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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

DOS19823.6/5 Sierra On-Line

Dream Zone

DOS19884.2/5 Naughty Dog

Borland Turbo Pascal 2.0

DOS19834/5 Borland Software Corporation

Leather Goddesses of Phobos

DOS19864.2/5 Infocom

Wall Street Raider

DOS19864.4/5

A-Maze

DOS19894.2/5 New Era Software

Dungeon Master's Assistant Vol 1

DOS1988protected4/5 SSI Strategic Simulations Inc.

Borland Eureka: the Solver

DOS19873.9/5 Borland Software Corporation

Borland Eureka: the Solver is an abandoned text-based application developed by Borland Software Corporation and released in 1987 for DOS. The product is designed to solve complex problems, generate tables and plots, and perform what-if analysis. The user writes an equation, sets options, and instructs the software to solve the problem. The pro...

Amnesia

DOS19864/5 Cognetics corporation

B-1 Nuclear Bomber

DOS19813.6/5 Avalon Hill

Zork III: The Dungeon Master

DOS19844/5 Infocom

FreeDOS Shell

DOS2002freeware3.6/5

Rambo First Blood Part 2

DOS19854.1/5 Angelsoft

Enchanter

DOS19833.3/5 Infocom

PKzip

DOS1989protected4/5 PKware

Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz

DOS19894/5 Infocom

Math Cad 2.5

DOS19894.1/5

Suspended

DOS19833.9/5 Infocom

ZZT

DOS1991freeware4.2/5 Epic MegaGames

Super ZZT

DOS19923.3/5 Epic MegaGames

Cutthroats

DOS19843.4/5 Infocom

Championship Manager

DOS19924.1/5 Domark Software

Championship Manager is the first chapter in one of the most successful football manager games series. The first Championship Manager was a text-based British football/soccer simulation and included teams from four English divisions, European cups and domestic cups as well. Championship Manager was designed by Paul and Oliver Collyer and ...