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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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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Hollywood Hijinx

DOS19863.3/5 Infocom

Farenheit 451

DOS19843.4/5 Telarium

Slash'Em

Windows XP/98/95Linux1997freeware4.1/5

Championship Manager Italia

DOS19934.1/5 Sports Interactive Limited

Midway Campaign

DOS19834/5 Microcomputer Games Inc.

Hockey League Simulator

DOS19903.3/5 Bethesda Softworks

WitchavenRL

WindowsLinux20133.8/5

Caves of Thor

DOS19893.4/5 Apogee Software

Zyll

DOS19843.9/5 IBM

Doszip Commander

DOS2007freeware3.9/5

Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy

DOSMac OS19864/5 TRANS Fiction Systems

LHA

DOS19884.2/5

Lost Adventures of Kroz

DOS1990freeware3.3/5 Apogee Software

Dungeons of Kroz

DOS1989freeware3.6/5 Apogee Software

Essex

DOS19853.6/5 Synapse Software

Mindshadow

DOSMac OS19853.6/5 Interplay Productions

Rules of Engagement

DOS19913.6/5 Omnitrend Software

Global Thermo War

DOS19853.9/5

ZAngband

WindowsMac OSDOSLinux1999freeware4.3/5

Zangband is a variant of the popular roguelike game Angband. Zangband, short for Zelazny Angband, was developed by Chris Weisiger and first released in 1994. The game features a fantasy world with diverse races, classes, and monsters. Players explore dungeons, caves, and other environments in a quest to reach the bottom level of the dungeon, d...

Star Trek: the Kobayashi alternative

DOS19854/5 Micromosaics

Taipan for Windows

Windows XP/98/952002freeware3.5/5

Baseball Mogul 2006

Windows20054.1/5

2112

DOS19943/5

Dungeons of Kroz 2

DOS19893.6/5 Apogee Software

Boggle

DOS19903.5/5 HVB 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...