It's not a computer game, it's crack disguised as a computer game.

Cafe Society
1

There have been four of these for me. Way back in my 486-25 days, my first exposure to crack in computer game form was X-Com. I was obsessed with this game to the point that I did little else until I had beaten it, then would start a new game again. None of the sequels lived up to the promise of that first game.

Master of Magic was obsession number two. It was so buggy for so long that for the first six months, the only way I could finish a game was through the Spell of Mastery, which took all of the fun out of rampaging across both worlds with my Ultimate Stack[super]tm[/super]* destroying every city in my path with little to no effort. It took mystic voodoo rituals to get the game to run on the aforementioned 486–603kb of free memory required to get the game to run–and I can still remember the boot ceremony:

Next came Civilization 2. Sure, the original was great, but I could regularly beat it with only a dozen cities. Civ2 took a lot more planning and effort. I’ve played it to completion more than 200 times. At 5-10 hours per complete game, that makes between 1000 and 2000 hours put into that game. Civ 3 is wonderful, but hasn’t captured me the same way Civ 2 did.

It’s been a few years, but I’ve found a new one. Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 was an impulse buy–I hadn’t done any research, but I bought it from a place that had a return policy, and one copy of the game was marked $19.99 and not $29.99 like the other dozen or so, so I picked it up.

And now I’m addicted. The first couple of days, I spent eight or ten hours playing, and I never actually played the game. All I did was play with the roller coaster designer. I finally got around to playing a scenario, and lost twice before winning–this being the easiest scenario. I was a little disappointed with the number of scenarios included, but the official site has about 20 extra ones from the original game available for free download. This game will be a major drain on my time in the weeks to come.

What computer games have you become obsessed with to the point of ignoring other trivial things in your life such as your job, wife, and eating at regular intervals?

*The Ultimate Stack:

Wizard: Myrran, Warlord, Artificer, 7 life spell books, 4 nature spell books retort of divine mastery (picked up extra spell books and divine mastery in high temples and nature nodes)

Global enchantments: Crusade and the one that increases all units hit points by 25%

Hero: Torin the Chosen
Mele fighters: 4 Dwarven Hammerhands, Champion level, adamantium swords.
Ranged: 4 Dark Elf Warlocks, Champion, adamantium swords.

Lionheart, Iron Skin, and Invulnerability all cast on every unit in the stack–the Warlocks, normally among the weakest mele characters in the game could withstand great wyrm attacks with these spells on them, let alone the already kick-ass hammerhands.

2

Ditto on X-Com. A pity the sequels sucked so much.

Add to the list: Final Fantasy Tactics, Tropico, Alpha Centauri, and Transport Tycoon. (Why no sequel to TT, Chris Roberts? Make one that is as nice as Rollercoaster Tycoon!)

3

The original Sim City. I eventually had to delete it from my computer in order to get anything else done.

4

I second Transport Tycoon. That game took away years of my life…

5

Master of Magic must rate as my all time favourite game - I still play it occasionally (MoM2, what happened to you?) If you think the voodoo rituals to get it to run on a 486 were bad, just try it on a 95/98/ME/XP computer

Have you tried Age of Wonders (and its sequel, imaginatively titled Age of Wonders 2 - they are very similar in concept.

One of my neighbours has the numberplate ‘T0R1N’ - I long to ask him if it comes from MoM, but I hardly ever see him, and don’t want to make him think I’m a complete freak by asking. (I AM a complete freak, but I don’t want him to think that…)

My additions to the list:
All the Civ games, including Alpha Centauri, had me up till the small hours.

Baldur’s gate, and especially BG2 - I am still playing BG2, despite having finished it twice - there are so many subquests that vary depending on your character/companions that it’s never the same game twice :smiley:

Diablo (1 & 2) I was also hooked on for ages.

6

currently Medieval:Total War. Nothing can beat slowy building up technology levels then crushing the skulls of your neighbours.

btw I personally find the first 3 X-COM games a blast.
The first still tops it though.

7

Gotta be The Sims. One of the few games where expansion packs actually *improve[/] on the original.

8

Starflight - I was 15 I think when this game came out, and my dad had to put a lock on the keyboard to keep me from playing all day every day. Never knew there was a second game until recently, and I cannot get it to run on my computer. My system is just way too fast. I have an old 486 that I might try to resurect to make work.

Castle Wolfenstien - played for hours. This one was the work stopper for us. We all had the hotkeys set up to play it, and hide the screen when someone walked by.

Baldur’s Gate - loved this game…great RPG when it first came out. Played over and over again…the second one hasn’t really captured my attention too much though. As I play more, I dislike the lack of control I have over the party.

9

Atrael - try turning AI off in BG2 (the little lantern icon at bottom right). I found that the AI was useless in combat, with nobody ever doing anything sensible.

Unless you mean the fact that the characters talk to you and each other, and develop their own characters - in which case you seem to be missing one of the main points of the game :smiley:

10

Fallout 2.

RC Pro-Am.

Dragon Warrior.

Final Fantasy 1

11

I feel somewhat pathetic for having played all of the games mentioned, and for at least a hundred hours per game. (There’s a low estimate because I was never a big Transport Tycoon fan.)

I also feel somewhat pathetic for having X-Com, Civ2, RCT2, and Tropico all currently installed, and all of the others lurking in zipped files or cds tossed in the closet.

Atrael - Starflight II was a bit of a disappointment, and is nigh-upon impossible if you don’t have the fold-out starmap that came with the game. Of course, a pdf or jpg would suffice, but I have fond memories of tacking that map to the wall next to the computer desk…

But for me, the ultimate time sink has to be Wizardry 1: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. I began playing this in second grade, and continued playing it actively for five or six years afterwards. The sequels held little interest to me. I returned to it a few years back and dedicated another few hundred hours to it. In total, I probably spent several thousand hours of my life advancing through a wireframe dungeon which only took up a tiny corner in the upperleft portion of the screen.

And I even tried to tell my parents it was educational as it taught me valuable dungeon-mapping skills. They wanted to know why I kept asking for graph paper, after all …

12

Colonization, the best historical 4X game ever.

Civ and Civ2, aka Crack and Crack 2.

Robotron: 2084, 21 years old, still fun as hell and played at least 3 times a week. Thanks, MAME! :love:

Might and Magic: World of Xeen. Love this game, but I NEVER see it mentioned among anybody’s favorites. Oh, well.

All the above are still installed on my computer.

13

No one has mentioned Master of Orion yet? :eek:

That was the first game I ever uninstalled to keep myself from playing it all the time.

The original Wing Commander was another.

I’ll also point out that I still have Master of Magic and X-Com installed on my machine.

Atrael: If your machine runs too fast for older games, check out MoSlo.

14

Total Annihilation.

Dune II on the Amiga.

And Unreal Tournament on this damned school LAN with 20 classmates, all in the same room.

15

Sim City was the first big one that became an obsession. Previously I’d played Wizardry and the Bard’s Tale series, Lode Runner was pretty good, too. But as far as all-encompassing obsession, Sim City was the first, closely followed by Civilization. Those two games dominated my life for a bit.

After that? The first Diablo was a big one. Took a passing gander at Ultima Online, but the crowds, player killers, and @#@ tradeskills made it less than addictive. I remember the UO crowd talked about this new game coming out - a MMORPG much like UO, only done in 3D, called Everquest. I filed it away in the back of my head while I changed jobs, got a divorce, and generally drifted away from computer games for a while.

Then came a new computer, and Black and White. I’d been looking forward to the game for a while, and had a new computer on order because my old one just didn’t cut it. While waiting for my new computer, I slaked my game interest by purchasing a $10 copy of that Everquest game I’d heard about so long ago. That was almost two years ago. It’s been downhill from there. I’ve never had a game so all encompassing. I dream about it. I want to play it all the time. Give me my evercrack.

16

My favorite is a game formerly known as Subspace. It was created by Virgin Interactive as a simple “fly around in space as part of a multiplayer team” to test their online gaming engine, but quickly morphed into a legit game.

When the company went under, the user community re-wrote the entire game to play like the orginal, and has supported and developed it ever since. It is now known as Continuum.

The best part of the game - you can track your online usage. I have thousands of hours logged.

My favorite “zone” (the supports multiple zones, where the game physics, ship characteristics, and weapons vary) is called Extreme Games. Its very past paced, and you die and respawn often.

Particularly fun is joining a flagging game, in which your team must capture and defend the 30 flags spread out among the arena by bringing them into a base. These can literally last hours, and require a great deal of strategy to win.

I like this game b/c I can pick it up and drop it whenever. I’ve avoided many RPGs lately cause I don’t have the initiative to get involved in them unless I can dedicate hours of continuous time.

If anyone is interested, check out http://www.extreme-games.net

17

Diablo II
I would get up at 4 AM to play it.
I had a callous on my thumb from the track ball.
I once took the game CD out & broke it in half with my bare hands to make myself stop playing it (I bought another one).
I had to give the game CD to my daughter & make her TAKE IT TO SCHOOL with her so I would not play during the day.
I don’t have it installed on my computer - I’m not tough enough to resist!

18

Civilization.
Diablo.
Deus Ex.
Diablo II.
and the current black hole of productivity in the Ethilrist household:

Mechwarrior Mercenaries.

19

Almost, but not quite as addictive as it’s sister game, Master of Magic. However, it was obviously more popular, since it has spawned not onw, but 2 sequels <hops up and down excitedly>: MOO3 out in March…</hops>

Also, is it just me, or does anyone else think Master of Orion : Battle at Antares had the best acronym ever? (MOOBAA)

20

** Civ ** on an Amiga 600. With the constant interchanging of the four floppies it ran from and the sloth-like processor you can imagine how long a single game would take!