Abandonware DOS title

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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

Most popular text-based games

Text-based games

  • nortoncommander-5
    DOS19984.2/5 Peter Norton Computing

    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 ...

  • borland-turbo-basic-1-03
    DOS19874.1/5 Borland Software Corporation
  • zork1-2
    DOS19824.2/5 Infocom

    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...

  • qbasic71-01
    DOS19914.5/5 Microsoft
  • gwbasic-03
    DOS19884.2/5 Microsoft
  • rogue-1
    Windows XP/98/95DOSLinuxMac19844.3/5 Artificial Intelligence Design

    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...

  • a-night-with-troi-01
    DOS1991NSFW4.2/5
  • alice-wonderland-if-01
    DOS19893.4/5
  • ascii-sector-02
    WindowsLinuxDOS2007freeware3.9/5
  • wordstar4-01
    DOS19864.2/5 MicroPro International
  • questprobe-spiderman-01
    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 ...

  • empire1-1
    DOS19874/5 Northwest Software
  • borland-c1-03
    DOS19874.3/5 Borland Software Corporation
  • planetfall-1
    DOS19834.1/5 Infocom
  • adventure-in-serenia-01
    DOS19823.6/5 Sierra On-Line
  • chinaseatrader-2
    DOS19893.5/5
  • hack-5
    DOS1984freeware3.8/5
  • arthur-excalibur-02
    DOS19894.1/5 Infocom
  • amnesia-3
    DOS19864/5 Cognetics corporation
  • ibm-filing-assistant-02
    DOS19864.1/5 IBM
  • business-simulator-03
    DOS19873.9/5 Reality Technologies
  • _amfv_001
    DOSMac19854.1/5 Infocom
  • beyond-zork-02
  • word-perfect-5-02
    DOS19893.9/5 Corel
  • 2112-01
    DOS19943/5
  • championship-manager-1-01
    DOS19924/5 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 ...

  • acheton-01
    DOS19873.7/5
  • shadowsmordor-3
    DOS19883.7/5 Beam Software
  • dnd_text-02
    DOS19844.1/5
  • hitchhikerguide-1
    DOSMac1984freeware4.2/5 Infocom

    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...