The most popular text-based games

Norton Commander was one of the most popular file manager applications ever released for MS DOS. Its clever side-by-side windows interface and the ease of use allowed DOS users to copy, delete, move and preview any kind of file without the hassle of typing every command by hand. Norton Commander was first released in 1986, but the latest and final ...

DOSBox is an open-source emulator that allows you to run software and games designed for the MS-DOS operating system on modern computers. As you probably already know, MS-DOS was a popular operating system used in the 1980s and early 1990s. DOSBox emulates the necessary hardware components and provides a DOS-like environment, allowing users to...

QBasic, or QuickBASIC, was an interpreted version of the BASIC programming language developed by Microsoft. It was designed to be easy to learn and use, making it accessible to beginners and hobbyist programmers. QBasic was part of Microsoft's QuickBASIC product line, which included both compiled and interpreted versions of the language. QBasi...

WordStar 4 was a popular word processing software program during the early days of personal computing. WordStar 4 included features typical of word processors in that era, allowing users to create, edit, and format documents. It used a command-driven interface, where users would enter specific commands to perform various tasks. The software wa...

Zork is one of the most popular text-adventures and one of the first interactive fiction games ever created. The first Zork was developed in the seventies and ported on various platform by Infocom in the early 80s. Infocom was one of the most prolific developers of text-adventures for home computers and created memorable interactive fiction ga...

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...

dBASE III is a relational database management system (RDBMS) that was popular in the late 1980s. It was developed by Ashton-Tate, a software company. dBASE III was a successor to the earlier dBASE II and was part of a series of dBASE products. dBASE III played a significant role in the history of database management systems, especially during ...

Borland Turbo Basic was a programming language developed by Borland, a software company that was prominent in the 1980s and 1990s. Turbo Basic was part of the Turbo series of programming languages and development tools that Borland created during that time.Turbo Basic was designed as a fast and efficient version of the BASIC programming language. B...

Turbo Assembler, often referred to as TASM, is an x86 assembler for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. It was part of the Turbo Assembler/Turbo Debugger (TASM/TD) package that Borland released as part of their Turbo Assembler product line. Borland was a software company known for its development tools during the 1980s and 1990s.

GW-BASIC (short for Gee Whiz BASIC) is a dialect of the BASIC programming language that was developed by Microsoft. It's one of the early implementations of BASIC and was included as the default programming environment in early versions of the MS-DOS operating system.GW-BASIC was initially released with MS-DOS 2.0 in 1983. Subsequent versions of MS...

James Clavell's Shogun, a text adventure game developed by Infocom and released in 1989. Infocom was known for its interactive fiction games, and "James Clavell's Shogun" was one of its later releases.This text adventure game is based on James Clavell's novel "Shogun" and follows the story of John Blackthorne, an English navigator who becomes invol...

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...

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 ...

NetHack is an open-source roguelike game that's been around since the early 1980s. It's a single-player dungeon exploration game where you navigate your character through a randomly generated dungeon filled with monsters, traps, treasures, and various items. The goal is to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, located deep within the dungeon's lowest leve...

VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet software for personal computers, and it played a pivotal role in the early history of personal computing. It was developed by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston and first released in 1979 for the Apple II computer. VisiCalc is often considered the first electronic spreadsheet, and its success had a significant impact ...

Dungeon Crawl (also known as Linley's Dungeon Crawl from the name of the original programmer: Linley Henzell) is a classic roguelike: an RPG with permadeath, procedural generation and high replayability. Dungeon Crawl was released on 1997 but it's not maintained anymore. The spiritual successr of Crawl is DCCS (Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup).