The most popular text-based games

In the past, lots of games used ASCII characters (text) to represent the game world. These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.
A few genres traditionally linked to the beautiful world of ascii characters still survives: roguelikes (nethack, angband, etc.) and interactive fiction, for example.

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Doszip Commander

DOS2007freeware3.9/5

Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy

DOSMac OS19864/5 TRANS Fiction Systems

Farenheit 451

DOS19843.4/5 Telarium

Drug wars: a game based on the New York drug market

DOS19843.3/5

Lynx

DOS1992freeware3/5

Pac-girl

DOS19823.7/5 Magicom Multimedia

Hollywood Hijinx

DOS19863.3/5 Infocom

The Witness

DOS19834/5 Infocom

The Lurking Horror

DOS19874.1/5 Infocom

Taipan for Windows

Windows XP/98/952002freeware3.5/5

James Bond 007: Goldfinger

DOS19864.1/5 Angelsoft

Star Trek: the Kobayashi alternative

DOS19854/5 Micromosaics

Microsoft Diagnostics 3.01

DOS19943.7/5 Microsoft

Arachne WWW

DOS1996freeware4.2/5

Arachne is a graphical web browser for DOS. Arachne was developed by Michal Polák and released in the early 1990s as a text-mode web browser with limited graphical capabilities. Arachne allowed DOS users to browse the World Wide Web in a graphical, though quite basic, manner. It supported features such as displaying images, handling lin...

Championship Manager Italia

DOS19934.1/5 Sports Interactive Limited

Dungeon Master's Assistant Vol 2

DOS1989protected3.8/5 SSI Strategic Simulations Inc.

Breakers

DOS19864.1/5 Synapse Software

Mindshadow

DOSMac OS19853.6/5 Interplay Productions

Dungeons of Kroz

DOS1989freeware3.6/5 Apogee Software

WitchavenRL

WindowsLinux20133.8/5

Monopoly

DOS19853.9/5

Earthly delights

DOS19843.6/5 Datamost

Sleuth: A Murder Mystery

DOS1983freeware4.2/5 Norland Software

Essex

DOS19853.6/5 Synapse Software

Dungeons of Kroz 2

DOS19893.6/5 Apogee Software

Hacker 2: The Doomsday Papers

DOS19863.7/5 Activision

Hacker II: The Doomsday Papers is a video computer game developed by Steve Cartwright and published by Activision. It was released in 1986 and is a sequel to the original Hacker game. The game was available for various home computer systems of the time, including the Apple II, Commodore 64, and MS-DOS.In Hacker II: The Doomsday Papers, players take...