Sample of Elosian Writing
All screenshots taken from the Evil Grinn BBS, 1993. All ANSI art by Jeff Robertson unless otherwise noted.
These images were made by running either the WWIV BBS itself or TheDraw in a DOS window, and taking screen captures. I know there is 1337 ANSI viewer software out there, but I already know how to use WWIV and TheDraw.
I can't remember if this was part of the logon process, or what. Hopefully even at 17 I knew that bastardized Zeppelin quote would make people cringe, and did it on purpose. That's my story and I'm stickin to it!
I think this was very similar to a screen from the Great Quest. The all-text BASIC version had exactly one hi-res screen in the whole game: when you first started the game, you were presented with a title-screen of a cave with the Evil Grinn peering out at you. This ANSI was of course a later reproduction.
An earlier version of the logon screen. This was before there was a version of TheDraw that had built-in support for "big fonts", so making titles like this was a laborious process. Curtis Cole went to the trouble to make these giant letters for me.
It is obvious that I just pasted Curtis' title onto the top of an even earlier logon screen, since the name of the BBS appears again in normal letters farther down the page. Because most people would've been using 25-line DOS modes, the big title would've appeared first on their screen and then then scrolled off the top as the rest slowly came over the 2400 baud connection.
I think WWIV had a lot more commands than this, but I sacrificed them for the sake of ANSI art!
ISTR that this is more or less what "Great Quest II" looked like, except that the size of the Grinn relative to the player has been greatly exaggerated. It would've really been about the same size, because everything in Adventure Construction Set had to fit on a tile.
Not sure what this was, but it was in the GFILES directory. Its not a very good representation of the Evil Grinn. I think it was supposed to look like there was a "hole" in the "grid" through which the Grinn was peering. Instead it looks like a black pumpkin or something.
I was in the 205!
It says "Andria"
This was the Stofonian Imperial Department of Civilization. Note the Stofonian Imperial flag showing the Sword of Stofs. Both the sword and suit of armor depicted are appropriate for the early imperial period, while the E.T.I. wasn't actually established under that name until some time later.
A still from taken from the animated ANSI The Coming of the Cubes. The actual ANSI file is available here, for those equiped to view it. The "VCR" buttons are part of the ANSI and are totally fake. On a real text-mode DOS display, the "12:00" in the lower right corner blinks.
"Cubes" is set in the distant future, when the Stofonians develop interstellar travel and actually attack Earth!
"Cubes" was originally a long song or musical drama, the lyrics of which are available here. Part of the music also exists as two Flvxxvm Florvm songs: "Coming of the Cubes, parts 4 and 5" and "This is How it Feels" (which re-uses the music from the section entitled "The Stoffonians").
This was my favorite album at the time
The Magic Duck by Nathan Bailey. This is really a still from the ANSI animation The Cubes vs. the Duck, in which I re-used Nathan's orginal work.
A Grinn that I drew sometime later with the Windows 3.1 Paintbrush program. This is essentially the logo for the "Evil Grinn Records" company. Most Grinns actually used in the packaging of Flvxxvm Florvm albums were hand-drawn on paper and didn't use this image. But they all basically look like this.