If your story involves some kind of homemade urinating contraption and a strict diet of whatever is within arm’s reach and doesn’t require cooking, you’re probably delightfully gross and I want to hear from you.
Ditto if your story involves days of unwashed clothes, missed jury duty dates, or anything involving the words “temporary paralysis.”
If it’s more about your house burning down while you stayed to kill a boss, or left a broken arm unattended, you need to reconsider your life but I still want to hear from you. And believe me, I’ve heard stories like that before…
Drop a comment with your stories below.
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68 responses to “What’s Your Craziest Gaming Marathon Story?”
It’s not so crazy, but I remember my buddy bringing his SNES over in the late 90s. We had it set up in the same room as my computer. He played my computer and I played Mario Kart on the SNES. We started around 7pm. I went to the toilet after what I thought was a few hours, only to hear birds chirping. I looked up out the window and the sun was shining. Then I got super tired :/
Pretty much the same for me. I think the longest marathon session I’d have had would be 20+ years ago. Saving up pocket money and hiring a SNES and a couple of games from the video store for the a night. I’d play till I fell asleep in front of the TV (or “Nintendo Thumb” became too much) to get my money’s worth.
Did the same thing with Syndicate. COuldn’t work out why birds were making a racket in the middle of the… Aw fuck
Time to go to work.
Halo 3: Bungie vs. the World.
During a marvellous 24 hour period there was recon armor at stake for any team that matched with a Bungie staff team and won.
I believe with the help of snacks and Red Bull my wife and I played for around 20 of those 24 hours. We never met a Bungie team, but it was the most fun we ever had playing that game, and we played a lot of Halo 3 between 2007 and 2010.
Why would you attempt that with their host advantage?
Because we were delusional about our skill level and had a passion for the game.
I can’t exactly specify why, but Halo 3 was the Halo game that I played the most as well. I really got into the multiplayer and had a lot of fun with it for a long time. I enjoyed all the other Halo games, but after finishing the campaigns only really dabbled in the multiplayer aside from #3…
When red dead remdemption first came out. I picked it up the day it came out then stayed up all night until sometime the next day. By the time I went to sleep I was in Mexico and I worked out that I played the game for about 40 hours straight: right after spending a 11 hour shift labouring
Thats excellent, and a worthy game.
I’ve had RDR sitting on the backburner for a while. Might have to pick it back up if I ever finish New Vegas before I either pick up Arkham Knight or Witcher 3
It’s totally worth playing mate and if you’ve managed to avoid spoilers for this long your doing well. I won’t spoil it but the way it all goes it Certainly doesn’t feel like GTA in the Wild West
Had Ninja Gaiden on NES, used to leave it on for days straight due to no save function.
I played K.O.T.O.R for maybe 30 hours straight once..went daylight, night and then daylight again.
i did the same thing with Rygar on the NES. best part was when I fell asleep playing and woke up in a new part of the game with no idea how i got there.
Had a LAN for the release of Cataclysm. 2 friends around, made a huge industrial sized pot of potato salad. played from release for 29 hours, by which we were level capped and geared in raid ready heroic gear. slept for about 5 hours then proceeded to play further to gear up others and move on to raiding.
Did a similar thing with SW:TOR
Most recently, Witcher 3 where I spent the entiretly of my 3 day weekend on the couch in front of the TV moving only to get more coffee or food or to relieve myself, usually only when all three coincided. When sleep came it was due to a lack thereof and I would wake up, pick up the controller that I had dropped and continue.
During the worst of my WoW addiction, I was pulling up to 20 hours a day. I once took an entire week off school where I did 18-20 hours a day for the entire period. I don’t know how I didn’t die.
Unemployment
1999- 2005
…six years???
I never counted
one of my most memorable experiences involved Nobunaga’s Ambition on the Genesis. I was 13 at the time and had a friend come over so we could try and figure the game out. The instruction book was the size of a text book so I said screw it. A means yes, b means no, and we went for it. we played from 6pm to 8am and went through enough coffee to poison a small African tribe. As my dad woke up we shared the knowledge we had gained, and expressed how proud we were that we managed to take over a few territories after many failures. We then passed out for about 3 hours, which is all the caffeine overdose would allow, When we woke up we walked out to the living room to see my dad sitting there with half the map taken over and playing the game like a champ. We asked him in shock how he figured it all out and he simply said “i read the instructions.”
now that I think about it he did the same thing when MK was released on the SNES. I begged him to rent it for me, and he was able to get out of work early and pick up a copy. He came home, read the instructions and practiced until about 5 mins before I got home. Once home he first played like he didn’t get the game to see my dreams crushed, then laughed at me and turned the game on. He said he got to challenge me first, and selected Sub Zero. I went with Scorpion because, reasons! Needless to say my dad handed my ass to me, and laughed at me. yeah.. my dad rocks hehe.
