Why NFO files stop at 79 columns

Published 2026-10-13 by Gonzalo Tudela Chavero

The classic DOS text screen is 80 columns by 25 rows, so you would expect release NFOs to use all 80. Most of them stop at 79.

In many DOS viewers and editors, printing a character in column 80 moved the cursor to the next line on its own. The line break that followed then added a second jump, and every full-width line came out with an empty line under it. Leaving the last column free avoided the problem in every viewer, so artists drew to 79.

The habit stuck long after DOS. Look at NFOs from the 1990s and 2000s and the widest lines are usually 79 characters, and the ones that go further tend to look broken in some viewer or other.

Every NFO page on this site follows the same rule.