• Top 10 Most Addictive Games

  

  Written by Zeromage 69 Comments
  Last Updated:: January 9, 2009

  You know these games. You can’t put down the controller, you walk to go to the bathroom and you have vertigo from looking at a screen too long, your mother used to yell at you saying “stop playing that damn game”! These are the products of the most addicting video games. In this list we will go through the most addicting video games of all time. Many to choose from, many to eliminate, many obvious choices. These are the games you would play into all the hours of the night and then go to bed just to get enough rest to play them immediately in the morning. You couldn’t get away from these games, and for this reason they would be remembered as some of the greatest video games of all time.

  10. Doctor Mario

  Does anyone remember the original Dr Mario commercials? They were horrible. Released on the coat-tails of Tetris’ success the two kids playing the split-screen made you want to puke on your TV. The biggest problem with the commercial was that the brats looked so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed! If this ultra-addictive 2 player was properly marketed, the two kids would be swearing and bloodshot, and one of them would have to throw their controller on the ground before the commercial ended. This game broke up friendships. This game continues to almost break up my marriage. This game is awesome. If you’ve forgotten about Dr Mario, plug in the NES and get a friend to play you. Be warned, you may not be talking when the game is done.

  9. Ms. Pac-man

  It’s very rare to find arcades around these days, but when I do, I immediately go to the Ms. Pac-Man machine. In the Arcade there are the skee ball machines, street fighter machines, claw machines and the like, but the Ms. Pac-Man machine in all its simplicity is what first strikes me. What is it about chomping dots and being chased around by ghosts that’s so fun? It’s simple, straightforward and difficult at the same time. I rarely get past level 8, but somehow I’m always impressed when I pass the first two levels. I don’t know if this is because when I see most people play, they can’t get by the first level, or I feel that after all these years I still have a decent grasp of the game. Whatever it is, it always calls for me when I enter the arcade.

  8. Civilization 2

  Civilization 2 was addictive because of the sheer scope of the game. The patience and time involved with trying to watch the world evolve was immense. Starting off as an indigenous tribe trying to eventually build a space craft wouldn’t take a couple hours or days, or even months. You would have to play this game for a year before you were able to accomplish this technological feat. Everything along the way would keep you gripped to the game as if you had complete control of the world. Building alliances, putting your resources into weaponry, having to fend off barbaric Germanic tribes, all this would keep you glued to your computer in hopes your civilization was the most superlative in the world. Call it ego or social Darwinism, whatever it was, your whole being was invested in what was as stake.

  7. Tetris

  When I first played Tetris, I played it for a year straight, getting irritable because I couldn’t get past level 50. I put down the controller for a year and stopped playing it. Two years after I would pick back up the controller and play for another year and get to level 60. Just last week, I asked Sage where I could find a place on the internet to play Tetris for free. I couldn’t get past level 10 this time around! Am I just getting old? No, it was just that the online version I was playing could only play up to level 10 and made it about as fast as level 100 on the traditional Tetris for the NES. Who would of thought that fitting blocks together would have been this entertaining? The Russians had great literature and a decent space program, but no one should forget that they created the most addicting video game of all time.

  6. Diablo

  This game was scary. Late at night, sitting at my computer, fighting off hordes of demons, goat men, skeletons, and other baddies often led to a night of bizarre dreams and nightmares. Even the way the lights shone out of the church’s windows was creepy. Blizzard basically has three universes that it works in, Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. Each is unique, detailed and story driven, and no story line is scarier than this one. The dark lord himself, Diablo, has returned and he has brought back some friends.

  The principle of the game was simple; a church in a small town has been invaded by the denizens of hell and you are sent in to take care of the problem. Sort of makes you wonder why you became an exterminator in the first place. In an even more interesting twist it turns out the church was built on top of catacombs, which were built on top of caves, which were built on top of the entrance to hell. If I were the owners I would have sued not only the construction company but also the land developer, architect, and surveyor. I would imagine such a unique area would be hard to miss, but then again it might have been a union job so… Anyway I digress. Like most Blizzard games Diablo was also addicting. Every time you find the stairs to the next level you don’t want to wait till the morning to start hacking your way through. Eventually you kill the dark lord and for some reason plunge some sort of crystal into your head and then wander off. I guess that makes for a good sequel. I never actually finished playing Diablo 2. I can’t remember why.

