Remember how great ASCII art used to be in game guides?

Back in the old days (10+ years ago), guides weren’t a thing that websites had a dedicated writing team for. Instead, they were written for free by absolute heroes who toiled away for months on end, updating their guides to new versions until they had cleared it to 100% and documented everything, entirely in their spare time. Go to sites like NeoSeeker and GameFAQs and you can still see their work preserved, their beautiful HTML formatting, and their instructions on the precise font and size you should view the guide in (or it would mess up the formatting and ruin all the work they put into the contents lists).

I used to sit up reading these in the 90s and 00s, a little goblin who wasn’t yet good enough to complete these games without help. You reached out to me, guides writers, and you never even knew it. And the true marker of the dedication of these artisans can be seen in one thing: the ASCII art of game titles they put in at the top of their work. A true craft that has died out but deserves to be seen and celebrated.

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