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So-called Block ASCII (or High ASCII) art uses the extended characters of the 8-bit code page 437, which is a proprietary standard introduced by IBM in 1979 (ANSI Standard x3.16) for the IBM PC and MS DOS operating system. Block ASCIIs were widely used on the PC during the 1990s until the Internet replaced BBSes as the main communication platform. Before then, Block ASCIIs dominated the PC text art scene.

There is some debate between ASCII and Block ASCII artists, with Hardcore ASCII artists maintaining that Block ASCII art is, in fact, not ASCII art, because it does not use the 128 characters of the original ASCII standard. On the other hand, Block ASCII artists argue that, if their art uses only characters of the computer’s character set, then it can be called ASCII, regardless if the character set is proprietary or not.