[General Discussion] Minigames!

We had a thread like this a while back before the crash...and another one even before that. Anywho~

I think enough new games have come out to warrant this topic's revival! I recently replayed Final Fantasy X for one sole reason - Blitzball. Blitzball, to me, is quite possible the great minigame ever conceived by a developer. It has the best tie-in to the story (it's not just "oh hay he playz blitz", it's a major component in FFX), it's far deeper than most minigames, spanned two games and could even be created as a game in its own right, provided S-E put enough effort into it.

So, tons of games have various minigames. Why is _____ minigame your favorite? Does it have any relevance to the main story? POST.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Fishing in Ocarina of Time. No scores, no time limits, no indicators or multipliers. Just sit back, chill out and fish. If you need goals, you can keep trying to catch bigger and bigger fish. I was just happy snatching the shop owner's hat. I don't even like fishing generally, so it speaks volumes how beautifully implemented it was.

The fishing in Twilight Princess was great too, the boat was a nice addition, but I still prefer the one in Ocarina slightly better.


If you can count it, Mercenaries in Resident Evil 4 was an artform of its own. I hate that minigame now, but I played it enough to get an S-rank with every character, in all four stages, which unlocks the handcannon. And you simply can't deny that it's beautifully built around the crowd control gameplay with added time limits and multipliers. I still enjoy watching crazy japanese people score hilariously high combos in the levels without missing a beat.

For instance, Yankichi shot a 288 combo in Stage 2, scoring 332970 points. That's no longer the record though (which is 342970).

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Triple Triad - FFVIII

The greatest minigame ever conceived, and it was so good that Square actually made a stand alone version of the game. Too bad it was only released in Japan. It's so good that fans have made their own version of the game to be playable online, such as Triple Triad Extreme and a PSP version of the game which is shown in the screenshot below:



Although TT doesn't have a relevance to the main story, I've heard many people commenting they could spend 'hours' with the game just playing TT, perhaps spending more time with TT than the actual game. FFVIII is my favourite FF game so I'm implying FFVIII is crap or anything.

Square even tried to mimic TT's success by creating another similar minigame in FFIX, Tetra Master. Unfortunately, it was overly complicated and wasn't as fun/good as TT.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Honestly, I liked IX's card game a lot more the VIII's. I didn't really spend hours playing either, though.

I also didn't really like Blitzball, but, that may be because of the reason I always pressed some weird option by accident that I couldn't really do... well, anything. x-2's was easier for me to figure out, but, it's kinda boring, and all my players got hurt and I didn't feel like spending the gil to find new ones... Ah well.

I dunno if this counts as a minigame, but, I loved raising the chaos in Sonic Adventure 2. Just a fun little distraction from the main game.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Yoshi's Island had a few mini-games. The one I found oddly satisfying was the hot potato with the ever size increasing balloon. It was just really awesome to have it blow up on that bastard bandit who kept taking Mario throughout the game. I enjoyed the watermelon spitting battle as well. Good times. Made searching for that damn key well worth it. =)

I was speaking idiomatically.

I count Megaton Punch in Kirby Superstar as a minigame, especially since beating it doesn't unlock any of the other games. There's just something very appealing about testing your timing to see if you can align three different types of cursors perfectly in order to try and break Popstar in half. The win and lose poses would be cute enough to warrant trying over again as well as trying to spot the audience members in the background.

The hidden star shooting minigame in Super Mario RPG was a bunch of fun as well trying to get the highscore, although you were unlikely to come across it unless you were searching for it in particular.

On a similar note, Pure White Glastonbury, the forced shooting minigame in No More Heroes on teh way to Ranking Battle 3 is a lot of fun especially with the bullet patterns they throw at you from the start. You can even play it on your tv anytime you want after you beat the ranking battle!

How ya doing, buddy?