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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

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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

DOS19853.7/5 Infocom

Amnesia

DOS19864/5 Cognetics corporation

Ballyhoo

DOS19863.5/5 Infocom

Bank Streek Writer Plus

DOS19863/5

Beyond the Titanic

DOS19863.8/5 Apogee Software

Borland Reflex 2.0

DOS19863.7/5 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.

Borland Turbo Pascal 3.0

DOS19863.8/5 Borland Software Corporation

Breakers

DOS19864.1/5 Synapse Software

Dr. Ruth Computer Game of Good Sex

DOS19863.6/5 Avalon Hill

Hacker 2: The Doomsday Papers

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...

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

DOS1986freeware3.9/5

Leather Goddesses of Phobos

DOS19864.2/5 Infocom

Mind Mirror

DOS19863.6/5

Moonmist

DOS19863.8/5 Infocom

NewsMaster

DOS19863.5/5

Norton Commander 1.0

DOS19863.8/5 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 ...