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An excerpt from Simon Jansen's (the creator's) FAQs:

Why (oh God, why)?
Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

That seems to pretty much sum up his ASCII rendition of the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope. The "film" can be viewed either via command prompt (by hitting Start > Run > typing cmd then telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl) or in a browser through the man's website.

It's seriously entertaining in its own right, and will probably offer a weird kick to Star Wars fans who've seen the first movie more times than they can count, but I think the only thing that might improve it is sound. Perhaps only music though, as voice-overs could wreck its charm.

Jansen explains in the FAQ where the idea came from:

A friend of mine in the UK sent me an email one day containing a joke. The idea was to size your window around the first picture in the joke then hit the pagedown key to display the next picture and so on. The result was a crude (i n more ways that one) animation. I tried a few experiments to see how far the idea could be taken.

Folks, this is a fine example of how a joke can go too far. But hey, it's good watchin', right?

Head to the website (link below) to find out more about it, and also check out Jansen's blog, where he shows off some of his mechanical creations.