What's the Most Addictive Game You've Ever Played?

[Prof Frink]

Recently been DMC3 for me I could play the first few levels over and over and never get bored to a lesser extent i've played Gradius V quite a bit as well. I must have played FFVII a lot as I've finished it about 5 times and FF:Tactics on the GBA I've played quite a bit. I actually own disgaea but I'm ashamed to admit I've never had the chance to give the game to time it deserves.

[MartyG]

Transport Tycoon - I've really no idea how much time I've ploughed into that game as all that mattered was making the company I was running hugely successful, finding that lucrative cargo run and beating your opponents into submission by making their trains crash all the time

Disgaea and FF7/8 are pretty close after that.

[Kotatsu Neko]

Phantasy Star Online was truly digital crack for me back on the Dreamcast. Every evening from 7pm to midnight or so for months.

I'm currently pretty additicted to Ouendan on the DS, but to nothing like the level of PSO.

[gunrock]

Old school and a bit controversial (to the Elite hardcore), but Frontier: Elite II on the Amiga had me enthralled for months and months. Even when I hadn't touched it for months I'd come back to it and play over and over.

The pursuit of new ships and greater weapons and new supply routes, new missions kept me trying different things. The closest comparison I can make to today's generation of software is GTA:SA. In almost the exact same way, you go back and try things in different ways, or try to see if you can get certain things to happen again.

In Frontier there were two moments that stay with me. The first, I was on an assasination mission of a guy in big panther clipper. He took off the the space station at the alloted time and I was in hot pursuit, directly behind him, firing my massive beam laser trying to kill him before he got to hyperspace jump altitude. He was moving so fast, he was starting to turn into a small dot, and I was accelerating as fast as I could and after a few seconds I could see that he was getting nearer. I locked my beam onto him and was firing as much as I could without letting the laser get too hot and cut out. He seemed to be slowing down as my distance to target readout show me getting closer and closer rapidly... It was only when it was too late that I realised that he was heading straight for me and it was too late to get out of the way.... I figured the AI worked out that his hull was many time more dense than mine and as he had tons of shield regenerators, he may just as well go through me as run away... I spent days reloading from the same save file trying to recreate that response and never did....

The other was something I read about but didn't believe. The Imperial Courier (arguably the best all rounder ship in the game) had a fixed engine. You could not replace it with a better model. One day I was flying around in space picking off space pirates and my engine broke (I had been neglecting my maintenance and repairs) and I checked the hold and I had 150 tonnes (from memory) of junk. The junk of course, was the engine, and I had read that you could buy a bigger engine if you can get to a space station with no means of propulsion. I did manage it once but where I was docked only had smaller engines than I originally had (not very useful)

Gunrock

[Street Turk]

Time

Streetfighter in its numerous guises has cost me hundreds of hours...I still play Alpha3 and Super Turbo, not to mention 3rd Strike.

The Snes RPGs took a battering too...although my FF7 game was immense. ALL characters at Lvl 99 with nearly all of them having Knights of the Round...

[eastyy]

Baldurs gate 2 for the pc completed at least 15 times now

Oh and perhaps X2 the threat lost track with how much time i put into that

[butchcvc]

without a doubt, wwf no mercy for the n64!

[themanwithapc]

It's gotta be anything with the Gran Turismo name (barring 4), and DMC1 and DMC3.

Looking at older games, Sonic 2 on the MD was massive for me, as were most Mario games on the SNES.

[muse hunter]

tough, would have to say its out of mario kart, jet set radio, shenmue, and fable, the amount of time i've spent on those games was amazing. I love it when games do that to you, when you start a game in the morningb and before you no it 4 hours have passed and you still haven't brushed your teeth.

[huxley]

PSO for me - started on the Dreamcast and went over to the GC - dont want to think about the ammount of hours that game had off of me

[thebuddahman]

For me it all started with Ocarina of Time, just like it did for a lot of people. I remember grabbing a 12-pack of Pepsi Max, gluing myself to the sofa and just yearning to see more and more of the game. I couldn't stop. Even when I was at school I was wasting my lessons away at the back writing down all the items I could think of from the game, or discussing it discreetly with like-minded friends!

To be honest though, the only other time I've been completely addicted to a game is Runescape (Java online adventure). I haven't logged into the game for nearly a year now (university life finally took its toll) but there was a time when I just HAD to train more and more, every day, from as soon as I got up until the time I had to go to sleep. It was crazy. I used to leave the house pretending to go to college, drive round the corner to my friends house and just play that game all freakin day (with the obligatory trip to asda for cooked cumberland sausages of course! ). Madness I tell ya.

Good times!

[SUMIRE]

Phantasy Star Online

[eastyy]

PSO for the GC took up alot of hours for me but.. my save was erased twice by that game after the second time i had enough

[Gradius]

Without a doubt - online poker

other than that - Animal Crossing, a life consuming pastime.

[MikeRox]

Transport Tycoon for me, with Phantasy Star Online a very VERY distant 2nd. I dread to think how many 1000s of hours I spent on Transport tycoon, when I first got it in 1995 I'd play it pretty much every hour of my life I wasn't either out or at school, I was still playing it regularly in 98 infact, the only times I stopped playing it was when I got a new N64 game (which due to the prices was very few and far between) but once I'd done with that game, straight back onto TT it was only when the Dreamcast came out that I eventually stopped playing it.