Abandonware DOS title

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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

Most popular text-based games

Borland Turbo Pascal 1.0
applicationDOS
Norton Commander 5.5
applicationDOS
QBASIC
applicationDOS
  • hitchhikerguide-1
    DOSMac1984freeware4.2/5 Infocom

    The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a humorous free text adventure game based on the novel of the same name written by Douglas Adams (if you never read it, shame on you!). The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was designed by Douglas Adams himself and interactive fiction god Steve Eric Meretzky, it was released by Infocom in 1984 for DOS and for...

  • sleuth-1
    DOS1983freeware4.2/5 Norland Software
  • angband-03
    Windows XP/98/95DOSLinux1992freeware4/5
  • dungeon-crawl-dos-03
    Windows XP/98/95DOSLinux1997freeware4/5

    Dungeon Crawl (also known as Linley's Dungeon Crawl from the name of the original programmer: Linley Henzell) is a classic roguelike: an RPG with permadeath, procedural generation and high replayability. Dungeon Crawl was released on 1997 but it's not maintained anymore. The spiritual successr of Crawl is DCCS (Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup).

  • jamesbondview2kill-1
    DOS19853.9/5 Angelsoft
  • norton-desktop1-02
    DOS19924/5 Peter Norton Computing
  • softporn-4
    DOS1981freewareNSFW4/5 Sierra On-Line
  • dosbox-1
    Windows XP/98/95Linux2002freeware4.2/5
  • nethack-2
    DOS1987freeware3.7/5
  • hacker-2-doomsday-papers-3
    DOS19863.7/5 Activision

    Hacker II: The Doomsday Papers is a video computer game developed by Steve Cartwright and published by Activision. It was released in 1986 and is a sequel to the original Hacker game. The game was available for various home computer systems of the time, including the Apple II, Commodore 64, and MS-DOS.In Hacker II: The Doomsday Papers, players take...

  • zorkzero-1
  • ms-diagnostics-3-01
    DOS19943.7/5 Microsoft
  • amnesia-3
    DOS19864/5 Cognetics corporation
  • thepatcher-1
    DOS19934/5
  • mathcad2-01
    DOS19893.8/5
  • chinaseatrader-2
    DOS19893.5/5
  • magnetic-scrolls-collection-02
    DOS19914/5 Magnetic Scrolls

    Magnetic Scrolls was one of the finest developer companies dedicated to Interactive Fiction. The Magnetic Scrolls Collection is a trilogy of Magnenic Scrolls adventures remade using the Wonderland engine: Fish!, Corruption, The Guild of Thieves. The new window-based interface made text-adventuring easy even for gamers not used to a text-only interf...

  • moria-5
    DOS1992freeware3.9/5
  • 2112-01
    DOS19943/5
  • starfleet1-battle-begins03
    DOSMac19853.8/5 Interstel Corporation
  • doslynx-01
    DOS1992freeware3/5
  • questprobe-spiderman-01
    DOS19864.1/5 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, Commodore 64, Dragon 32, ZX Spectrum, MSX. Questprobe Featuring Spider-Man is part of the Questprobe game series, the ...

  • doszipcommander-1
    DOS2007freeware3.9/5
  • alphaman-02
    DOS19953.6/5
  • checkit-3-02
    DOS19903.3/5
  • borland-reflex-2-01
    DOS19863.9/5 Borland Software Corporation

    Borland Reflex was a relational database management system (RDBMS) developed by Borland International, a software company that was prominent in the 1980s and 1990s. Reflex was released in the mid-1980s as a graphical database software primarily targeted at business and professional users.

  • alice-pascal-01
  • hack-5
    DOS1984freeware3.8/5
  • adventure-in-serenia-01
    DOS19823.6/5 Sierra On-Line
  • lawnmover-1
    DOS19873.8/5