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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

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Doom: The Roguelike

DOS2005freeware

Hamurabi remake

DOS1996freewareremake

Microsoft COBOL 1.12

DOS1984 Microsoft

Novell DOS 7

DOS1993 Novell

The President is Missing

DOS1988protected Cosmi Corporation

The Wizard's Castle

DOS1981freeware

The Wizard's Castle is a classic text-based, dungeon-crawling adventure game released in 1980, designed by Joseph R. Power. The game was originally developed for the Exidy Sorcerer computer and later ported to various platforms, such as the TRS-80 and early IBM PCs. The game is set in a mysterious wizard's castle, where the player takes on the...