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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

DOS19853.9/5

James Bond 007: Goldfinger

DOS19864.1/5 Angelsoft

Trinity

DOS19864.1/5 Infocom

Sorcerer

DOS19844.1/5 Infocom

Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz

DOS19894/5 Infocom

Wall Street Raider

DOS19864.3/5

Sleuth: A Murder Mystery

DOS1983freeware4.2/5 Norland Software

Indenture

DOS1995remake4.1/5

Core War Plus

DOS19843.9/5

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

DOS19843.3/5

Lynx

DOS1992freeware3/5

Return to Doom

DOS19883.8/5 Topologika Software

Kingdom of Kroz

DOS1988freeware3.7/5 Apogee Software

Mindwheel

DOS19853.2/5 Synapse Software

Madball

DOS19853/5

Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur

DOS19894/5 Infocom

The mist

DOS19853.9/5 Angelsoft

Borland Eureka: the Solver

DOS19873.9/5 Borland Software Corporation

Borland Eureka: the Solver is an abandoned text-based application developed by Borland Software Corporation and released in 1987 for DOS. The product is designed to solve complex problems, generate tables and plots, and perform what-if analysis. The user writes an equation, sets options, and instructs the software to solve the problem. The pro...

Melody Maker 3

DOS19923.8/5

A Dudley Dilemma

DOS19883.3/5

Seastalker

DOS19844/5 Infocom

Omega

DOSLinux1988freeware3.8/5

Caves of Thor

DOS19893.4/5 Apogee Software

Football Fanatic

DOS1998freeware4/5

Midway Campaign

DOS19834/5 Microcomputer Games Inc.

Magnetic Scrolls Collection

DOS19914.1/5 Magnetic Scrolls

Magnetic Scrolls was one of the finest developer companies dedicated to Interactive Fiction. The Magnetic Scrolls Collection is a trilogy of Magnenic Scrolls adventures remade using the Wonderland engine: Fish!, Corruption, The Guild of Thieves. The new window-based interface made text-adventuring easy even for gamers not used to a text-only interf...