What Was the First Game that Took Over Your Life?

Shamelessly stealing from an RPS post here, but what's the first game that you can remember being something more than this game seems good and I play a decent amount of it. I knew my answer immediately (more on that in a bit), but used the prompt to think about games that came before it that maybe just missed being something I spent every waking hour thinking about.

The first game I remember is King's Quest, which I played through with my grandmother on an IBM PCjr. I'm tempted to say that I was too young at that point for any media to take over my life, but this was about the time I discovered Star Wars and that definitely did.

I got an NES when I was 6 and played a lot of the Zelda games, but nothing on that system really gets close. Next up was the Genesis, where I got really into sports games. Untold numbers of seasons in the Joe Montana Football and World Series Baseball games were played, but again, I didn't spend any time outside of the games thinking about them.

In the early 90s we somehow ended up with a Macintosh SE (the black & white screen one), and I played a ton of SimCity. This is probably the first game that really sucked me in, but it's not the sort of thing that had me reading about urban planning or anything in my time away from the game.

Then we got a PC in the mid-90s and I eventually read the PCGamer review of Sid Meier's Civilization 2 and knew I had to play the game. My schedule for the summer of '96 was:

  • 5:30 - 7:30am - Morning swim practice
  • 9:00am - 3:00pm - Civ 2
  • 4:00pm - 6:00pm - Afternoon swim practice
  • 7:00pm - 10:00pm - Civ 2

And unlike something like SimCity, I was spending time outside of the game reading about not just it but also random history topics inspired by playing the game.

Other games come to mind after that -- SMAC, Oblivion, later Civ entries. But nothing quite like Civ 2. I'm sure alot of it was the fact that I was the right age to be interested in the subject matter and able to devote that much time to a single game, and also the fact that so many fewer games came out in a given year during that time. But having played it again recently, Civ 2 is just a really good game.

Anyway -- what's your first life-destroying (in a good way hopefully, but if not that's interesting too) game?

DOOM - In college I saw someone else had the shareware installed on their PC and instantly knew I needed it on mine. Bought the full version and played the heck out of it. I'd redo levels to see how fast I could get 100% kills and secrets, and eventually replay whole episodes in one sitting for fun. It led of course to DOOM 2 and QUAKE and Half Life and beyond, but my gaming obsession started with DOOM.

Morrowind on the OG Xbox. A relationship ended right before I discovered the game and I ended up losing most of a summer in Vvardenfell. I had multiple save files that were 400+ hours long, because that was the point at which the file would start to refuse to load and lock up my console. I still have most of the map memorized.

The first Dragon Quest (released as Dragon Warrior in North America) for NES. I was young so my parents didn't let it take over my life, but it was definitely the first game that I played to beat instead of just seeing how far I could get. I even studied the monster map it came with when I wasn't playing it.

Either Elite on the Amstrad or Gameboy Tetris, I couldn't count the hours i put into those little wonders. I try and remind myself of that when I watch mini bbk pile his Minecraft hours up and up.

Super Mario RPG Legend of the 7 stars on the SNES.

We used to go upstate every weekend when I was young, and being a young nerd I would generally stay inside and play video games. It got to the point that I would start playing Friday night and would generally have it beat Sunday afternoon. I probably beat that game a solid 40 times or so.

Next after that is probably Ragnarok Online, which consumed several years of my adolescence.

Civ 2 for me too. And I knew another guy who played for like 20 hours straight once. The pacing on that game was perfectly addictive, and it hit during a time in life when my free time was at its maximum.

The Championship Manager series (later renamed to Football Manager). Played right from the first edition, back in 1992 on the Atari ST, and then every iteration through the end of the decade. Entire summer holidays spent ignoring the sunshine outside to coax Stockport County through the divisions and to eventual European glory...

That was easily Pokemon Red. It wasn't my first game, but I was the right age when it came out and at ground zero for Pokemania - the games, the show, the cards, the movies, the toys, all of it; and we'd talk about it at home, at school, at baseball practice, etc. Everyone was into it, and it got the imagination going like nothing else. And I talked my dad into getting an extra Game Boy Pocket and Blue and a link cable so I could trade with myself. I played and beat both of those games dozens of times, often using the same team in each one while playing them simultaneously. There's no way to track, but it might still be my most played game by hours.

Dark Forces.

