the unfortunate fact is that our favorite games are usually not the ones with the most longevity. You can only play Mario 64 so many times (I think 5 times through for me) and Ocarina of Time is only good for a play through every few years. But there are games with unbelievable longevity, be it a massive RPG or an awesome multiplayer game.

In terms of time played, I'd rank mine as follows:

1) Age of Empires: Age of Kings / The Conquerors - I played this game 75% of days from 2am-4am for two straight summers with a lot of play in between. For some reason, I never got great at it, but I was always able to have a blast be it from screwing around with people or playing gametypes suited to my strengths. I never really tried to get good, but damn, did I play this a lot.

2) Madden '05 - After starting out 2-29, my online record in this was something like 145-38. Once I got this game, I got realllly good. I was ranked top 5 in the rankings for a bit and knocked off the number one guy a few times. This was a fun one, but at ~45 minutes a game, a hugeeee time waster. The numbers may be a little misleading, as I recall a 3 day stretch of playing at least 80 games in early September.

3) Super Smash Brothers: Brawl - This game was always on in my dorm room last year. I think we have ~120 hours of playing time. I probably played about 2/3 of those hours.

4) RollerCoaster Tycoon - Beat the game and all the original expansion packs and spent a ton of time making custom parks. I'd say I've spent at least 65 hours playing RCT.

5) Halo 2 - I played this game from December 2005 (I think that's when it released) through May 2006, when I sold it. To this day I don't think I have played a game a more concentrated dose for such a significant period of time. I sank hours a day into this game for a solid 3 months.

Honorable Mentions

College Football '97 and Sonic the Hedgehog (2?) for the Sega Genesis

starcraft 2 (I played ladder for a long time)

warcraft 3 (more so customs than ladder)

ssb melee (didn't play for long periods at a time but always went back to it with friends)

tetris (i'm a tetris freak).

counterstrike (most time spent on fps game)

I'm sure anyone who plays mmorpgs have wasted countless months of nonstop time on them.

1) Super Smash Brothers - This was the game of choice through at least 3 years of college. I have logged hundreds of hours on it, and many more in grade school/high school.

2) Final Fantasy VII - I have played through this game no less than 8 times. I have beaten it at least 5. I have sunk hundreds of hours into this game as well. If SSB wasn't so consistently played in 3+ hour sessions - FFVII would be No. 1.

3) Starcraft - I have played through the single player campaign countless times. I had a challenge to myself of how quickly I could beat the final Zerg mission in Brood War. I only played competitively a little, and I wasn't that great of a player. Better than many of my college dormies, but when it got too serious (counting up APM) I got tired of it. However, the UMS maps never got old for me. Lots of RPG maps (Paradoth's Return among others) and DBZ maps were huge time wasters.

4) Halo 2 - I started playing this game fall of 2004 and continued all the way until spring of 2007. That's three years of playing whenever I could find a game in the dorm, plus many many more online.

5) Oblivion - I am playing this game right now and have about 60 hours logged. I can see this game moving up the list.

These are just off the top of my head. I might add some more later.

Post from 2025 ftw.

Civ 2 tops this list for me. When i first started playing it, it seemed to take forever to get old. Since then i play a full game once or twice a year.

lol yeah, I blame it on that sc2 thread.

Everquest >>>> Everything else (probably more than the next four combined actually)

WoW is great but it's no Everquest...

Fifa 06 on Xbox -- Life as a 16 year old in the summer, get off work at 5pm, shower, play fifa till 10, go out, play fifa when I get home, repeat for the whole summer

I was ranked somewhere around 500 in the world

Guitar Hero (all of them). And I still suck.

1. Lufia 2 - Ancient Cave FTW.

2. WoW, EQ, EQ2, etc, so on and so forth

Most time:


Civ 2 and 3
Mario 64
Mario Kart 64
Halo 2
Kingdom Hearts
GTA III and SA
WE9
and now Wow

Probably a lot of SFII back in the day, and Ken Griffey Jr. baseball.

Stupid WOW damnit.

I played a ton of EQ too, a ridiculous amount. And WoW definitely doesn't hold a candle to it in a lot of ways.

I also played a lot of AOE 2, including online.

Lots of Warcraft and Warcraft 2, but only against friends, not on the net.

Tons of Total Annihilation, my favorite game to date. I was one of the best players on that, and beat the best player a good number of times.

counter-strike by about 100 times as much as any other game. been playing competitively for many years off and on
goldeneye
guitar hero
tfc
tf2
basically the only games i've logged serious time on

I don't know the order, but here it goes:

Pokemon: some insanely stupid amount, trying to 'catch them all' and have a huge team all at 100, never played one after that, and deleted that memory, so that is all far into my past

Goldeneye 007: Many nights played with my friends. 5 of us would always have a sleepover and play it all night basically. Once we had a match first to 100 kills, and the one we always pick on had to watch from the sideline, must've been boring for him. The setting was rockets on Complex.

Perfect Dark: Got up to 2: Almost Perfect ranking, playing 80% by myself, since this was after my friends had burned of Goldeneye and such.

Super Smash Bros Melee: Way too much time spent.

Other non video game wasted time:
Online Chess
Online Poker

growing up:
SMB1
Pitfall
RBI Baseball

recently:
guitar hero
CoD4
GTA IV

For me SOCOM 2 and NCAA Football 03 and 04 (whichever were the first 2 years it was online for PS2). Basically any game you could play for 6 hour stretches online and completely lose track of time. No other shooter has come close to SOCOM 2 online for me and I've played the Halos, SOCOM 3, Gears, and other. I'm hoping SOCOM:Confrontation is the real deal.

Rainbow Six
Rogue Spear
COunter strike
WOW
diablo 2
And someone mentioned ken griffey jr baseball... i defintly played the **** out of that for a good 3 years. greatest baseball game.

SOCOM 2, Fifa 08, the NCAA franchise, and Halo 2 would my winners.

Mario Kart 64
FF VII
Monster Rancher 2
Halo 2/3
Guitar Hero/Rock Band games

oh hell ya, ken griffey jr on snes is by far and away the greatest baseball game ever!

Tecmo Super Bowl when I was five. I played every game in the season, for every team.

Ogre Battle 64, played 60+ hours.

Freecell, 2,367 games and counting.

Counter-Strike, by a very large margin. Played from 1.3-Source, pretty much stopped when Source came out. Played competitively from late 1.3-1.6.

morrowind by a long long long shot

I already have like 13 days on COD4 alone so that's already 300 hrs and it's not even close to how long I use to play CS 1.3-CS:S.

I spent over 3000 hours on a MUD over a span of 6 yrs. Talk about a waste a time. Raiding on a MUD on 28.8k before raiding became cool. I now look at those years and wish I could get it back and use it for something more productive. At least I didn't get into WoW because I knew it'd just be a massive time sink with nothing to show for in the end.