We all have those games that we are more than happy to celebrate and love where the time we spent with them feels justified. This in the same way that I think we all have games that we just wasted time on. Where the hours just flew by and piled up and in the end is something we might wish we could take back. I thought about this yesterday and in my head a barely thought out list started to emerge. What are the games, of all time, that have eaten up the most of my time? Here comes a valiant attempt to write a kind of list of the games that stole the most hours without measuring instruments or actual numbers. Where did the hours go?
Halo (xbox)
The single-player adventure took me about 20 hours to play through, and of course I include all the times I died during The Flood chapter (and screamed, so that my voice cracked) and that in itself was of course no further time waster. The multiplayer portion, on the other hand… Jeez Amalia. Me, childhood friend JB, his brother Larsa and my old friend Ville played Halo Multiplayer every night for two years. Every night. It quickly became standard that after finishing work, dinner and other errands, we connected at JB’s house around 20 to spend at least three hours in the wonderful world of Bungie. We always played Slayer. We always ran 20 as the frag limit and we always ran against each other on the favorite tracks Blood Gulch, Hang em High, Rat Race and Derelict.
Quake III: Arena (PC)
I really loved Quake and during my high school years we played a lot of Id Software’s dark, weird, fast-paced and incredibly explosive multiplayer fest but the sequel really wasn’t for me. Quake II never felt like Quake (which we now know the reason behind, when it was actually developed as a standalone title called “War”) and when then Id announced that Quake III would be “multiplayer only” based on a new game engine with new mechanics, I was one of those who were expectant and curious. After spending hundreds of hours in Unreal Tournament (which was magically good), Quake III: Arena hit like a bomb and I was hooked, from day one. After honing my skills for about half a year, I sold my first magazine idea (Missil) to the Spray-owned magazine Cirkus Media and there, in our office, we quickly made sure all four of us had top-of-the-line gaming computers with Quake III installed. The rest is… History. We worked hard, made tons of mistakes and learned as we failed, and we played Quake III like sweaty fools, all night long. For over a year.
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Street of Rage (Mega Drive)
There is no game in existence that I have beaten as many times as the first game in Sega’s acclaimed Streets of Rage series- Nothing. I bought it in the form of a kind of pirate cassette with a low-resolution, homemade label and everything (via an ad in Gula Tidningen) and then played it non-stop for almost two years. I remember it well. I turned it on every day when I got home from school and played it through in the role of Axel. From beginning to end. Every day. Of course, it became an obvious part of my day and this was topped off by the fact that I always played through it once more during the weekend, then often with the neighbor and childhood friend Gullberg.
Street Fighter Alpha 3 (playstation)
It was me and my childhood friend Jimmy who together, or as bitter arch-enemies, spent all our waking hours with Capcom’s wonderful prologue and when I try to remember the many evenings and weekends we just sat in each other’s armchairs and beat each other up – everything flows together to a couple of years of tough competition. Because as much as we enjoyed each other’s company and as much as we loved the game, we were both competitively gravely serious, which led to sweat, screams and hailing insults and talk of “syrup in the control” and “only float”.
Half-Life Multiplayer (PC)
It’s a pity (and a shame) for me that the multiplayer part of Valve’s acclaimed debut shooter is not celebrated or even mentioned today, at all. Because even though the single player portion was more innovative and better, the MP part was really nothing to sneeze at. On the contrary. I quickly fell in love with everything from the pace of the game to the various selectable characters to the track design which I still consider to be one of the best ever released. Crossfire and Undertow I hold up there at the top as two of the best MP tracks ever created and rented on the LAN that was at our local video store, we played at least two hours of Half-Life Multiplayer every day for an entire summer. Every day.
Clash of Clans (iphone)
It was in September 2012, about four weeks after the Finnish Supercell unleashed its ingenious little multiplayer game for the iPhone, that I stumbled upon it. I had just had surgery on my lower back, was relatively immobile and was therefore able to spend more time than I had perhaps originally planned on this game. And so it had to be. Hours turned into days turned into weeks and before I knew it I was spending three hours a day tending to my fort, upgrading equipment and attacking other players to steal their treasures. However, when I realized that I had spent about 18 months on Clash of Clans and poured 5600 kroner into the game to avoid “waiting”, I decided to delete the app and never look back.
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Mario Kart 64 (Nintendo 64)
I consider the Battle mode in the Nintendo 64 classic Mario Kart 64 to be the best multiplayer mode that Nintendo has ever created and when I think back to the amount of matches me and my high school friends Johan and Kenneth ran, I get a little sweaty just thinking about it. Because we each chose our old man (I always played as Wario) and threw ourselves into the course “Block Fort” where the matches were even, frustrating, wonderful and drowned in abysmal roar. We played it so much that, in the end, the only way to knock out the others’ balloons was to do it from the air. Jump on each other from high floors.
Tekken 5 (Playstation 2)
Many, many thousands of games were played by Namco’s wonderful five and I can still miss that. Miss kicking on the Playstation 2 and getting ready together with favorite character Kazuya to try to wear down friends JB, Larsa and Ville in tight, demanding rounds and matches. We played it several nights a week for almost two years, and when the Gamereactor editorial team got an addition in the form of Tekken competition player Peter Bernhardsson, I had some really tough opposition to bite into. We played a lot, the two of us, against each other, and won always the same number of matches, which allowed me to sharpen my skills and especially my “juggles” which allowed me to start dominating the group of friends, much to their annoyance, haha.
Dirt Rally 2.0 (PC)
2440 hours, in total. Of course, it will be partially divided between five people as me and my sim racing gang meet two nights a week to compete in Codemaster’s now four-year-old rally masterpiece, but still… A lot of time has been spent in the rally car and this much thanks to Gamereactor’s sim racing rig which makes the rally experience so wonderfully immersive and sweaty. We’ve driven all the routes, even mirrored ones, and we know them all. Every millimeter of Dirt Rally 2.0 is in my head at this point which of course involves thousands of curves, something that scares me a little as I could most likely use the memory space for something more… rewarding or useful?
