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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

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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The President is Missing

DOS1988protected3.5/5 Cosmi Corporation
The Shadows of Mordor

DOS19883.7/5 Beam Software
The Usurper

DOS19893.6/5 Sir-tech Software
The Witness

DOS19834/5 Infocom
Time and Magik: The Trilogy

DOS19884.1/5 Level 9 Computing
TomeNET

Windows XP/98/95Linux2003freeware4.3/5
Treasure Island

DOS19853.5/5 Byron Preiss Video Productions
Trinity

DOS19864.2/5 Infocom
Turbo Prolog 2.0

DOS1986protected4.1/5 Borland Software Corporation
Uplink: Hacker Elite

Windows XP/98/952003protected4/5 Introversion Software Limited
Video Trek 88

DOS19823.9/5 Windmill Software
VisiCalc 1.0

DOS1979freeware4.4/5 Software Arts
Voodoo island

DOS19853.8/5 Angelsoft
Wall Street Raider

DOS19864.1/5
Warp Rogue

WindowsLinux2004freeware3.9/5
Wishbringer

DOS19853.8/5 Infocom
WitchavenRL

WindowsLinux20133.8/5
Word Perfect 5

DOS19893.9/5 Corel
Wordstar 4

DOS19864.2/5 MicroPro International
X Trek

DOS1991NSFW3.9/5
Zork I: The Great Underground Empire

DOS19824.2/5 Infocom

Zork is one of the most popular text-adventures and one of the first interactive fiction games ever created. The first Zork was developed in the seventies and ported on various platform by Infocom in the early 80s. Infocom was one of the most prolific developers of text-adventures for home computers and created memorable interactive fiction ga...
Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz

DOS19834.2/5 Infocom
Zork III: The Dungeon Master

DOS19844/5 Infocom
Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz

DOS19894/5 Infocom
Zyll

DOS19843.9/5 IBM
ZZT

DOS1991freeware4.2/5 Epic MegaGames