I'm pretty sure I used one that was terminal based, likely using ncurses. Without searching, I can't recall the name of it, though.

I used XMPP a bit among friends, more so when Google supported it, which was probably after ICQ/AIM/MSN wasn't as popular? I don't really talk to many people anymore, so whatever, heheh :)

It would be nice to see XMPP make some kind of "comeback" ... or some sort of popularity boost like mastodon/lemmy/etc in recent times.

Scorched Earth was awesome, never got a lot done in computer classes at school because of it :)

I think modern games in general hold your hand too much. Some small level of hand holding/tutorial is fine, but so many take it way too far. I've gotten bored of a lot of games before they actually started because of that.