulties in emulating. Maybe I should solve that problem myself lol. Since I did have to play it, shoutouts to Ben Woodhouse from 2003 for your GameFAQs guide and beautiful ASCII calendar of appearance times for helping me get through it

Anyway Akiho is best girl fuck your sexist bosses and get 👏that 👏bread👏; she absolutely has the best collection of facial expressions and her ending has a real touch of heart to it, respect.

[eimogji]

Made a zine about PNGs, so I thought I’d put it here!

[ID: Cover: “I love PNG’s” with a checkered background to representa. Transparent background. “I love” is in a bubble shape with flowers around it, and “PNG’s” is in a blocky angular shape.

Page 1: Smaller ones especially! Like this (pointing to a smiling party hat emoji). The page is drawn so every bit of text or drawing has an object modification box around it.

Page 2: A drawing of Esrah stimming anon their knees and exclaiming “they’re just so cute!” There’s a similar object modification box around them.

Page 3: “Can you really blame me?” Each word is in an outlined shape on a pile of various other emojis, shapes, and symbols.

Page 4: “One of my favorite sites is emojikitchen.dev.” Below the text is an addition equation of a cow emoji and a monocle emoji, combining to make a cow with a monocle.

Page 5: “Another one is flaticon, even though it has a pretty corporate art style.” Below the text is a simplistic drawing of a person in a plane, a tree, and a briefcase.

Page 6: “symbols, items, images, PNG’s!” Each word is drawn differently and there are various ASCII symbols scattered around them.

Back cover: “This zine was made on June sixteenth 2024” and signed “Esrah,” with a beetle emoji covering the part where a last name was written. The background is checkered just like the front, and each text section is within a unique shape. /End ID]

[tangibletechnomancy]

But really the thing that gets me about the "AI art isn't REAL art" argument-

More than the fact that this is a complete subjective non-argument, more than the fact that attempts to MAKE it objective inevitably lead to...dark places-

Is the fact that, fine, even if we agree that AI generation isn't INHERENTLY art, that's not going to take away the fact that humans fucking love taking "non-artistic" things and MAKING art out of them.

Look at ASCII art - that's "just" typing characters. Fractal art is a modern iteration of a long, LONG tradition of coloring math to make art. People ascribe meaning to found items and call them art - to broad agreement - all the time. Hell, this website itself has a whole subculture of shitposting artistic presentation into anything from candy wrappers to dog pee, or finding the value in art someone dreamed up and dismissed as nonsense upon waking.

So, sure, by one of my two own personal definitions of Art (1. Something someone creates or presents to project an idea; 2. Something someone finds Meaning in; i.e., potentially anything), yeah, I agree that, say, a generic portrait generated with no real intent beyond "look good on a shelf", because a Midjourney credit cuts into profits less than actually hiring an artist, to fill out a cover for Nepo Baby Cash Grab YA Book Of The Week isn't really Art. But what of when someone gives it an abstract prompt for the sake of seeing what the math engine produces in trying to make sense of it? What of when they find a result and spend 5 hours running it through multiple models, creating meaning in the chaos with every step? What of when someone shitposts up a storm, prints it out, and builds on top of it in the physical world? What of when someone uses it as a meditation on what latent space "looks" and "feels" like? What of when the flaws of the medium are the point? What of when the point is found in the fact that the computer doesn't know how absurd any given prompt is and just creates it anyway?

What if someone with hallucinations decides to take photos and img2img them into a deliberately imperfect approximation of what they see?

What if someone takes photos of their childhood play spots and img2img's them into what they imagined?

What if someone just challenges themself to take this "unartistic" medium and run wild with it for a full 24 hours to create one piece and a full meaning they can ascribe to it?

What if someone makes a whole series of art about jailbreaking the walled gardens of corporate AI?

This isn't a theoretical thing someone COULD do but no one IS - none of this is uncommon in the hobbyist space, because again, human beings will make art out of anything. ANYTHING. It's just what people do!

The Great Cosmic Tomato, created using img2img on a public domain photo of the planet Pluto from NASA's New Horizon's mission Generated under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

[the2dvgstages]

"Tablet Cave" - Ardy Lightfoot

[donotdestroy]

“We now call it the community industry. The history of the web went as follows: at first it was military, then education and now commerce oriented. What are the possibilities of artists in the confrontation with these three systems? All of the time you can notice the anti-authoritarian spirit that changes flavour. At one stage it is simply pacifist. At another time, when it comes to education, it deals with intellectual independence. As Twain once said: “I’ve never let my school interfere with my education”.

