I had Ultima VII and VIII but I don't think I ever finished either of them.

That bus minigame in the pen and teller thing sounds brutal! On the other hand, I've thought it would be sort of cool if there was a driving simulator sort of like MS Flight Sim, but covering the 4 million or so miles of road in the US... that would be a hell of a lot of modeling though so I'm sure we won't ever see anything that extensive.

I'd play it more if I could. Once I hit 90 hours on Oblivion I started relying on walkthroughs (mostly just for the last part of the Thief quest).

It still took me over 120 hours to finish. I just wanted to be done so I could get my life back.

Hearing some of these responses is amazing. I could never see myself devoting 50, let alone 100+ hours on a game without getting bored, or crazy. I guess I just like playing so many...as soon as I beat one I move onto another.

Most for me was Final Fantasy Tactics on PS1. Easily 120-140 hours, just battling and building up characters to get the classes and skills I wanted.....then I beat it and played it again.
However...I can't do that anymore. I just don't have the time, and I honestly am ready to move on to something new around 35-40 hours (less if the game sucks). There are only a few games I wished were longer (ie, had more of the same quality of content) once I beat them (admittedly I don't beat many games): the Ratchet and Clank games on PS2, Bioshock. And there are many that once I hit ~30 hours, I'm ready for it to be done (or I move on). Not that they're bad, I just want a new experience.
It's funny, in the back of my head when I read game reviews is "Hows the replayability?" Then I think about it and admit to myself "It doesn't really matter, you will never replay it" (except for games like Rock Band or short multiplayer things like Scene It.)
Good point about nonskippable cutscenes and grinding and fetchquests...all of those do artificially jack up playtime, and purposefully jack up annoyance factor. I don't mind fetch quests, if they're fun or funny or beneficial, but I do mind lots of backtracking. As much as I like RPGs I think all of them should have some item or skill (maybe later in the game) that lowers or eliminates random encounters, especially in complicated mazes....I hate trying to figure out a maze or a "flip this switch then this one" and getting interrupted by a baddie every fourteen steps....then the fight is so long I forget where I was going or what I was doing.

Doesn't really count in terms of a main quest
196 hours in Advance Wars Dual Strike: of course they count how long the game has been on and I think that includes my brother going through the campaign. Still counts as over 150+ hours

Countless hours - AW1 and AW2 I actually checked and they don't count the hours unfortunately

Countless hours - Animal Crossing.

I don't think this really counts, but I imagine that playing a baseball game franchise mode to completion would take a while, if you don't get sick of it. I'm not sure how long a game takes, but if it's about half an hour, that would be more than 80 hours per season, plus playoffs and time spent fidding with your rosters and other stuff.

I think 60-70 is my limit on single player experiences. All the following fall into that range from this gen:

Viva Pinata
Burnout Revenge
Okami (Wii)
Dead Rising
Pac-Man: CE
Geometry Wars 2: Pacifism
Crackdown (probably, since 360voice tells me I've played it on 44 days)

Then of course, there are the oddballs like GHIII, RB1 & RB2 in which 60 hours is a drop in the bucket. Those would probably fall into a different category though.

I would say FF7 for me.

I remember being off for 2 weeks and playing that dammn game from the time I woke up until 1am.

I would say that it took over 100hrs easily - but I was trying to get everything (golden chuco or what ever that thing was)

It was a long game because each battle took so long to finish, not paying attention could get you killed. I loved every second of it though.

Have you played Disgaea? It's basically the same concept except they had this thing where you could get chances to better you characters by having an in-game feature where you could start the game over again with the same items (but starting from lvl 1). Great game but took forever to get anywhere!

I did try Disgaea, I couldn't get into it. I don't know if the character classes didn't stand out enough for me (my problem with Suikoden Tactics), or if it was just *too* big (hundred floor dungeons in *each* weapon?!) or what, but it didn't click.
My all time favorite SRPGs are Shining Force (this one actually got me back into gaming in the Gen gen), FFT, and HoMM3: SoD/complete.
Vandal Hearts 1 and 2 are probably second.

I just beat Fallout 3 and logged about 30-35 hours. That has to be my longest single player experience (as I don't really play RPG/fantasy games).

I was surprised that it kept my interest the entire time.

= J

Haven't finished Fallout 3 yet, but Morrowind on Xbox kept me going over a hundred hours for the first time through.

Can't remember how long I spent on Fallout 1/2 the first time I played them.

Because it just seems like the most tidious, boring thing possible and in return it would make a funny 5 minute story to show people how big of a loser I am.

"Captive" is a game on Amiga (released on other platforms too) that according to a calculation I read somewhere would take 40 years of actual gameplay to complete.

The game is on a single Amiga floppy disk, 3D-RPG, so you can imagine the super duper graphics and music/sound effects it holds.

Don't get me wrong, I love(d) this game.

/JayEff

How long was Legend of Zelda:OOT? Has to be up there. I spent a few months with that one.

According to Penn some people are playing this for marathon sessions to raise money for charity - the url is http://desertbus.org/ . Here's a Youtube video of Penn talking about the undergoing and discussing the game and its history/origins (Janet Reno!)

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Ugh. Ultima 5.

I still hurt a little hearing that name. At a certain point I was just playing because I'd sunk so much time into it.

Then I quit. I never went back to finish it. I have no idea how close I got. I just didn't care anymore.

I did everything, beat everything I could think of, did crap over and over to get the best stuff so I could beat the optional bosses, and I went over 100 hours before I finished it. Of course I did the same with Fallout 3 but I probably spent more time just wandering aimlessly in that than in FF7.

Morrowind was a time sink.

I've spent the most time playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I think I had ~250 hours in that game with one character... playing all the expansions and going so far as to kill every NPC possible bare-fisted after I finished all the side-quests and had nothing left to do. lol.

I started playing Ms. Pac Man and Galaga in 1981 and have played them both every year since.

It has taken me well over 100 hours to complete all major achievements in Fallout 3 including DLC and I still have the last Brotherhood of Steel quest to complete to get my percentage back to 100. I think I'm at around 110 hours and there are some things that I shortcutted like the Replicated Man quest.

I think most of my longest games were Final Fantasy titles. I have a 90 hour save for FFX and a 110 hour save for FFXIII. I don't even want to begin to estimate how much time I've spent with stuff like Street Fighter II and whatnot.

Now that I have a 50+ hour a week job, am married, and do all sorts of crap in the off-time my gaming time has greatly diminished. Anything that takes more than 20 hours is far too much for me now.