Dropping by the Ascii Sector for a Visit

Today we've got a look back at Ascii Sector. The project began in the 2000s as a novel ASCII art take on Wing Commander Privateer. If you've been following us for a long time, you'll recall that the project actually won Fan Project of the Year for 2008. However, a few years later, the project removed "Privateer" from the name and started to change up the internal assets to avoid a sense of direct copyright infringement/overlap. I would have argued that there was no practical concern, since the project was fairly low-key and EA has a long history of not worrying about fan projects and mods, but I get it. And then we lost track of things for the past decade!

Fast forward today, and I see that development continued into 2016. Unfortunately, the game's website and associated materials appear to have gone offline in 2022, but you can still find a copy and download the latest version via archive.org. There's also an extensive Wiki that you can access for more information. I posted two clips below that show off how things eventually turned out. The first is a lengthy play through, and there is also a rundown of the Ascii Sector soundtrack. Although it's always a little sad when things go quiet, I'm happy to see the game enjoyed a good ten years of solid development with many happy players!