  5. Sim City

  Sim City for SNES was addicting in its own way. You would keep the game on for long periods of time letting your towns build on their own while cash would slowly come in from taxes. The infrastructure in the game was colorful and much bigger than the computer version. The soundtrack to Sim City for SNES was amazing. This really came out of nowhere. Usually the Sim City games for the computer had elevator music which was fine enough for municipality engineering, but Sim City for the SNES had music that made you want to play the game just to listen to the music. Like the computer version though, I still needed to code of infinity money to play the game with any sense of evolving. I didn’t have the patience to wait yearly for tax income even with the game on a speed setting. Regardless of the code though, I would be building and building till the end hours of the night.

  4. Super Off Road

  Super Off Road is one of the greatest games of all time, which we list in our top 100 games of all time along with our top 5 racing games of all time lists. Beyond being a great game though, this game was addicting as hell. One summer we became so addicted to it that we were planning on getting a generator to keep the SNES version on in case there was a power outage and we lost our place. You could play this game forever because there was never an end to the game and all the tracks were as fun as trying to make a friend slip on a banana peel. You had to create your own ending, and for us, this was getting “9’s” straight across the money board which we estimated would take 1000 hours. Obviously if were spending 500 hours on the game and couldn’t save, a generator would make sense. We never went ahead with this idea but it’s never too late to be the ultimate Super Off Road player by accomplishing this seemingly impenetrable feat.

  3. Mario Kart Double Dash

  We knew a Mario Kart had to be in this list, but which one? We considered all the games and choose the one we collectively spent most hours on which was Double Dash for the Gamecube. This game not only defined 75% of the time I spent at college, but about 90% of the time I spent after college. After my lifetime has past, I will have spent anywhere from 3-6% of it playing this game. Not only was this game addicting, but it could make people pissed beyond your wildest dreams. Thinking back to playing this with some of my roommates, I remember one of them being beaten by the other in the star cup and at the end the beaten roommate saying “You want to take this outside to really see who’s better” with no sense of humor in the statement. This game warped people into it for hours and hours at a time and made people define themselves as people by this game alone. Talk about hypnotic.

  2. Starcraft

  This is the game that got us talking about this list. It’s incredible on every level. An epic battle between the mindless overlords of the Zerg, the superior technology of the Protoss, and the corrupt government of the Terrans. We here at OW must have played this game for years of our lives. In fact DM and I used to play in high school during our CAD class. This game was also incredibly addicting many a night I said one more level, five or six times before passing out face down on my keyboard. Only to find that my base was leveled and I need to start again.

  We all have fond memories of waiting for the dial up to connect so we could duke it out on battle net. At the time I was a master of the zergling rush. They were definitely my favorites. I’ve always been a huge fan of the borg or mindless species with genius overlords so the zerg were perfect. Plus the whole plot twist with Kerrigan becoming the queen of blades and overthrowing the overmind was even more awesome. Here at OW we are all very excited about Starcraft 2. In our opinion this is the Blizzard’s best universe.

