Text-based games: ASCII, etc. sorted by release date

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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

QBASIC

applicationDOS

Text-based games

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Crime and Punishment

DOS19844.3/5 Mindscape
Cutthroats

DOS19843.2/5 Infocom
DND

DOS19844.1/5
Dragon World

DOS19844.2/5 Telarium
Drug wars: a game based on the New York drug market

DOS19843.2/5
Earthly delights

DOS19843.6/5 Datamost
Farenheit 451

DOS19843.4/5 Telarium
Hack

DOS1984freeware3.8/5
Holy Grail

DOS19843.7/5
Questprobe featuring The Hulk

DOS19844.1/5 Adventure International
Rogue

Windows XP/98/95DOSLinuxMac19844.3/5 Artificial Intelligence Design

Rogue is one of the first RPGs in the history of video gaming. It's a text-based dungeon crawler in which you have to fight your way in the dungeon to recover the Amulet of Yendor. Rogue became popular around 1980 on mainframes and later ported to various platforms, including DOS in 1984. Rogue is simply the father of all the roguelike games that c...
Seastalker

DOS19843.7/5 Infocom
Sorcerer

DOS19844.1/5 Infocom
Suspect

DOS19844.1/5 Infocom
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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...
Zork III: The Dungeon Master

DOS19844/5 Infocom
Zyll

DOS19843.9/5 IBM
A Mind Forever Voyaging

DOSMac19854.1/5 Infocom
Air Traffic Controller

DOS19854.1/5 Cascoly Software
Alice: The Personal Pascal

DOS19854.4/5
Amulet of Yendor

DOS19853.6/5 Keypunch Software
Armchair Quarterback

DOS19854/5
Brimstone

DOS19853.4/5 Synapse Software
Essex

DOS19853.6/5 Synapse Software
Forbidden Castle

DOS19853.6/5 Angelsoft
Global Thermo War

DOS19853.9/5
James Bond 007: A View to a Kill

DOS19853.9/5 Angelsoft
Mickey's Space Adventure

DOS19853.4/5 Sierra On-Line
Mindshadow

DOSMac19853.6/5 Interplay Productions
Mindwheel

DOS19853.2/5 Synapse Software