Enjoy the show, and do not forget to share this wonder with a new generation of internet users.

Do not worry. Below is an exhaustive, step-by-step guide to enabling Telnet, running the infamous Star Wars animation, and troubleshooting any issues—all on Windows 10. Before diving into the “how,” let us briefly discuss the “what.” Telnet is a network protocol that allows you to connect to remote computers over a network. The address towel.blinkenlights.nl is a server maintained by a Dutch hacker group (and later a long-running internet art project). It plays a frame-by-frame ASCII animation of Star Wars Episode IV.

However, if you try this command on a fresh installation of Windows 10, you will be met with an error message: 'telnet' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. Why? Because Microsoft disabled the Telnet client by default starting with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 due to security concerns.

If you have ever roamed the less-charted waters of the early internet, you have likely heard of a hidden gem: the ASCII Star Wars movie that plays entirely in a terminal window. The command telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl is a nostalgic journey back to the 1990s, piping a full-text version of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope directly to your screen.