Awesome dad and awesome story mate
My buddy and I were into Counter Strike back in the day (the very early ones, maybe… 10 years ago) and we would play through a whole weekends. I am talking about maybe 1 to 2 hours sleep during a weekend, for months.
Between Diablo and Diablo 2 I didn’t sleep for years.
Not my story, but two friends of mine were co-op marathoning Diablo 2 for a whole night.
The next day, my friends older brother (who wasn’t playing at the time) said, “All I heard all night long were Ogres dying! Kept me up half the night… wait for me before you guys kick off again tonight!”
Freelancer. Set up a multi LAN server at a friend’s place near uni on Monday, didn’t go to uni all week, didn’t even nap until Thursday, didn’t stop playing until Friday.
How in the world did you manage that? I honestly don’t think I could’ve stayed awake that long. I don’t specifically know the longest amount of time I’ve gone without sleep, but I’m sure it wasn’t anything like three days (are we talking three days-ish?). I would’ve fallen asleep sitting up, lol.
Yep, it’s my record – Monday to Friday with only a nap Thursday morning. All I remember is that we had the biggest ships and were doing diamond runs by the Wednesday, it’s all a bit hazy apart from that.
No way I can manage more than 2 days or so these days. Getting old 🙁
Was a long weekend.
I used to live with a couple. She was heading back home solo for the long weekend, so me and my mate decided to play through borderlands. As she left on Saturday morning, we were setting up consoles & TVs in the loungeroom.
Flash forward to monday, she arrives to find us unmoved from when she left, surrounded by assorted pizza boxes and junk food. She asked us if we’d moved at all, to which the answer, of course, was a general grunt. Beat the last DLC on the monday night.
Mine isn’t all that impressive but at the time it felt absolutely monumental. When Chrono Trigger came out I played it from 2pm to about 5am. I can’t remember how far I got but, as a 10 year old, I felt pretty hardcore.
My brother and i did a 48 hr streak on the mega drive playing a TAZ game as you had to finish it in one go once you turned off the system game went back to begining we had a ball my husband on the other hand was not impressed with us but still does not stop our games nights the other 48hr weekend was a custom designed heroes of might and magic map that hubby designed for about six of us that was a lot of coffee with alchol
As I’ve pushed into my 30’s, the thought of a gaming marathon makes me cringe.
Sleep oh glorious sleep.
I’m in mid 30s with a sub 1 year old. I played through till midnight one day last week. Madness.
I’m in mid 40s with a 2 yr old that doesn’t sleep. Been a long, long time since a game marathon seemed like a good idea.
Though I did watch an entire The Walking Dead series in one hit… that cost me.
Ouch
I’m late 30’s with a 4 year old and a 10 month old. I get up at 5am and ride my bike 25kms to work (just under an hour). I’m rekt if I game two evenings in a row.
I’m 32 with no kids and impose myself a strict bedtime of midnight else I’ll be a wreck the next day since I tend to wake up around 6:30 to get ready for work.
My co-workers with kids think staying up past 10pm on a work night is sheer lunacy.
It’s incredible how hard this has hit me too…21 and I fear staying awake past eleven most nights because I’m going to be a paralyzed, drowned zombie the next morning. Nevertheless, two nights ago I was up until 12:30 gaming…
21?? You should have the stamina to go until dawn!
Seriously though, the older I get, the less interest I have in long marathon gaming sessions. It’s coupled to the overall sense of pointlessness that’s been growing in me when I think about games. Granted, I’m kind of in a weird gaming bubble at the moment where I still enjoy the medium, but I can’t really afford to buy the games I want, or spend the time on it as much as I want. The effect of all this is that I’m stuck playing games I’ve already played before, yearning for something new to happen in them, and becoming disappointed when that doesn’t happen.
Yeah, I do have the stamina to go till dawn…but I would just feel crap all day after the all nighter.
I seem to be in that same bubble, I want something new but I don’t want to pay for it or invest more than a few hours a week in it. But it has to be life changing.
I used to make an expresso at 12am and put a movie on…
Now I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m just killing the next day and am I really enjoying myself that much? I’m so tired…
GOD I MISS IT SO MUCH!
But yeah, 3 kids, yada yada yada. Very rare for me to be gaming at night now.