I had played Wolfenstein and Doom, and although I liked them a lot and saw their potential for first-person perspective games, Dark Forces delivered on the immersion in a world that also included "quest" objectives and a compelling story. That game was the first first-person game that I truly felt immersed in another world. As a Star Wars nerd, being able to run around those worlds and shoot stormtroopers just blew my mind. I must've re-played that game four or five times in a row.

And then I discovered mods.

Back then, I was still on dial-up AND our service was none other than AOL. I was so frustrated trying to use AOL to download mods from a web site that I somehow accidentally figured out that I could connect to the AOL service and then use a separate browser to browse the web. (Yup, that wasn't immediately obvious to me back in the day.) I had to queue the downloads up at night and hope no one picked up the phone too.

I downloaded tons of these mods and found a bunch that all had unique stories, levels, and even new art assets and models that weren't in the original game. I played and re-played those a bunch as well. What modders were doing with those levels impressed me so much that I even tried designing my own levels for a short time.

This game set the bar for me for immersive first-person perspective games (followed later by Half-Life and Morrowind) which is still my favorite interface for games to this day.

The first thing that comes to mind for me is playing Adventure Construction Set on our old IBM PC clone. I spent a lot of time with the various adventures that came bundled in, and loads more time goofing around with the creation tools, constructing little mini-adventures for my friends, and forever plotting the really big one that never quite got off the ground.

After that was the Norse mythology-based isometric RPG Dusk of the Gods, which probably qualified a bit more for the being on my mind every waking hour thing, as it aligned perfectly with my interests at that age. I explored every nook and cranny of what was a surprisingly large world to me, and was thrilled by every little discovery and nod to the myths and legends. No idea how many hours I sunk into that game, but it was far beyond what was required to finish it.

The time-line in my head is a bit muddy.
But one of the first games I spent significant amounts of time with was Galaxy on the Commodore 16.
The first game that I remember taking over was X-Wing. I DID things to play that game. I may have wiped out my parent's installation of Windows 3.1 to make room for that game on our hard drive a time or two.

I remember having to spend a night on my computer and a friends downloading the 4 floppy disks required for Doom. It was so much fun once we got it working. Taking turns when someone died, trying to figure out where every secret was hidden.

I also remember getting Myst and having to run out to buy an SVGA card so I could see it in all its glory. But it was worth it.

I know games look 1000% better now but somehow the magic of them is less.

Civilization 2. Get home from school and play, that went on for quite a while.

billt721 wrote:

And unlike something like SimCity, I was spending time outside of the game reading about not just it but also random history topics inspired by playing the game.

Definitely the same, it made me interested in history, and might very well have played the most significant role in the education I ended up picking years later.

Everquest. It quickly became a second job!

Coolbeans wrote:

Everquest. It quickly became a second job!

Yeah same for me. There's plenty of games I spent a lot of time playing before Everquest but it's the only game in my life that took over to an unhealthy degree. Once I gave it up I never got into another MMO.

There were numerous games I spent lots of time with as a kid - Defender of the Crown, M.U.L.E, Dragon Warrior, The Legend of Zelda, and others. The first one to truly dominate my gaming time was Sid Meier's Pirates! on the c64 though. I spent a crazy amount of my young life playing that game - either at home or on my friend's c128 after school. Also learned quite a lot of geography and history of the Carribean through it, and the included map and handbook let my imagination run free. Could I captured the Silver Train around lake Maracaibo in the middle of picking off Treasure Fleet galleons one more time, or would I fail and be thrown in prison again? Only one way to find out!

Other games came and went, and I played Doom first on a Blockbuster rental of the SNES version, then on an acquantaince's PC, next I bought the 32X version, and finally I owned my own PC copy and got into mods and level packs.

...but it wasn't until Quake that a game so totally took over my gaming life again. In fact, Quake put my Pirates! obsession to shame, and it was nearly the only thing I played for roughly 2 years, and still accounted for the lion's share of my gaming 4 years after release. Also got me into map making, running clans and tournaments, html coding and other stuff. Anyone who has read even a few of my posts on this site knows of my love for Quake, and that's never going to change.

mrwynd wrote:
Coolbeans wrote:

Everquest. It quickly became a second job!

Yeah same for me. There's plenty of games I spent a lot of time playing before Everquest but it's the only game in my life that took over to an unhealthy degree. Once I gave it up I never got into another MMO.