Right now, we live in a corporate atmosphere. The dominant frame in the artistic field is decorative art, but I cannot waste my time discussing it. In new media art, the radical and experimental artists always confront the dominant frame. And right now, it is the community industry that provides the most useful grip that the corporate world can possibly have on the online population. You have all these various dimensions of self-‐disclosure, and when you disclose things about yourself you share parts of your privacy that feed the system. And I think this is a good topic for artists. I am currently working on a project with Heath Bunting. I think this is a good topic because people are blind, they behave as sheep.” — Vuk Ćosić

Vuk Ćosić Deep ASCII​ 2021 Token ID: 0 Contract Address: 0x2C3c…dfFc Non-Fungible Token: ERC-1155 MP4: 46.1 MB (48,440,942 bytes), 742x1034px, 00:01:19 From the 1998 full length video Deep ASCII, running time 59 minutes Estimate £40,000 - 50,000

[archoneddzs15]

Super Famicom - Wizardry V - Heart of the Maelstrom

Title: Wizardry V - Heart of the Maelstrom / ウィザードリィV 災渦の中心

Developer: Sir-Tech Software / GAME STUDIO Inc.

Publisher: ASCII Corporation

Release date: 20 November 1992

Catalogue Code: SHVC-W5

Genre: RPG

No. of Players: 1

Despite the greatest magic of the ancient High Sages, great floods, earthquakes, and famine again pervade the great land of Llylgamyn. The great orb of L'Kbreth, an artifact of remarkable power that has protected the city for generations, is powerless to halt the scourge.

The Sages have discovered that the hidden reason is deeper and more frightening than the worst of these disasters. To save the very world as we know it, you and your intrepid party must march headlong into the...Heart of the Maelstrom!

What SFC/SNES RPG could you play that isn't Final Fantasy, Super Mario RPG, or Chrono Trigger that I would recommend? It's Wizardry 5, easily. Published by Capcom in North America, and also released in 1995 as part of the Satellaview service in Japan, the graphical look of Wizardry 5 is very welcoming and much easier on the eyes than the earlier computer versions of the game. Menus in the castle are accompanied by a background picture, making them more interesting to look at. The dungeon walls have textures instead of Apple II-style vector grid lines, so you can see doors and corners from several squares away. Monster sprites are crisp and bright and the shadowy versions of them are a cool feature.

Adding to the game's atmosphere are orchestral-sounding music tracks that let you know where you are in the menus and how deep you are in the dungeons. These music tracks are composed by the late Kentaro Haneda (RIP 1949-2007) and as always, they sound fantastic. So fantastic are his contributions to the soundtrack to the Wizardry world that there are CD albums such as "We Love Wizardry" that contain Sonic Symphony-style orchestrations of the Famicom and SFC Wizardry soundtracks.

The gameplay is extremely faithful to the original versions of the game but with new praiseworthy changes. The control scheme caters well to the lack of a keyboard. You can comfortably press the D-pad to navigate smoothly and select the menu option you want. You no longer need to manually type the name of spells to cast them, you just select them from your spellcaster's battle menu. The pacing in combat is much faster but pay attention to your characters' health points so they don't die without your knowledge.

One major problem with the game, and this only applies to the US version, is that there isn't a proper method of saving your game such as a password or multiple save files on the RAM, which means you can't really correct any mistakes you make in the game, so you'll have no choice but to go along with your losses (works like that in real life). The Japanese version actually supports the ASCII Turbo File and Turbo File 2, which are both game save devices meant to connect to the Famicom. But wait, "How can you connect this to the Super Famicom?" That's what the Turbo File Adapter is for. With this Adapter, you can connect any of the Turbo File devices to the Super Famicom with ease. Also, the US version is censored to adhere to Nintendo America's strict guidelines regarding nudity, religious imagery, and whatnot. The Japanese version is uncensored, so you have text like "sexy woman with a tail" and so on.

