I couldn’t pick one in particular, but any new Infocom title would do it. Also Ultima IV. When it comes to more “modern” fare, the first Civ grabbed me and never let go. Up to that point I never imagined a computer game could have that kind of scope.
While Civilization IV is my favorite of the series, there was no other feeling like when I picked up the original Civilization box in Electronics Boutique. I read the back of the box several times and couldn’t believe this was an actual game. When I played it I wasn’t disappointed.
Even though at that point I had been playing computer games probably for 10 years (started on my friend’s TSR-80 model III), the original Empire was probably the closest thing I played to a 4X game. There were probably days I played that for 16 hours, it would keep me up until daylight started approaching,and be the only game I played for months. No game will capture that magic. I put a ton of hours into other Civ games, but none will inspire the awe of the very first.
First year of Everquest by a mile. A first person RPG with a huge game world that’s really hard? I got seriously sucked in, and put way too many hours a day into this game. The timing of this also happened to coincide with me just getting out of a contract/band, so I had money and free time…very dangerous combo.
Nothing else has come close to the addiction level of EQ really. Next up would probably be Tribes, which I played religiously, but wasn’t hooked into the world in the same way. Honorable mention to Asherons Call.
For an hour: I have vivid memories of playing the original Doom on my new computer in my dorm room with about ten people behind me watching and all of us lunging to the side when an unseen demon threw a fireball at me.
For one day: My college roommate and I finished The Fool’s Errand in one 26-hour stretch. I don’t know how it sucked us in so strongly but we could not put it down.
For one year: Civilization II
For multiple years: Everquest, largely because most of my pre-EQ friends were playing with me and the allure of seeing how much we could do with a tiny group really sucked us in. Also because I’d chosen to play an Enchanter because I thought it meant I could make magic items, and then it turned out that it was the most difficult class and I liked seeing how far I could get charm soloing. (Answer: real far.)
My initial response was Everquest by far, but Ultima III, and especially IV would be a very close second. Ultima IV hit me at a time in my life where the virtues really hit me hard as a young adult/late teenager and as strange as it sounds to some of you younger folks, when I played the early Ultimas I truly felt my choices that I made reflected on me as a human being. There wasn’t the disconnect between video games and real life for me yet, and no internet groups or forums to bounce ideas and feelings on these sorts of things around with others, so experiencing these games were life changing events for me.
The Meridian 59/Ultima Online/Everquest chain of MMORPGs was quite a whirlwind for me. They hit me at a time when I was in my early 30s, and trying to figure out what type of person I was. The weirdest thing for all of these was that my sole objective wasn’t to level as fast as I could or acquire items or power as fast as I could, but to enjoy the company of friends and guildmates and just spend time in this crazy realized world. I learned a lot about myself and the times I spent in these games and I believe they made me a better person today.
Ultima IV and Everquest. Both games that if I wasn’t playing, I thought of constantly. I would talk to anyone I could about them. I took notes and drew maps with both of them. EQ was probably even better because I met a ton of people playing it and got to know them quite well.
EQ was also a game I would stay up for a couple of days playing. But looking back at it, there was a lot of game play that was just plain tedious and not at all fun.The last year of it wasn’t really fun at all, but it was such a huge part of my life, I couldn’t just quit either. I really don’t want to play another MMORPG again thanks to EQ.
Mine is pretty obscure, but at the time gaming wasn’t all splintered up like it is today, so for online gaming there was a relatively small community playing Quake 2 CTF, but the reason I mention obscure is because w/in that rather small MP world was a sub-world where some of us played something called LMCTF.
Time playing matches in LMCTF flew by, 5 minutes really was 5 hours. To this day for my money nothing has ever beaten the fun I had with a grapple in one hand and a rocket launcher in the other.
Witness the grapple mania and mayhem in a match between two of the best clans at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vW59CA2LL8
Same re: Ultima IV. I even wrote notes in the runic alphabet. What a nerd!
This is one of favourite game moments ever. My apartment was dark, I had headphones on and it was loud. I jumped out of my chair, had barely a corner of a ass cheek catch the seat, two hands with arms extended grabbing an armrest and the headphones yanked out of the jack and flew onto the floor. I then started laughing and couldn’t stop. Never will forget that.
I remember a Bards Tale where it was all black in a maze, three of us taking turns moving while the other two marking up graph paper. A team effort got us through that game. Like others Everquest was one I was totally addicted.
Everquest, no doubt.
I signed up for the beta and got in early. Like, got a fedex with an NDA early, then a fedex with a CDR. It was like Christmas when I was 6. Started an Erudite wizard and played for days till I realized I couldn’t get off the island because the boat was broken and would be for months.
Recently it would be a toss up between Factorio & Fortresscraft Evolved. That combination of base building plus optimization is an arrow straight to my knee.
CIV 1, I remember buying the game and then it was like 14 hours later and I thought I really have to go to bed.
