It's not easy to see an untouched original of Star Wars: Episode IV anymore. We should know. We did it. It is, however, still pretty easy to see the whole move in ASCII on Windows 10.
Why, you want to view a two hour movie as what is essentially a text scroll? If you have to ask, you don’t understand nerd culture.
ASCII, by the way, stands for "American Standard Code for Information Interchange " and is a most common format for text files. The idea of presenting the first Star Wars as ASCII predates Windows 10 and, to be honest, we didn’t go looking for it. Some ubernerds over at Windows Clan figured out a way to make it work on Microsoft's latest operating system. We followed the steps and found that, yes, it does work.
The effect is slow, painful and oddly fascinating.
Here's how to make it happen if you have a Windows 10 system and you realize you have not watched George Lucas's classic in every way imaginable.
Open the Windows 10 search box by clicking on the Windows logo. Start typing in "Control Panel".
In Control Panel, select "Programs".
Under "Programs," select "Turn Windows features on or off".
Turn "Telnet Client" on.
Now close those windows and run your Command Prompt by typing "CMD" into the Windows Startup search box (A.K.A "Cortana").
Now you are really close to experiencing the joy that is a movie told in characters, only (some are a little animated).
In the Command Prompt window, type in this without the quote marks: "Telnet Towel.blinkenlights.nl".
Hit enter and site back and watch (be patient, it takes a few seconds to start. There is no sound all the dialogue is in text.
You're welcome.