The Blade Nation - NicheInterests/mistfunk GitHub Wiki

"Blade (artscene group)" at Wikipedia contains a lot of good information that may otherwise get lost if and when they remove the article, so I have revised a mirror of it here:

Blade, also referred to as The Blade Nation, was an underground computer artscene group that primarily released ANSI art, ASCII art, and [high resolution] artwork intermittently from 1994 through 1998.

The group was founded in New Jersey by ANSI artist Sub Zero, who quickly changed to Mindcrime after the first Blade release to avoid namespace conflict.

Blade developed a long-standing rivalry with another artscene group headquartered in New Jersey, Creators of Intense Art.

At the end of 1996 Blade took part in the first successful [Mistigris World Tour] stop (BLDE9612), under which Mist released its artwork in other group's artpacks, as opposed to its own.

Blade released 43 monthly artpacks beginning with the first "Blade Epic" in March of 1994. After the (at press time, missing) 43rd release, several months passed until their 44th and final artpack was released.