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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

DOS19823.9/5 Armonk Corporation

Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur

DOS19894/5 Infocom

Romantic encounters at the dome

DOS19883.9/5 MicroIllusions

Business Simulator

DOS19873.9/5 Reality Development

Business Simulator is an abandoned business simulation game developed and released by Reality Development in 1987 for DOS only. Business Simulator is a text-based management simulation designed by an university professor.

Supernova

DOS1987freeware3.5/5 Apogee Software

Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy

DOSMac OS19864/5 TRANS Fiction Systems

TomeNET

Windows XP/98/95Linux2003freeware4.4/5

Sleuth: A Murder Mystery

DOS1983freeware4.2/5 Norland Software

Earthly delights

DOS19843.6/5 Datamost

Anacreon: Reconstruction 4021

DOS1987freeware3.9/5 Thinking Machine Associates

Anacreon: Reconstruction 4021 is one of the first 4x turn-based strategy games, ASCII based. Anacreon is set in space, as most 4x sci-fi games are, and was published by Thinking Machines Associates and designed by George Moromisato who later re-released the game as freeware.