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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

Most popular text-based games

Norton Commander 5.5

applicationDOS

Borland Turbo Basic 1.0

applicationDOS

Zork I: The Great Underground Empire

adventureDOS

Text-based games

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Baseball Mogul

Windows XP/98/9519973.5/5 Infinite Monkey Systems
Boggle

DOS19903.5/5 HVB Software
China Sea Trader

DOS19893.5/5
Demon's Tomb: The Awakening

DOS19893.5/5 Silhouette Software
Dracula in London

DOS19883.5/5 SDJ Enterprises
Evets

DOS1988freeware3.5/5 SAck Enterprizes
Guardians of Infinity: to Save Kennedy

DOS1988protected3.5/5 Paragon Software
Norton Commander 1.0

DOS19863.5/5 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 any kind of file easily: it was an improvement over the command-line only MS-DOS interface. Norton Commander 1.0 was fir...
Pro Manager

DOS19853.5/5 Avalon Hill
Safe Opening Simulator

DOS19933.5/5
SRAM

DOS19873.5/5 ERE Informatique
Supernova

DOS1987freeware3.5/5 Apogee Software
The President is Missing

DOS1988protected3.5/5 Cosmi Corporation
Treasure Island

DOS19853.5/5 Byron Preiss Video Productions
Castle Elsinore

DOS19923.5/5 Temple Software
Borland Turbo C v2

DOS19883.5/5 Borland Software Corporation
Brimstone

DOS19853.4/5 Synapse Software
Avon

DOS19893.4/5 Topologika Software
Caves of Thor

DOS19893.4/5 Apogee Software
Classic Hangman

DOS19833.4/5 Norland Software
Mickey's Space Adventure

DOS19853.4/5 Sierra On-Line
Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It

DOS19873.4/5 Infocom
Air Trax

DOS19833.4/5
African Adventure

DOS1997remake3.4/5
Alice in Wonderland

DOS19893.4/5
Farenheit 451

DOS19843.4/5 Telarium
Cutthroats

DOS19843.3/5 Infocom
Enchanter

DOS19833.3/5 Infocom
Bible Builder

DOS19923.3/5
Caverns of Kroz 2

DOS19893.3/5 Apogee Software