Games with ASCII Graphics

The popularity of games with ASCII graphics on the IBM PC peaked around 1990, probably because they would run—and look more or less the same—on all the graphics cards available for PCs at the time, even the monochrome ones, unless color was essential for gameplay. With the general adoption of VGA in the following years, ASCII graphics became a niche genre among the fans of roguelike games and ZZT.

The Complete List

The 80s

Pac-Gal	Pac-Man	82	Al J. Jiménez
The Queen of Hearts Maze Game	Pac-Man	82
Beast	Puzzle	84
Othello	Othello		Details unknown
Relentless Logic	Puzzle		Conway, Hong, and Smith
Rogue	Roguelike
8088 Othello	Othello	85
Turbo-Gomoku	Gomoku	85
Pente	Gomoku	86	Michael A. Leach
Tetris	Tetris	86
Bones	RPG	87	Bruce N. Baker
Castles & Kings	strat	88	Steve Hanson
Nyet	Tetris		David Howorth
Pentix	Tetris		Marta & Adrian Soncodi
Block Five	Gomoku	89	Scott Miller
MaxIt	MaxIt	89	Owen Gwilliams

1990: A Rise in Popularity

In 1990, there is a sudden boost in popularity for ASCII games. I have almost as many of them from 1990/91 as I have of the whole previous decade. What caused this, I do not know, but it may simply have been a rising popularity of the IBM PC as a hardware platform. 1990 was also the year that game development for Windows 3.1 started in earnest.

Blox	Tetris	90	Graham Cluley
Da	Tetris		Michael Heyda
Diamaze	Puzzle		Steve Herring
Fusion	Columns		William Chin
Popgames			Geoffrey Silverton
Kroz	Adventure		Scott Miller
Shogatsu	Ishido		Alan Meiss
TetraFix	Tetris
Crux	Puzzle	91	Bob Lancaster
Dr. Rudy	Tetris		Kevin Jay North
Taktix	Ataxx		Alan Meiss
ZZT	Adventure		Tim Sweeney
Tiny Tetris	Tetris		Alex Lochm

1992: Moving to Europe

Up to and including 1991, ASCII games were mostly a US thing. Beyond this year, the majority of the games is from Europe. This is not an uncommon pattern. You will find it, though less pronounced, with 16-bit Windows games as well.

Small Tetris	Tetris	92	Tore Bastiansen
Tiles	Puzzle		Daniel G. Rigal
Wari	Mancala		Eric Roosendaal
DOSMine	Puzzle	93	David Vancina
ADOM	Roguelike	94
MegaZeux	GCS	94	Gregory Janson
Alphaman	Roguelike	95	Jeffrey R. Olson
Lentris	Tetris	98	Lennart Johannesson
WormWars 3	Arcade	06	Christian Knudsen
Tetris	Tetris	08	Sergey Smolyachenko

Final Notes

A special case is Edward Henigin's Minefind (1993) that uses ASCII graphics, yet runs in (hi-res) VGA mode. The graphics are used only for a border around the screen. And WormWars 3 is the only game I know that uses ASCII graphics and has a Windows version.

It is possible to create action games using ASCII graphics, but it has rarely ever been done. Apart from the roguelike games, ASCII graphics were most popular for board game implementations like Othello and the various Monopoly clones. It should be noted that the original Tetris featured ASCII graphics, as did some early clones.

Hardware

These games are probably the most unproblematic ones ever released for the PC. Most will look better on some sort of color adapter, a few may even require it, very few are truly monochrome. None of the games listed here uses custom characters, which would require VGA and was common for applications. Very few run in 40-column mode, which looks awkward in a monochrome setup.

I think ADOM is the only game to have a minimum requirement as far as processor speed or type is concerned, it needs a 386. Beast on the other hand is the only one that has problems with fast computers. The others will run on any PC at all. Since they can run in a DOS window, they are usually easier to play on new computers than other DOS games. Most of my screenshots were made under Windows 98 or even Windows XP.

Few of these games have any sound at all, and if they do, it is played over the PC speaker. None of them has any sound card support.