Remorse ASCII, or Remorse 1981, is the official ASCII sub-label of ACiD Productions.
History
Remorse was established in late 1994 by two IBM-PC scene ASCII artists from San Jose, California who went by the pseudonyms Necromancer and Necronite. After releasing five artpacks between 1994–1995, Remorse temporarily disbanded. Prominent members each went their separate ways; some created their own groups and another joined ANSI Creators in Demand to assist with their ASCII division. In 1996, it was decided by the leaders of Trank, ACiD proper, and the newly formed ACiD ASCII division that they should consolidate as a single group. Like pHluid, the music sublabel of ACiD, the leaders of these three organizations merged under the new name of Remorse/ACiD ASCII, and became an official extension of ACiD Productions. This is the Remorse which continues to exist to this day.
Present day
Remorse continues to release ASCII in the same traditional artpack format that it started with. These packs are now distributed via the internet on IRC and FTP servers; decorating FTP sites, telnet BBSes, NFO files or art for the sake of art.
Member List
As of May 2005, the active member list of Remorse included the following people:
Arrogance, Axel Barebones, Bad Sector, Barium, Black Jack, bLACKDAWn,Cannibal, cD_, cRu, Cypher Hex, Enigmatic, Empty, Erupt, Essence, Ewheat, Fahrenheit, Firestorm, F0st, Hiro Protagonist, Creature Of Hell, J. Hale, Kaleidas, Kayozz, Killa Hertz, Kxmode, Kyr, Megga Hertz, Miasma, Mister Kite, Mister Self Destruct, Mjolnir, Nahal, Ogre, Omicron, Palmore, phaser-X, Pix, Pixel Pusher, , , Poskgubbe, Rek, Revert, Talo, Terminator 2, The Messiah, The Upright Man, , Tr5tarr, Tzeentch, Whodini, Windrider, and Zooyork.
Trivia
It is worth noting that at the time Remorse was founded, ASCII art itself within the IBM-PC underground computer art scene was not taken seriously within the ANSI art community. Against these odds Remorse rose to the challenge and established itself as what is now the longest operating organization of ASCII artists in history.
Remorse, which also goes by "Remorse 1981", makes heavy use of Code page 437, a superset of ASCII commonly referred to as "extended ASCII". This eight-bit system was introduced by the IBM Corporation in 1981 for use with its first model of personal computer.
The 21st Remorse ASCII pack does not exist on any artpacks archives. When the Remorse group was first revived the leaders decided to release under the file nameRMRS-21.ZIP; twenty-one was said to be the combined sum of all packs from Trank, Remorse-prior, and ACiD ASCII. Soon after this file was pulled and renamed to RMRS-06.ZIP, perhaps due to public outcry. When the new Remorse had completed its 20th pack, the 21st was skipped over to avoid confusion.
Necromancer, a long-time friend of the founder of ACiD Productions, RaD Man, contacted him at the time of Remorse's original incarnation in 1994 to see if the creation of an ASCII art department in ACiD was possible. RaD Man's response? "ASCII in ACiD? Over my dead body!" Later after the death of the original Remorse, one of the original members of the group, Christopher Robin, convinced RaD Man to allow an ASCII section in ACiD.
The actual name of the art group is Remorse ASCII, but at one point a certain select few of the members that had been around since pack #1 decided that the best way to signify their loyalty to the group would be to show how Remorse was "cooler" than one of the longest-living underground computer groups, Razor 1911, founded in 1985. As such, Remorse 1981 came to exist as a catch-phrase related to loyalty.
