[Endoperez]

ASCII is a way of saving/encoding/keeping track of the letters of the alphabet, both big and small. ASCII and its predecessors are needed to make writing possible. Roguelike games, like Adom or Dungeon Crawl mentioned in the Newbie's First Impressions thread, use ASCII instead of graphics. Player character is presented by @, orc might be o, ogre O, dragon D, Demons in Crawl are presented by numbers 9-through-1 with smaller being more powerful, etc.