Honorable Mentions:
MOO 1, XCOM the original, City of Heroes, Sim City 1, Roller Coaster Tycoon 1, and maybe Wizardry as my first rpg.
Probably Chrono Trigger
I remember sitting down early one morning some 15 years ago to play this Super Nintendo ROM that a friend highly recommended. Tock Tock goes the pendulum on the title screen, lazily swinging back and forth and the music gradually builds. Skipping much of the introductory video, I end up transported to this early modern era fairground. So absorbed I was that only when I return and find myself on trial in game do I take a moment to check the time and realise that I too had been lost in time. The morning had passed, I needed to pee, and to eat. The hardest thing I could do was stop and attend to those needs, as opposed to playing out the escape from prison and seeing where my adventure would go to next. Thinking back, I guess I wanted to leave the real world and be transported into that one. Heck, even now, that world feels a lot more inviting and exciting than where I’m at. My 3DS needs some love, maybe it is time to replay Chrono Trigger again soon.
Alternately, games that absorb me these days, like Tim_N, is the Paradox grand strategy games, namely CKII and EUIV. It is nothing for me to start up the game 7 or 8 o’clock at night and to go through until 3 or 4am in the morning. There’s always some objective to chase, some strange evolution or event happening in the world, and that ongoing desire to see the outcome. Heck, on occasion I’ll taunt a colleague who is currently at work after my nightshifts to tell him that while he’s been working until that sort of ridiculous hour, I’ve been busy murdering babies and committing genocide. Typical response is “you bastard” followed up with a reminder about going to sleep.
I can’t remember my most engrossing game. Maybe SimCity 2000. Definitely nothing recent.
The first SimCity is definitely one. I would go to a friend’s house and end up playing SimCity for hours and ignoring everyone else. Boy, I was kind of a jerk! Thanks, SimCity!
I think it would be impossible to identify just 1 game that was my “most immersive experience”. There are so many great games from the earliest days of gaming, through today that I’ve felt “fully immersed” in, which I think is the highest level of immersion I can feel. So it’s probably like a 20 game tie. Here’s a few, off the top of my head:
Ultima IV & Ultima VII
System Shock
Crusader: No Remorse / No Regret
Jagged Alliance 2
Many of the Final Fantasy games
Elder Scrolls: Morrowind / Oblivion / Skyrim
HoMM II & III
Everquest 1 and 2
WoW
Eve Online
plus so many more.
I guess if I had to pick 1 favorite out of these, based on my first memory of playing it, it would be Ultima VII.
Or maybe Skyrim. Or WoW.
Ugh, never mind, I can’t pick just 1!
All the old football managment games I used to play in the 80s. the Double, Tracksuit Manager, Treble Champions on the ZX Spectrum. Lost much of my life to this nonsense. Football Masters and Champ Manager 92/93 on the Amiga. From a slightly more modern era I’d go with Morrowind. The only recent game would probably be Crusader Kings 2, where I could spend a whole day playing it. But then not touch it for months.
The two that come to mind for me are:
Ultima Underworld: the first time I walked around the 3-d rendered objects in the dungeon I was completely hooked.
X-COM: the original one. I remember devoting hours and hours of time to cautiously creeping across maps, trying desperately to keep my guys from dying to a Sectoid.
Everquest was totally one for me too. But thinking about single player games that really pulled me in, there are several that really stand out.
Mass Effect 1- I remember when the credits rolled and that song be Faunts started playing, I just sat there totally in awe of everything that I had just gone through, amazing experience.
Dragon Age: Origins - I had bought this just before my wife had taken the kids up to visit her mom for a week. I had a bad cold and played through this in a haze of cold medicine while enjoying the game and a quiet house. I wound up playing like 12 hours a day for three or four days in a row.
Witcher 3 - Still haven’t finished this, but when I play I just get totally drawn in and focused on the world. My wife actually doesn’t like when I play since I’m so focused that I just lose contact with the rest of the house lol.
Lastly there is Horizon: Zero Dawn - Much like the Witcher 3, the game just totally draws me in and just totally captures my attention. I find this one much more relaxing than the Witcher though so it is easier to pop out when I’m needed. But when I sit down to play for a few minutes and three hours has gone by. This is the kind of game where I’m glad I have an alarm set on my phone to remind me it’s time to go to bed.
Beyond the obligatory EQ experience, which sucked me in from beta through maybe the first year or two before I burned out, and other MMOs to a lesser extent, I’d have to say Jagged Alliance 2 might top the list of games that I found impossible to put down. But I’ve got 600+ hours in Fallout 4, too, so, eh.
That was my answer before I even clicked the topic. Many late nights spent on a monochrome monitor looking at a little window where the “action” was going on. Talking to a new alien race, realizing I was never going to be able to land on the Spemin home world no matter how many of them I killed, using a Black Egg Device. . .
It’s pretty primitive now, but they packed a lot of interesting ideas into those floppies.