Motivation is one of the vital keys for special needs patients to feel sustain with their performances during rehabilitation therapies. as technology grows, serious games have become one of the assistive technology tools that used in rehabilitation field to help special needs patients to undergo their exercise. In this regard, the adaptation of special needs patients in using serious games for rehabilitation have attracted scholars to conduct number of relevant studies. Accordingly, a systematic review was conducted to identify the motivation attributes that influence special needs patients while playing serious games for rehabilitation. After the identification and screening processes, the use of the ARCS motivation model is to classify the motivation attributes into four main factors: attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction. A total number of 29 motivation attributes have been found from the previous studies that vigorously important in determine the rehabilitation performance of special needs patients. Each motivation attribute which repeatedly used in the recent studies from the year of 2011 to 2019 has been grouped as one. As results, the mostly used attribute in the previous research is motivation. The essential of motivation in ensuring confidence level and satisfaction among special needs patients while undergoing rehabilitation therapies is very important and has been successfully proven on the results. In other words, the previous studies have shown a positive experience of special needs patients in gaining and sustaining their motivation through serious games for rehabilitation by using the ARCS model.