My biggest was when a buddy brought his PS2 around and we rented a copy of FF10 for the weekend. We basically took the overnight in shifts while each other played with the intent to reach the end by sunday evening however we still were unable to finish 🙁
But pissing yourself and only eating cheese nips is fine kids!
buuuuuut… in saying that. my worst Gaming marathon was when World of Warcraft: Cataclysm came out. Me and my girlfriend both stayed up for about 2 days straight trying to reach the level cap so we could gear up for raiding. My GF made it to the cap and i was about 1 level from cap and just gave up. I woke up about 14 hours later to find my girlfriend passed out beside me in bed.
the sweetheart took the time to put me to bed, finish leveling my druid and then join me for the sweet sweet bliss of sleep before we did a marathon to get geared :P\
Then there was the Lan in my local neighbourhood that involved lugging the PC down to the local school hall for 3 days (Long weekend) and not moving from my keyboard for endless hours of Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament!
and when Diablo 3 came out on Xbox360 there was lugging 2 massive TV’s out to the loungeroom with my best mate and playing system link Co Op from about 12 in the afternoon till about 9am 😛
so many good marathon memories haha
Got together with a mate to play the real-time 24 hr mode of Le Mens GP race on PSX. We raced in shifts and finished the race.
I can’t even remember if we won.
I had that on the DreamCast I think, great racing game IMO. Kudos
When I was 16 I played through the original Neverwinter Nights with a mate, co-op Lan in a long weekend, only moved for toilet and food-getting. It made me feel so greasy, and we coined the term “geek-hangover” to describe the lethargic, eyestrain sort of bleh we felt afterwards. So worth it though, what a rad game.
For at least a month I played it for a couple of hours, every single day.
I really didn’t value my time in the late 90s 😀
I spent 17 hours straight playing a single game of Defender in the mid 80’s as a world record attempt. I got up over 16,000,000 points, and had a blister on the ball of my thumb the size of a 50c piece. I was young and assumed a photo of the score would be enough proof, had no idea there had to be officials there to vet it etc. I was devastated when I found out a few weeks later that I wouldn’t get the record recognised. I saw baiters in my sleep for months after it.
Not really a marathon but I went to the Halo 2 midnight release with a mate. Came home and we played until we finished the campaign. Even though it was only 4 hours later we had a great time.
Fallout 3 and New Vegas, I can’t count how many sleepless days and nights which I played for a combined total of atleast 1000 hours…
Sonic the Hedgehog 1,2,3 + knuckles add-on…on acid. No food or toilet breaks. Never, ever again.
Did you know an achievement can come up if you play the 360 for 24 hours straight?
Mass Effect 2 taught me this.
Daytona USA – Sega Saturn – Bought on the way home from school on a Friday, played none stop all weekend till Sunday afternoon trying to get a faster time on the oval. Finally got 15.66 Secs with the right tyre on the pit lane trick. Fun times, I just couldn’t get any faster. My eyes looked like I’d been washing them in bleach! So worth it! Still love that game.
Solo: FFVII +35hrs.
LAN Party (with 39 college students): WoW +8days / sleep on the sit.
mines pretty simple. GT4 and GT5’s endurance races. over a week i would try to do the two 24hr races and some of the 12hr races
Bought Bioshock 2 and finished it in one sitting (obviously some yrs ago). Lost track of time but definitely involved a day/night cycle.
The relief, slash, guilt you feel when finally going to bed is palpable.
With games such as Destiny and upcoming, ‘The Division’ it’s clear developers want us playing longer and more often. As a freelance writer who has written about games, amongst many other things I’ll always remember what one Dev told me. She said that a game is designed to be played and her prime measure of a successful game was not tied to money or graphics or reviews, it was how many people played it, how often, and for how long.
An appreciable slice of the gamers pie is made up of those with addictive tendencies – the way some parts of the industry are going… Well, it’s like providing a never-ending buffet to those with an eating disorder.
Should we be concerned? Ehm…Oh, stuff it, let’s go and hunt some orc!
My longest was a CS lan party that I kept going for 48 hours straight (the others all slept here and there for a couple of hours)
The other was the a gaming disaster, me and a friend did Metal gear solid on PS1 for 14 hours straight during the night
we didnt save trying to get an S or A rating
when fighting liquid snake at the end, my puppy got hyper and jumped on the playstation, paw first on the power button
we almost cried, lucky we had a retarded puppy to cheer us up
When I was 14 and Assassins Creed 2 came out (my favourite of the series + one of my top 3 games of all time) I was at the age where pocket money from my folks was starting to slow down and I didn’t have a job yet; therefore couldn’t afford games on release. Borrowing it out was my only option (as no one would lend me their brand new copy) and I had to wait until like 5pm to go out and get it because my parents were busy all day. Played from the minute I got home until about 3am, literally non-stop. Came out for dinner and as time was precious I almost choked whilst scoffing it down. I finished the game of course, powered through it. fuelled by skittles and iced coffee. I still bought it a few months later when it was on special to do all the extras. I still haven’t bought a game that I have pulled an over-nighter/all dayer like that ever since, not even GTA V. At least not to that extent.