  1. World of Warcraft

  It has recently been shown that World of Warcraft (WoW) is equivalent to crack cocaine (coke, yayo, the C-O,…). Seriously a team of the top chemists, biologists, psychologists, and doctors have found that there are no differences between the two. Addicts of both will sit in dark rooms for hours on end often soiling themselves and staring at screens. They can’t separate themselves from their drug for more than a few hours or they physically start to hurt and have to get a fix. They often speak an incomprehensible language of gibberish that only other addicts can understand. All of their earnings, which is usually meager to begin with, are spent on sating their devilish addictions. More often then not they become social outcasts interestingly, however, it is possible to distinguish the users of by their weight. Oddly WoW users are prone to obesity and acne, while coke heads tend to loose weight rapidly, but can have worse skin problems. Scientists are working hard to understand this disparity.Either way this game is amazing and possibly one of the most addicting games of all time. From a marketing stand point its also pure genius, think of it an addicting game that never ends. I have personally been battling my addiction for many years. Just when I think it’s been beat I’m back at my computer trying to get a group to raid Kara. It’s one hell of a monkey on my back. My family has been supportive and I have been able to hang on to my job, though I haven’t been able to re-establish lasting relationships. With time and consoling I believe that I will be able to make a full recovery. Until then my druid still needs his epic gear, and now there is the expansion to master. Its going to be a tough few months.

69 Comments

1. #1 Henry says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 8:27 pm

   ok, noobs. AMEN to Jerry! (no shit right?)

   Conquer Online 2.0

   Enough said!
2. #2 Hayley says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 5:33 am

   lol. WoW is the most addicting game. of course. it pwns all others! my holy pally can heal running through heroics…she’s amazing. oh btw for any of you WoW players out there…im on draka and i have an epic plate belt for lvl 58…WTS. if you’re on draka *alliance* PST me with offer and if its good ull get an amazing epic belt. =) my next mission…to run all the little kiddies through DM and Stocks… have fun all =)
3. #3 tonya says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 4:22 pm

   wow rocks!
4. #4 gidi says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 1:19 am

   I have a game Rome Totel War(RTW) and Rome Totel War Barberien Invachin(RTWBI) and thay are very adiddicting it sould be #2
5. #5 Uhhhhhhhhh, pie says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 8:15 pm

   You should’ve put an Age of Empires game. Those games rock! I can sit in front of a computer screen trying to get my colony as powerful as it can be before a wipe out (literally, wipe out) the others. I love that game.
6. #6 Wolf says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 10:37 am

   Halo isn’t a very good FPS but it has high addiction factor it should be on there to
   Oh and Super Mario Bros 3 is a very addicting game unlike most that are addicting its addicting because of how masterfully made simple and difficult it is but nonetheless addicting
7. #7 bryan says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 8:49 am

   tetris should be higher
8. #8 speck135les says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 8:44 am

   runescape turns middle age moms(me) into automatons that lose their children.
9. #9 avi says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 11:01 am

   bryan is right.
10. #10 big guns says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 4:35 pm

    I have to agree WOW is like crack it’s hard to kick the habit.
11. #11 Alberto says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 11:43 pm

    Having risked my job for Civilization and Total War games, Make me realize, that NEVER IN MY LIFE, I will touch WOW. I don’t want to risk my marriage for horny cyber elves

    I finish CIV 2 in huge map, deity mode, total conquest with out cheats in 1 week. I will never do that again in my life.
    and putting down the controller, that depends on taste I love Civ, total war and fallout3. I don’t care to much for the other games. I play ocassionally other type of games, but those 3 are always playable for me.
    LONG LIVE ALBERTO mighty emperor of the Aztecs
12. #12 Gareth says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 2:37 pm

    Metal Gear Solid 4, literally didn’t put it down and then started a new game straight after finishing. However I don’t see Final Fantasy 10 any where on this list. At one point I had over 1000 hours gameplay, tell me thats not addicted
13. #13 Lowell says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 11:29 pm

    Diablo is the shit, though I owe D2 to my failure of the 11th grade.
14. #14 Delta says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 11:42 pm

    Why are DIABLO-style Dungeon Crawlers so fucking addictive?
15. #15 Fedricco Rabaya says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 2:48 pm

    Oi Starcraft 4eva man. It’s one of the best. What do you guys think about Red Alert? I mean it was once very addictive though kinda crappy graphics. I heard they will release red alert 3.
16. #16 Gamer3000 says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 7:53 pm

    Half life series Source

    Counter strike and C S Source