The control scheme isn't perfect, because in some places it can make the game drag on a bit longer than you'd like. Pressing forward against a wall will make you bump into it, and you may accidentally repeat that when you meant to close the message box. You always need to remember that the action button opens unlocked doors and not the forward direction. And the down direction spins you around instead of going in reverse. If you practice you can get the hang of the way the controls work.

Overall, Wizardry V got the royal treatment with this Super Famicom port thanks to the wonderful folks at GAME STUDIO Inc. and ASCII. Every element in the game was made with care and attention. D&D and RPG fans are in for a treat, and even young adventurers will like this one. If you've got time to delve down and play a good long number of hours on your Super Famicom, you can never really go wrong with this fifth title in the series. A Nintendo Switch Online re-release would be desirable, so if you find this one, then your adventure has begun.

[the-least-undefinable-ordinal]

video game recs?

Most of these games are on steam and their devs will probably do a better job selling them to you, the only exception is Nethack, it's open source though.

I'll also include games that are fairly popular, just in case you hadn't heard of them or they just happened to fade into the background noise of all the popular releases at the time.

Battle Brothers: Turn based low medieval fantasy strategy game. It just feels good to play on a moment to moment basis, the writing is great, if a bit misanthropic at times.

Darkest Dungeon: Turn based dungeon crawler with a setting heavily inspired by Lovecraft's original works. It explores the mental toll a life of dungeon delving would take, it doesn't have an explicit morality system but you end up making hard choices nonetheless.

Deep Rock Galactic: Co-op (up to) 4 player FPS where you're dwarves in space working for a laughably callous mining corporation. The game is great on its own but the devs stand out by being great to their players too (I don't think I've got the space to elaborate here though).

Disco Elysium: One of the best RPGs I've ever played, great writing, you play a drunk amnesiac detective who can plausibly get a heart attack from sitting in an uncomfortable chair.

Dredge: You have a fishing boat and you eventually start finding fish that were better left at the bottom of the ocean.

Dwarf Fortress: Masterwork of a game with a steep learning curve, a colony simulator where you manage dwarves. I went to war with two neighbouring civilization because (a) I have no distinction between police and army and (b) my army has very little understanding of the concept of "non-lethal force".

Euro Truck Simulator 2: Relaxing to play while listening to some albums, I've recently enjoyed David Bowie's first album.

FTL: Faster Than Light: Sci-fi roguelike with a wonderful combat system and great music. It's a really hard game though, I've got like 130 hours in it and like 4 victories (a good run is at most 2 hours long).

Hacknet: Puzzle game where you play a hacker, I love how the devs bothered to leave interesting files to go through in the computers you hack.

Hades: Roguelike with fun writing, pretty character designs and great voice acting.

Hollow Knight: Metroidvania with a gorgeous world to explore and a sublime soundtrack. I've heard it compared in atmosphere and world building to Dark Souls, which is great because my laptop starts to overheat in protest as soon as I start typing "Dark souls torrent " in my searchbar.

Kerbal Space Program: You are in charge of a space program, I'm currently doing small suborbital flights but I'll eventually have to send a rocket to the Mun (its in-game spelling). The physics are simulated in loving detail, the game includes a watered-down introduction to aerodynamics and orbital mechanics.

Nethack: An AD&D inspired roguelike that is older than I am, its systems are delightfully complex, it has ASCII graphics but you get used to them pretty quickly. My thesis advisor used to play this when he was my age.

[alln64games]

AI Shoghi 3

JP release: 18th December 1998

PAL release: N/A

NA release: N/A

Developer: i4 Corporation

Publisher: ASCII

N64 Magazine Score: N/A

The AI Shogi series had yearly releases from 1996 to 1998, each one being on a different platform: the 3DO, PlayStation and then N64. This one has one welcome feature that the previous N64 Shogi games didn’t, and that’s showing the moves each piece can make. It didn’t help me much for actually playing, as I still couldn’t quite tell how my opponents pieces would move.

This shogi game is very basic, though. The biggest visual thing is that you can change the background, and you can choose to play against player 2 or the CPU. The only additional feature is that you can edit the starting position of each piece, so I was able to play a match where my opponent only had pawns. I managed to get a stalemate which, unlike chess, meant that I won.

Remake or Remaster?

Clubhouse Games on Switch does the job.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play AI Shogi 3