Top-down perspective sorted by release date

Top down games were very popular in the 80s and the 90s, when graphic cards were not capable of supporting 3D, and even when 3D started to become popular, 2D games continued to be easier to develop, at least in the infancy of 3D gaming. 2D game offered the player a viewpoint that helped keeping things easily under control (think about top down party-based RPGs or hex-based strategy games).

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Akalabeth: World of Doom

DOS1981freeware3.6/5 California Pacific Computer

Akalabeth is a RPG game allegedly developed in just one summer by the Ultima franchise creator Richard Garriott. It's a dungeon crawler with wire-frame black and white graphics. Akalabeth is played in both first person 3d and top down view points.

Chess

DOS19813.9/5 International PC Owners

Donkey BAS

DOS19813.8/5 Microsoft

Galaxy

DOS19814.1/5 Microcomputer Games Inc.

Astro Dodge

DOS19823.6/5 Digital Marketing Corporation

Boxer Rebellion

DOS19823.1/5

Cosmic Crusader

DOS19823.7/5 Funatics Software

Crossfire

DOS19823.7/5 Sierra On-Line

Night Mission Pinball

DOS19823.5/5 subLOGIC

Pac Gal

DOS19823/5

Pac-girl

DOS19823.7/5 Magicom Multimedia

PC-Man

DOS1982remake4.2/5 Orion Software

PC-Man is an abandoned top-down Pac-Man clone in every regard: from the shape of the protagonist, to the cute ghosts. PC-Man was designed by Greg Kuperberg, developed by Orion Software and released in 1982 for DOS. As PC-Man, you have to move through a one screen maze to collect dots (pills? wafers?) and avoid being touched by one of the usual Pac-...