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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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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DOS1988 Topologika Software

Romantic encounters at the dome

DOS1988 MicroIllusions

Executive Suite

DOS1982 Armonk Corporation

The Usurper

DOS1989 Sir-tech Software

FreeDOS Shell

DOS2002freeware

ZZT

DOS1991freeware Epic MegaGames

Borland Turbo Pascal 1.0

DOS1983 Borland Software Corporation

2112

DOS1994

Norton Editor 2

DOS1990 Peter Norton Computing

Starcross

DOS1982 Infocom

Castle Adventure

DOS1984freeware

EGA Trek

DOS1988remake

Baseball Mogul

Windows XP/98/951997 Infinite Monkey Systems

Lynx

DOS1992freeware

Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur

DOS1989 Infocom

Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It

DOS1987 Infocom

Anacreon: Reconstruction 4021

DOS1987freeware Thinking Machine Associates

Anacreon: Reconstruction 4021 is one of the first 4x turn-based strategy games, ASCII based. Anacreon is set in space, as most 4x sci-fi games are, and was published by Thinking Machines Associates and designed by George Moromisato who later re-released the game as freeware.

The Witness

DOS1983 Infocom

NewsMaster

DOS1986

Star Trek: the Kobayashi alternative

DOS1985 Micromosaics

Football Fanatic

DOS1998freeware

Legend of the Red Dragon

DOS1989 Robinson Technologies

DeskMate

DOS1984

Deskmate is a software suite developed by Tandy Corporation that provided a graphical user interface (GUI) and a set of applications for personal computers. It was often bundled with Tandy's TRS-80 and Tandy 1000 series of computers in the late 1980s and early 1990s.Deskmate included various applications such as a word processor, spreadsheet, calen...