Watch ASCII Star Wars in Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 & 11

Every one of us has watched at least one episode of Star Wars movie series either on television, on a computer or in a theater. Star Wars is a movie series with aliens fighting each other for galaxies and such stuff. There is nothing new in it. But wait, have you watched an ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) version of Star Wars and that too in Windows using Telnet? A network protocol known only to computer wizards. Well if you have not, then you must do it now!

There is a partial version of Star Wars Episode IV movie done entirely in ASCII characters that you can watch in the Windows operating system (or any OS that supports Telnet). The only thing required to watch it is an internet connection.

A Picture showing Star Wars in command prompt

To watch it on Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux
  1. Go to Start, Run. (Only for Windows users)
  2. Now type "telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl" without the quotes and press Enter. Users of Mac OS X and Linux can directly execute this code in the terminal window.

On Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 7 and Windows Vista

Telnet is turned off by default in the latest versions of Windows. So, in order to watch Star Wars, you must first enable Telnet by going to Control Panel › Programs › Turn Windows Feature On or Off and ticking the Telnet client check box. After doing that, follow the steps given below:-
  1. Go to Start, Search in Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 10 and Windows 11. On Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, open the main Start page.
  2. Type Telnet and press Enter.
  3. In the following Command Prompt window, type "o" without quotes and press Enter.
  4. Now type "towel.blinkenlights.nl" without the quotes and press Enter to load the movie on your screen.
A Command Prompt window like the one in the image will open with the movie being played in it. See the movie yourself. Did you enjoy watching this new version of Star Wars? Well, I did and know it for sure that you would have too.

If you do not need Telnet after seeing the movie, you can turn off the Telnet client Windows feature.
Author About
Akhilesh Sharma maintains and writes Tweak And Trick. He is a technology enthusiast and a science student.
You can contact him at tweakandtrick@gmail.com.

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