Wasted Time

[DaiSuki]

(this is a direct copy of the text of a post I made on Wireplay almost three years ago... just wondered if things had changed)


Which one game would you say you've wasted the biggest part of your life playing? Well, OK - not wasted, nothing you've enjoyed is wasted - but which one has had you spending most hours sitting in front of your telly/monitor when you probably should've been socialising/sleeping/eating/washing/etc. ?

I think mine would have to be Elite on the Acorn Electron; played it for hours on end, for days on end, for weeks on end... and I still never got better than "Deadly". And I forgot to change the name at the start, so I was stuck with "Commander Jameson" for the whole game Still, a fantastic, life-destroying, time-destructing game, well worth the effort.

I think the only ones that have come close to this would have been Populous 2 on the Amiga and Street Fighter 2 Turbo on the SNES. It doesn't seem that anything more recent than 1990 has come close to sucking away that much of my time - although that obviously has a fair bit to do with working for a living, and having women around

Anybody else...?

[James Harvey]

I also played Elite a LOT as a kid. I think I played it all day every saturday from age 6 to age 12. I don't see it as having wasted my childhood though, because:

I got Elite rating

/\/\3 = 37337

733773773373733737373333733737373737737337





I did once spend 5 hours downloading the Daikatana multiplayer demo, however.

[Rushy]

I lost my whole university life to Counter Strike, easily 2000+ hours over the years.

[Fuddle]

back when i was at school, i'd say it was street fighter II/turbo/super, and 4 player bomberman.
more recently its definately been initial D and moto GP2, while i was an unemployed bum i played both literally all day...sadly those days are over
(for now )

[Ashe]

The original Starsiege: Tribes had me playing throughout College - too many hours to hazard a guess. The only game I ever cared enough about to play with voice com (Roger Wilco...those were the days) and a team, pre Live.

I still get twitchy when I think about disc launchers

[nips]

I lost my whole university life to Counter Strike, easily 2000+ hours over the years.

I can't wait to do that.

Hear that Internet Community. You've got a little over a year to develop a new online FPS or improve on Counter-Strike to a level that will keep me hooked like that.

I could easily do it, I've quite an addictive character, and the potentially infinitely malleable world of online gaming intreagues and excites me.

Don't let me down.

Pokemon Series (Blue mainly)! Including playing, re-playing, reading, researching, thinking, dreaming, dossing, talking, and re-re playing, it'll probably be that!

Mario Kart 64 may be pretty close. I played that every weekday for atleast 2 hours for over a year!

[PeteJ]

Half Life TFC.

Usually between 3-6 hours per day. Sometimes over 12 hours in one stretch. Did that for about two years, my clan became European Champions [/gloat], at which point I gave it up.

Good days, good days...

Half Life: Front Line Force would be second probably. Similar amount played per day but it only lasted a few months. We were the best in Europe, again , as long as you ignore the damn [Muppets] clan

[JammyD]

Pro Evolution Soccer: It's so damn easy to pick up the controller for a quick game, and then another one and then one more...
I use it to time my dinner as well

[fragmast3r]

foresaken and shogo mobile armoured division on pc

was club captain for both us these games and ran tournaments for both these games and ran websites for both of them for wireplay too, around 20 hours per week and then there was time spent playing for my own pleasure too


mind i still play both from time to time




fuk me daisuki wireplay that brings back some memories used to lose a few hours to red alert on there too

reminds me of my 400 quid per quarter phone bills too

[hankwangford]

Man, back in the days of Wireplay I was on free 0800 access that cut you off after an hour and took about 50 tries to get back on. Oh the ping times I had on Half Life with that...

I can't really say anything has kept me addicted recently, except maybe Ring of Red which had me planning out my battle tactics on a piece of paper, and constantly studying the enemies movements both on the grid and in the game. I'm getting FFTA soon so I figure the same thing's gonna happen again!

Jet Set Radio hooked me for the entire Summer 2000 period (Japanese import, of course); I wasn't really interested in getting all the Jet rankings at the time, but it was so good I must have played through it about 30 times.

However, the all time #1 addiction: C64 version of Ghostbusters. I lost hours and hours to this. Got it on some 20 game compilation package in some late 80's Christmas and tbh it was more or less the only game I played (after giving the rest a try of course). After all the games I played I had something like a billion pounds in the bank before I lost my account number and decided to let the old days go. Easily hooked me for 4-5 months and was played on and off for the following 3 years till my parents saw fit to let me have a Megadrive

[dreamylittledream]

The original Civilisation on the Amiga.

I was hopelessly addicted to this....leading the proud English to world domination over and over again. Whole days wasted repeatedly. Only ever once managed to win on Emperer level with a peceful game tho'...taking over the world with catapults was always very hard to resist!

[sutom]

easily Counter-Strike for me too.
overall been playing for about 4 and a bit years, although I don't play much at the moment because I have a Steam problem.

So many hours of CS, and even when I give it up for a while I always give it another go and get hooked as though I was just starting again....

[Corrupt Rose]

Populous 2.

So... many... hours. I remember linking it up with a friend as well, although that may have been the prequel. Regardless... Populous of all versions ate into my time horribly.

[Brodie]

Chaos on the Speccy - we used to put a towel over the keyboad so we couldn't see each others fingers, that way when you cast a creature spell no-one new if it was real or an illusion. Quite a few fights caused by that game too.

Rainbow Islands on Speccy - I played this sooo much, I had dreams about it. Vivid bright dayglo dreams, with the music playing in the background. Still love it, still play it today on my PlayStation.

Gunstar Heroes/Street Fighter II on Megadrive - both of these consumed my life for months. I had moved towns, had no friends, and just sat in my room for hours at a time. Started my Street Fighter addiction good and proper.

Tie Fighter on PC - caused me to fail college. Every study period or free day was spent on this. Always started with good intentions of writing essays on Word, but ended up 5 hours later destroying rebel scum for the good of the Empire ^_^

Tenchu Stealth Assasins/Gran Turismo/Ridge Racer Revolution/Tekken 3 - Probably played Tenchu more than anything else on PlayStation. Could just sit for hours waiting. Recreational smoking certainly helped there. The others were played loads too, but nothing quite as much as Tenchu.

Recently very little has been able to hold my attention in the same way. I've got so many games to play, so many films to watch, so many jobs round the house to do, it's impossible to spend that much time on any of them.

Still, VF4 Evo gets played every day at lunch break at work, and i try and fit in a Sunday afternoon every week. Unless the missus wants something plastered/moved/thrown out/built.

Can't wait til i retire...

[AllYourBase]

Mario Kart / Streetfighter 2 turbo without a doubt!