What video game character have you played as the most?

Over the totality of your time spent gaming, which character do you figure you spent the most time controlling?

Your answer could be a specific character that you spent many hours playing as in a single game or as that same character across multiple titles.

It could also be a created character you made for an RPG/MMO or some other type of game that you put countless hours into?

Obviously this isn't something I expect you can calculate exactly but still it would be nice to know what character you have spent the most time with throughout gaming.

For me, If I had to guess it would probably be Super Mario (Aka Mario Mario). This is somewhat by design of course, because Nintendo intended Mario to be a Mickey Mouse type figure for gaming so they could slot him into multiple projects.

I have played pretty much every mainline Mario platformer. Mario is also one of most played characters across Smash Bros and Mario Kart. I don't really play the Mario Sport games or Mario Party. I most recently played Super Mario Sunshine on Switch, adding about another 20 hours playing as Mario.

Other notable contenders would probably include Link, if you count all the different version as essentially the same character. I've played a few mainline Zelda games, used him a bunch in Soul Calibur II on Gamecube, and also use Link/ToonLink/YoungLink in Smash.

Nathan Drake is probably up there as well across 4 mainline Uncharted games and Golden Abyss. Kratos is probably top ten as well.

If you count the player character from Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow as the same character, that's probably the tops as I think I put over 100 hours into each of those games back in the day. 

What about you?

I mean... do I even need to say anything?

Link, obviously. 1k hours over multiple Breath of the Wild playthroughs, every mainline console game, Soul Caliber II and Smash.

All that and yet your avatar is freaking Wario?

Ungrateful...

Link, followed by Mario, Samus, and... I dunno. Chun-Li? Kitana? Cloud? Luigi?

Hard to say, most games I play have classes/character creation, but...

Fujimaru Ritsuka from Fate/Grand Order. I must have over 3000 h.

For me its "Elvaan" (elf) character in FFXI (MMO), that I played for like 15 years or something.

I won't even guess at how many hours of play that is.... I was without a job for a while, and depressed, and had days playing like 14-16hours a day.
Even when that wasn't the case, my play time was insane. I think I actually reached the point of "addiction"... I would sleep and dream of ffxi.
Quitting was hard, and I had trouble even staying away. The last time I quit, I deleted my character, to "make sure" it would stick.

Afterwards it's probably FFXIV (mmo) (got at launch, quit, came back to it lateron) and Path of Exile (I usually play melee characters, such as dualist/marauder), while I didn't play PoE from release, it wouldn't long there after (every new league I put in the hours, the first few weeks). We are talking 1000's of hours here.

My custom character in Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii, an athletic redhead chick with whom I spent over 1000 hours slaying giant monsters.

As for actual pre-defined characters, either Link or Mario, thousands of hours across dozens of games since the SNES.

Hard to say, but here's perhaps the strongest contenders:

• one of my Titan Quest characters
• one of my Grim Dawn characters
• Coach or Nick from Left 4 Dead 2, or perhaps Louis from either game in the series
• Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid
• Big Boss from Metal Gear Solid
• one of my Skyrim characters
• Alexios from Assassin's Creed: Odyssey
• Bayek from Assassin's Creed: Origins

My WoW main had like 200 days (4800 hours) played. PVE and PVP through multiple expansions. Of course eventually the combined time of all my alts eventually surpassed that. I spent a lot of money on WoW over the years, but I can't say it wasn't worth it value wise.

Dovahkin - 450 Hours +

Crash Bandicoot - 200 Hours (tracked only)

Fallout 4 Mom - 200 Hours

Joker - 160 Hours

Commander Shepherd - 150 Hours

Kassandra (AC Odyssey) - 135 Hours

The problem is no time tracking on older consoles, I have no idea how much crash I played on the older titles. I only have NSane Trilogy, Nitro-Fueled and Crash 4 tracked. Probably easily over an additional 200 hours. So I likely have 400+, could even be a LOT more.

Mario I also have no clue at all. Who knows what the total is after adding up all the time playing Mario Kart, Mario Party, Mario Strikers etc etc. I can't even guess with this one.