I wish I could use the DOS / IBM PC style smileys in terminal games. They were, in fact, designed for "ansi art" style fixed width character games. However, there isn't the convention in fonts that it should fit into a single character with a monospace font, so you can't use this or a lot of the lovely characters that DOS games would use.

Also look at them! They have such nice, minimalist character!

And yes, they WERE intended for games: https://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/790/the-ibm-smiley-character-turns-30