Question 1

What is Bad Apple!!?

Accepted Answer

A 2009 Touhou-Project music video by Anira (animation) and Alstroemeria Records (music) that has become a programming demoscene meme — porting it to obscure platforms (calculators, oscilloscopes, Game Boys) is a common 'hello world' for the rendering trick. This page renders it in pure ASCII, frame-by-frame in monospace text, with synced audio.

Question 2

How is the animation rendered?

Accepted Answer

Each frame is a 480 by 216 grid, sampled from the video the same way the ASCII app samples a picture: one cell per glyph, brightness mapped through a dense-to-sparse ramp. The grid is stored run-length encoded. The player can draw those runs three ways at the original frame rate: HTML table cells, CSS gradients, or a canvas bitmap. All three paint solid shades, so the silhouette stays continuous instead of showing gaps between glyphs, with the audio kept in sync.

Question 3

Can I download the ASCII frames?

Accepted Answer

Each frame is a static HTML file under frame/. The picture is run-length encoded (a count followed by the glyph) so the higher-resolution grid stays small. The player expands those runs and draws them with whichever renderer is selected.

Question 4

How long is it?

Accepted Answer

About three minutes and forty seconds — the full original Bad Apple!! video length. The audio plays from start to finish synchronised to the ASCII frames.