For me it was Super Mario World. I was blown away by that game but as a kid I didn't have much interest in games so I hardly played. In college I began to take strong interest in seeing whether or not the game actually had 96 levels. I would play any chance I got but got killed a lot so I would keep playing. This never caused me to skip classes like it did for my cousin. He was so obsessed with Super M World that he would skip classes and even began to reconsider what he was studying in school. Turns out he got an engineering degree and got into the business of packaging video games!

It's hard to pick just one.  Here are my 3:

Starsiege: Tribes

I overplayed this to the point that once I crammed in 38 hours straight, only stopping to go to the bathroom and get snacks/water.  I created a legendary clan called The Children.  At one point I was funding all servers except 1, and I wrote the first true auto-aim for it after years of rumors that it was impossible.

GoldenEye 007/Perfect Dark

The only Nintendo 64 games that I have torn apart, ripping assets and devoting over a thousand hours on various conversions.  I hacked the maps (and textures) out of both games, wrote a tool to construct solids out of them, exported that to .MAP for Hammer/WorldCraft, and from there loaded them into Starsiege: Tribes (a cross-over obsession) and GoldenEye Source.

Here is Facility in Starsiege: Tribes: 

More recently I have been recording the OST for both games in CD quality.  
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG1p2qHnVfOIuRKOpePIgAA
This means:

• Obtain the original uncompressed samples for both games (very hard!  SAD!).
• Load them onto a Yamaha MONTAGE 8 ($4,000), carefully applying all properties such as volume, pan, pitch-bend range, detune, release time, etc. as they are in the game (requires hacking this data from the games).
• Hack the MIDI files out of each game.  Apply loops to the MIDI files.
• Run the MIDI through the Yamaha MONTAGE 8 as a professional tone-generator, record digitally, apply fade-outs, and put on YouTube for the world to hear.

Final Fantasy VII

Another game I tore apart.  I hacked out the models, textures, animation formats, etc. from the PC version and made my own engine to run them.

I built from-scratch an online version of Final Fantasy VII that allowed people to play groups of enemies, other players, and even multiple teams of other players/enemies.  For example, you and your friend each have 3 characters in battle and can be on a team against a bunch of enemies, or other teams of humans, or both.

There used to be many players.  It was pretty popular.

All of the battle mechanics were accurate, following the same algorithms as in the original game.

And of course my obsession grew to the point where I later joined Square Enix.


L. Spiro

16 hours ago, prof_smash said:

Smash Bros., without a doubt. I've poured hundreds of hours into that franchise and can never truly be bored of it. When I want to play a game just to play a game, Smash Bros. is my go to.

I play Super Smash Bros. for Wii U online every night and started the Nintendo Club inside Square Enix where we played it daily and had a few tournaments.  I joined the Nottingham GeekZilla events and played it at the The National Videogame Arcade weekly.  I had a world record with Ganondorf in Super Smash Bros. Melee.

It's borderline obsession, but I have never taken it apart like how I did with the other games I mentioned.


L. Spiro

Smash brothers rules but there's one games that just gets me not wanting to go to work - that's Super Mario 3's battle game. I especially like the one in Mario Allstars. When played with another person I can be on this until the other person gets tired and leaves!

Usually 3D collect-a-thons like Spyro and Super Mario Galaxy. Gotta get all those shinies. Also if a game is difficult, I get obsessive in scouring the internet for tips to beat it as quickly as possible, like in Lightning Returns FFXIII when I found that you can add debuff damage boost onto non-debuff abilities.