10 Most Addictive Video Games Of All Time

6. Super Mario Bros. 3

In 1988, we were given a game that billed itself as ‘the biggest, most exciting Mario Bros. adventure yet’ and the marketing team were spot on with this assessment. The original Super Mario Bros. is without doubt one of the most influential games of all time and is often referred to as a pioneering effort in gaming by Nintendo – they simply perfected the formula for the third outing.

Last year, we received confirmation that the fan theories are true and Super Mario Bros. 3 takes place as a stage play – unsurprisingly this led to a huge resurgence in popularity and pretty much everyone who owns a Wii U downloaded the virtual console version of the game.

Almost everything you read about this game tells you that even the most seasoned side scrolling gamers had trouble finishing Super Mario Bros. 3 and that’s a big part of its addictive nature. We were given characters we’d never seen before, a world map to move from location to location and new power ups to give Mario (and Luigi) the special abilities they needed to take down Bowser. All this added to everything we knew before made for a video game you simply couldn’t put down.

Nowadays, Mario is spending all of his time in glorious 3D but even the likes of Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy aren’t anywhere near as addictive as this wonder of side-scrolling brilliance. If any game was ever worthy of perfect scores; this is definitely ten out of ten.