When Unreal tournament 2004 was out i played for 56 hours straight with toilet breaks of course as i was aiming to be number 1 in the world for assault score on the stats board. I did make it to the number 1 spot which i was there for about a month as i still played but reduced the hours played lol. As for guild wars one i played well over 17,000 hours over a number of years on the many of accounts i played at once. I was playing running all 8 accounts at the same time through dungeons for 8 times the loot, was amazing money back there and super fun.
A friend came to visit me from overseas and she was mad jetlagged, so when I stayed up to keep her company and she liked watching people game, so I started the first Uncharted. Then I played the second Uncharted. Then what the hell, I thought, and played the third Uncharted. And then it was 10am, 36 hours later and we both thought you know, we really should give that multiplayer a bash.
And then mid afternoon it was time to sleep.
So it didn’t fix her jetlag and my sleeping patterns were screwed up too.
One word – UWALAN – Long weekend in the early noughties. Back during the tribes 2 and CS beta era. 48 hours straight in challenge stadium with 300 other gamers. I was so high on Jolt and redbull my friends were concerned I was tripping. Went out to the car about 18hrs in to get 4hrs sleep, came back to find my clanmate had passed out on his keyboard. Woke him up, threw him a jolt cola and some twisties and laughed at the keyboard imprint on his face 🙂 .
Still remember the epic 4500m disc launcher headshot my mate got in tribes, and the rage that followed when he forgot to save the replay after we all watched.
My neighbour and I also took a week off from school/TAFE when CS Beta 1 came out (1998?). Loved the 1m cliff fall death bug.
Nothing too crazy but a friend and I went to the midnight GTA V launch and we stayed up for god knows how long playing it simultaneously on two different TVs despite the fact he had work at 6 and two (very) small children. He looked like death the next morning, thankfully I was only semi-employed at the time.
There’s been many a bleary eyed morning at Maccas after hours of Dawn of War though.
I have a weird tradition where I play every hall game in one sitting. Amazing fun.
2004. A mate, his brother and myself were taking shifts on one of the Gran Turismo 3 24 hour endurance races. I was the driver for the 16-24 hour bracket. My mate loved to have everything realistic, which was unfortunate as I crashed about 2 hours in. Hit the wall coming into the pits.
I think he finished the race solo eventually, but I wasn’t invited to watch.
I have a planned marathon, which is probably never going to happen…but I want to go through all Halo’s (excluding Wars) along the story line., no cut-scene skips and no breaks more than 15 minutes except meals and in between games. Trouble is finding a good partner who’s willing.
Doom 1, just released. Bear in mind up to this point the best “3d” game around was wolfenstein, Doom was completely revolutionary, such a big step up in graphics hasn’t occurred since then. Visited a friend in the afternoon who showed me the first level then gave me a go. Then he had to go to bed because he had something on the next day, 8am I grabbed a hard drive with the game and my save game on (the only portable media we had was floppy discs), went home then finished the game the following evening, It was about 22 hours play time plus an hour for transport and eating.
Same friend a couple of years later, LAN party with Aliens Total Conversion mod on doom engine. We spread ourselves around the house so we had to use the text chat for greater immersion. Played the whole thing through in 4 player co-op. No idea how long that took, it was great fun with bourbon and jolt in a dark house. The other 3 would guard the person AFK for toilet/drink breaks. I’ve never set up an IPX network since.
Kind of related, same people, midnight to dawn sessions of laser tag. Those wrecked me, I remember the stares on the train on the way home, hobbling and staggering from completely exhausted muscles and stinking from exertion people must have thought I was a drug addict on a bender.
I think the longest solo marathon I had was about 8-10 hours when Super Mario Sunshine came out. Burnout 3 is up there, too, but that was playing with a mate and we took turns. Great memories, though!
PS1 mgs came home from school popped it in didn’t sleep until finished 9pm next day. Epic red alert lan game with a mate the lasted 30 odd hours, I lost.
Getting home at 3am after a night on the piss. Then doing a 7 hour raid on new content in Dark Age of Camelot. By 10 am I was literally floating around the room.
when i was a youngster, a buddy of mine just bought Street Fighter 2 for the SNES on the day it came out, which was luckily a Friday. We got him, and went straight to his room and started playing with the intention of playing it all night. Then the next thing we know it was morning time, and both of us were completely dead tired, and decided to get some sleep. I rolled out the spare matress onto the floor, and just as my head hit the pillow, his mum burst through the doors saying “COME ON, YOU TWO NEED TO HURRY UP NOW!!!” turns out it wasn’t Saturday morning, but Monday morning and she was trying to get us up ready to go to school.