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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

DOS1991freewareNSFW4/5

Word Perfect 5

DOS19893.9/5 Corel

Holy Grail

DOS19843.7/5

Adventure in Serenia

DOS19823.6/5 Sierra On-Line

Amnesia

DOS19864/5 Cognetics corporation

Championship Manager Italia

DOS19934.1/5 Sports Interactive Limited

Dream Zone

DOS19884.2/5 Naughty Dog

Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor

DOS19874/5 Infocom

Enchanter

DOS19833.3/5 Infocom

Borland Turbo Pascal 3.0

DOS19863.8/5 Borland Software Corporation

Deadline

DOS19823.8/5 Infocom

Borland Turbo C v1

DOS19874.1/5 Borland Software Corporation

A Dudley Dilemma

DOS19883.3/5

CheckIt 3

DOS19902.8/5

1893: A World's Fair Mystery

Windows XP/98/95Mac OS20033.6/5

Classic Hangman

DOS19833.6/5 Norland Software

Angband

Windows XP/98/95DOSLinux1992freeware4/5

Norton Editor 2

DOS19904.2/5 Peter Norton Computing

Starcross

DOS19823.7/5 Infocom

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

DOS19843.3/5

Adventure Game Studio (AGS)

WindowsLinuxMac OS1997freeware3.9/5

Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is a software development tool that enables users to create point-and-click adventure games. It was originally created by Chris Jones and has been used by game developers to produce a variety of 2D adventure games. AGS provides a scripting language, a visual editor, and various other tools to simplify the game developmen...

Indiana Jones: Revenge of the Ancients

DOS19874/5 Angelsoft

Star Trek: First Contact

DOS19883.6/5 Simon & Schuster Interactive

AlphaMan

DOS19953.6/5

Hollywood Hijinx

DOS19863.3/5 Infocom

Championship Manager

DOS19924.1/5 Domark Software

Championship Manager is the first chapter in one of the most successful football manager games series. The first Championship Manager was a text-based British football/soccer simulation and included teams from four English divisions, European cups and domestic cups as well. Championship Manager was designed by Paul and Oliver Collyer and ...