I had two almost identical MMO experiences. Anarchy Online wasn't my first MMO, but once I finally installed the base game when it became free to play, I couldn't seem to stop. Pumped innumerable hours into it in the course of about 2 months. Then came a longer overseas trip, and that broke my obsession, but not before I had bought all the expansion packs which I then never played.

AO was, in fact, the reason I stayed away from World of WarCraft for years. But then a friend insisted I play with him in ...2009, I think it was. The result was that I played WoW obsessively for about 5 weeks and watched the sun come up (probably more than) once. Then I took a long trip again, which once again cured me.

Haven't touched an MMO since.

AUs_TBirD wrote:
mrwynd wrote:
Coolbeans wrote:

Everquest. It quickly became a second job!

Yeah same for me. There's plenty of games I spent a lot of time playing before Everquest but it's the only game in my life that took over to an unhealthy degree. Once I gave it up I never got into another MMO.

I had two almost identical MMO experiences. Anarchy Online wasn't my first MMO, but once I finally installed the base game when it became free to play, I couldn't seem to stop. Pumped innumerable hours into it in the course of about 2 months. Then came a longer overseas trip, and that broke my obsession, but not before I had bought all the expansion packs which I then never played.

AO was, in fact, the reason I stayed away from World of WarCraft for years. But then a friend insisted I play with him in ...2009, I think it was. The result was that I played WoW obsessively for about 5 weeks and watched the sun come up (probably more than) once. Then I took a long trip again, which once again cured me.

Haven't touched an MMO since.

Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure this is how I ended up falling off the MMO wagon as well. I got from a long trip (maybe summer camp?), fired up RO, thought “…this isn’t fun. This is work.” And that was it. At least until WoW came out and me and a bunch of friends started playing, but it never really got it’s hooks into me that deeply.

I think it was Warcraft 2. Or maybe Crusader No Remorse or maybe Wing Commander 3. Such classics.

Zork.

Also Ultima 3.

Also I'm old.

There were RPGs that I played off and on for well over a year, like Skyrim, The Witcher 3, and Dragon Age Inquisition.

But nothing really consumed me until Final Fantasy XIV. It took a while for this to happen. I tried the game a couple times with friends and didn't stick with it. But it had a mood and soundtrack that stuck with me. Once the NoClip documentary about it came out I decided to give it another try. I stuck with it, and enjoyed it a lot. I still took frequent breaks though, unsubbing for a few months at a time before coming back and continuing my progress through the lengthy main story.

After getting caught up with the main story in the Shadowbringers expansion, I started trying more of the game's content, leveling other jobs, unlocking old raids, etc. I was unsubbing less frequently. Once the pandemic hit, without really realizing it I slid into a 2 year obsession with it. I finally dug into crafting and gathering classes, spent hours in optional grinds for cool weapons and mounts, kept leveling the other jobs in the game. I was watching more streamers on Twitch who played the game, playing with folks in this community, and even shepherded a few IRL friends through. Before the current Endwalker expansion came out, I replayed the entire main story up to that point, something that took over a month of playtime all by itself. I was watching WoW streamers and youtubers try the game for the first time.

The release of Endwalker was a joy. The community was insanely hyped for this expansion that was promising to wrap up the overarching 10 year storyline that we'd collectively been experiencing. After finishing the main story, I maxed out all my crafting and gathering classes and began chasing after the new expansion's long term grinds. I had a goal for this expansion to do all of the Extreme Trials when they're current, so I steeled myself for PUGing those and had a great time doing so. They're not close to the hardest fights in the game, but they're a significant step up and take more time, focus and willingness to learn than the normal dungeons, trials, and raids that are on offer. I tried the rest of the side content I had neglected at that point like learning spells for Blue Mage. While I certainly haven't 100%'d the game, at this point I've at least been exposed to every type of content the game now offers.

In November I finally finished leveling every job to max level and finished grinding out one of the rarer mounts in the game. Since then I've been playing significantly less. I still come back for new patch content, as the story, dailies, and side content continue to get regular updates. I'm still watching a few favorite Twitch streamers. But in the last 2 to 3 months I've been going back to my backlog, trying new games, and basically relearning what it's like to not have a single game take up the bulk of my gaming headspace. It's been fun, and a nice change of pace.

