Text-based games: ASCII, etc.

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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

DOSWindows XP/98/95Mac OSLinux1987freeware

NetHack is an open-source roguelike game that's been around since the early 1980s. It's a single-player dungeon exploration game where you navigate your character through a randomly generated dungeon filled with monsters, traps, t...

NewsMaster

DOS1986

Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It

DOS1987 Infocom

Norton Commander 1.0

DOS1986 Peter Norton Computing

Norton Commander was a file manager and editor application released by Peter Norton Computing for DOS. Norton Commander used a text-based user interface with side-by-side panels and featured copy, delete, editing and preview ...

Norton Commander 5.5

DOS1998 Peter Norton Computing

Norton Commander was one of the most popular and influential file management applications ever released for MS-DOS. Introduced in 1986, it featured an innovative, dual-pane interface that allowed users to perform tasks like copyin...

Norton Desktop

DOS1992 Peter Norton Computing

Norton Editor 2

DOS1990 Peter Norton Computing

Novell DOS 7

DOS1993 Novell

Objection!

DOS1992

Omega

DOSLinux1988freeware

One-Nil Soccer Manager

DOS1992 New Era Software

One-Nil Soccer Manager is a text-based soccer management simulation game that was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was developed for various home computer systems, including DOS, Commodore 64 and Amiga. In One-Ni...

Ooze: Creepy Nites

DOS1989 Dragonware Games

Pac Gal

DOS1982

Pac-girl

DOS1982 Magicom Multimedia

PKzip

DOS1989protected PKware

Planetfall

DOS1983 Infocom

Planetfall is an interactive fiction sci-fie game released in 1983 by Infocom, written by Steve Meretzky. It is often considered one of Infocom's best titles. You play as a low-ranking Ensign Seventh Class in the Stellar Patr...

Plundered Hearts

DOSMac OS1987 Infocom

President Elect: 1988 Edition

DOS1987protected SSI Strategic Simulations Inc.

President Elect: 1988 Edition is a political simulation game developed by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) and released in the mid-1980s. The game simulates U.S. presidential elections and allows players to take on the role of ca...

Pro Manager

DOS1985 Avalon Hill

Psycho

DOS1988 Starsoft Development

QBASIC

DOS1991 Microsoft

QBasic, or QuickBASIC, was an interpreted version of the BASIC programming language developed by Microsoft. It was designed to be easy to learn and use, making it accessible to beginners and hobbyist programmers. QBasic was part o...

Quattro Pro v4

DOS1991 Borland Software Corporation

Questprobe Featuring Spider-Man

DOS1986 Adventure International

Questprobe Featuring Spider-Man is an abandoned text-based adventure game designed by Scott Adams, developed and released by Adventure International in 1986 for DOS but was also published for Acorn Electron, Atari 8-bit, BBC Micro...