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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

Zork I: The Great Underground Empire

adventureDOS

Text-based games

Sort by:

Mindwheel

DOS19853.2/5 Synapse Software
Monopoly

DOS19854/5
Pro Manager

DOS19853.5/5 Avalon Hill
Rambo First Blood Part 2

DOS19854.1/5 Angelsoft
Spellbreaker

DOS19853.9/5 Infocom
Star Fleet 1: The War Begins

DOSMac19853.7/5 Interstel Corporation
Star Trek: the Kobayashi alternative

DOS19854/5 Micromosaics
The mist

DOS19853.9/5 Angelsoft
Treasure Island

DOS19853.5/5 Byron Preiss Video Productions
Voodoo island

DOS19853.8/5 Angelsoft
Wishbringer

DOS19853.8/5 Infocom
Amnesia

DOS19864/5 Cognetics corporation
Ballyhoo

DOS19863.5/5 Infocom
Beyond the Titanic

DOS19863.8/5 Apogee Software
Borland Reflex v2

DOS19863.9/5 Borland Software Corporation
Borland Turbo Pascal 3.0

DOS19863.8/5 Borland Software Corporation
Breakers

DOS19864.1/5 Synapse Software
Dr. Ruth Computer Game of Good Sex

DOS19863.7/5 Avalon Hill
Hamburger Hell

DOS1986remake2.8/5
Hollywood Hijinx

DOS19863.3/5 Infocom
IBM Assistant 2.0

DOS19864.1/5 IBM
James Bond 007: Goldfinger

DOS19864.1/5 Angelsoft
Jewels of Darkness

DOS19864.2/5 Level 9 Computing
Larn

DOS1986freeware4/5
Leather Goddesses of Phobos

DOS19864.2/5 Infocom
Mind Mirror

DOS19863.6/5
Moonmist

DOS19863.8/5 Infocom
NewsMaster

DOS19863/5
Norton Commander 1.0

DOS19863.5/5 Peter Norton Computing

Norton Commander was a file manager and editor application released by Peter Norton Computing for DOS. Norton Commander used a text-based user interface with side-by-side panels and featured copy, delete, editing and preview any kind of file easily: it was an improvement over the command-line only MS-DOS interface. Norton Commander 1.0 was fir...
Questprobe Featuring Spider-Man

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 ...