Ultima 3: Exodus. My father had purchased an Apple //e computer back in the 80s and the first two games I got for it were Championship Load Runner and Wizardry. Two awful picks for first computer games as both were crazy difficult.

We ended up returning Championship Load Runner to the Apple store - yes they had them back in the 80s. I still wanted a fantasy type game where I didn't have my entire party wipe within 20 minutes, and the cover of Ultima 3 looked so awesome. I knew nothing about the game itself. The Apple store employee tried to talk us out of it saying that game was also really difficult. But that cover looked so great I wanted to give it a try.

Right when I opened the box in the car I fell in love. It had a crazy detailed manual with weapon and armor stats, lots of story elements, and neat illustrations. Plus two separate spell books, a cloth map, and I think that one came with an ankh.

The game itself was exactly what I was looking for. I spent so many hours playing it over the next few months before I finally finished it. It was a pretty difficult game for a newbie - and without the internet. But loved every minute of it and felt such a level of accomplishment when I finally won.

My grandparents managed to track down Ultima 2 for me for that Christmas. And I think soon after I saw Ultima 4 on the shelves and got that. I spent way too much time on the computer during that time but was having such a blast staying up at all hours to get a little further.

I think I'd have to say Duke Nukem 3D.

At the time it came out we had our home PC and my dad got a laptop for work for the first time. My brother learned how to make a crossover cable using two 9-pin cables from old peripherals and we used that to connect the two computers and play 1v1 deathmatch. I remember we downloaded custom maps from a BBS server. We spent all weekend playing DM.

Starflight - I'd played many games before this, mostly arcade and console stuff, primarily meant for quick playthroughs. Starflight was my first PC game and the first to take over me wholly, mind, body, and soul. I spent days playing it, literal days up on Jolt Cola playing through the entire thing. It took over my life until I finished it, which took hundreds of hours. Few games have hit me as hard as that one.

Football Manager. But not that one. The original version from Kevin Toms, circa 1980s.

In the last week of summer vacation my Father died in a car accident. In the first week back at school my best friend gave me a TDK cassette tape with "Football Manger" (sic) scrawled on the front in marker.

The subsequent six months I poured pretty much every waking minute into that game while I was going through some stuff.

At one point I pressed Escape and the game dumped me to a screen with the entire code visible and editable. By Christmas I'd completely reworked the game to be a World League of American Football simulator with goals replaced by Touchdowns or Field Goals based on a random number generated off of your team's offensive ratings compared to the other team's defence, with a fractional weighting towards touchdowns for whichever team was at home.

I had pages of notes about how I was going to move the FA Cup competition to the end of the season and use its shell to make a kind of playoff structure to mimic the NFL but I then I got a girlfriend instead.

Thank you Sarah.

I read “took over your life” in kind of a negative sense, so, the first time I remember kind of losing myself in a game in a sort of unhealthy way was Baldur’s Gate II in the early 2000s.

Veloxi wrote:

Starflight - I'd played many games before this, mostly arcade and console stuff, primarily meant for quick playthroughs. Starflight was my first PC game and the first to take over me wholly, mind, body, and soul. I spent days playing it, literal days up on Jolt Cola playing through the entire thing. It took over my life until I finished it, which took hundreds of hours. Few games have hit me as hard as that one.

This was mine too. I don't think there was another game I got into like this until Guild Wars where I ended up running a guild which was basically a second job.

Final Fantasy VII, it coincided with starting highschool, and somehow getting a tv in my room to myself. First term holidays I would have been sinking hours on end into that game, something I now realise was pretty unhealthy. But that nostalgia and those connections to a narrative run deeeeeep.

I have two candidates, because I can't remember which one I played first.

I spent an entire summer vacation playing Elite. (Then, many years later, Elite: Dangerous helped me through a couple of years of un- and under-employment... but that's another story).

Pool of Radiance brought me not just the time playing the game, but months of imagining about it between the time I first heard of it and when I got it for Christmas. For a long while there, a computer D&D game was about the most exciting thing I could imagine as a nerdy kid growing up in a place that seemed really isolated at the time. Despite getting my mages and clerics to the level cap and spending a whole lot of time just exploring, I never actually finished the game.

Another vote for Civ 2 here. I must have sunk weeks into that game, but none of the sequels have grabbed me the same way since.