Not a minigame, but Maniac Mansion being within The Day of the Tentacle is probably my fav.
The full 4K version of Timesplitters 2 inside Homefront: The Revolution, but you have to play something like 75% of Homefront to reach it. I'll reach it one of these days.
The minigames in shenmue/yakuza. They are literally full games.
Probably not what you are asking for, but the character creation process in the Traveller ttRPG is a great mini game. You basically take a person from 18 to however old you want, and their life path is dictated by your choices and random dice outcomes. It's a lot of fun. You can end up with a retired admiral, a prisoner or criminal, psionic, etc. Going through this process with a table of friends let's you build in rich fun connections along the way. The actual RPG then starts with mature, connected characters with a history, instead of 4 randos meeting in a tavern. In the classic Traveller you can even die in character creation. Current iterations removed the death component but you can be maimed from accidents in your career and start the game with a mountain of medical debt.
Playing Receiver in Receiver 2 was a fun surprise.
Pretty much every minigame in Majora's Mask is making you forget the world is ending
Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal had a side scrolling Captain Quark game that was quite good
Treedude in superhot
And... Umm
Mario party
I thought of another one. There is a minigame in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 called Tiger! Tiger that is great. it is basically an arcade game where getting certain scores gives you credits that can be redeemed for upgrades for some characters. The minigame is randomized and has three different difficulty tiers and is overall really well done.
Not sure if it will count, but the Ancient Cave in Lufia 2 (SNES) was a game in and of itself. It was basically a roguelike dungeon. 100 random floors, it reverts you to level 1 and there were rare special items you could sometimes find in runs that could be brought back in. Beating the Ancient Cave is much, much harder and more rewarding than beating the game itself (storyline aside).
The hunting game in Oregon Trail.
Didn’t rocket league originate from a minigame ?
No, it's the sequel to Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle Cars
The cornfield photo minigame in mario party ds
the game.
Fk I lost
Let's be real, Witcher 3 is just a Gwent launcher.
Also I've definitely played more Pazaak than KOTOR.
In another life I wouldn't understand a word of these sentences lol
I loved the Chao Garden in the Sonic Adventure games.
YES YOU KNOW IT
It’s always fishing.
Loved the fishing in FF15.
Maniac Mansion: day of the tentacle includes the full first maniac Mansion game on weird Ed's computer in the room with him and the hamster
EverQuest /gems and /pizza
I had a lot more trouble with Maniac Mansion than DotT, I always got all my characters thrown in the dungeon. My favorite thing about it, at least the version on Weird Ed Edison's computer, was that it played music using the pc speaker, which is now a concept lost to time.
Who are you so wise in the ways of gwent?
Blitzball Final Fantasy X
A really divisive minigame, to be sure. My wife and I both hated blitzball, (I save-scummed to get Wakka’s ultimates ASAP, then never touched it again) but my buddy probably sank 150 hours into it during his first play through.
Sonic Adventure 2 has a pretty decent adventure platformer built into it
Yeah, Chao Garden 2 Battle had some really amazing minigames. One of the best was the ability to play as Sonic or Shadow, and experience an entire plotline. Lots of players missed it almost entirely, because they were just too wrapped up in the main Chao Garden game to bother with the Light/Dark story stuff.
Triple triad card game from FF8? Also the card game in FF9, I forgot which is which.
I came to mention this one! I loved that card game as a kid!
The Wolfenstein 3D minigame contained within Wolfenstein The New Order is probably the best one I've come across. I may be biased though since Wolfenstein 3D is probably one of my Top 5 all-time favorite games.
In DOOM Eternal you can play through all of DOOM and DOOM 2 at the Slayer’s desk in the fortress. I dig that
Everything runs Doom, even Doom!
I think DOOM Eternal has DOOM 2 inside of it... which then has ~~shatfenfrude~~ Wolfenstein inside of it. (ignore the spelling 😅)
edit: I forgot the name and accidentally tried to type the German word for laughing
I would just play Caravan if it didn't involve walking across the Mojave each time. Actually I'll walk just to play more Caravan.
Caravan from Fallout: New Vegas has a notoriously bad tutorial, but is easy enough to grasp and fun as an early-game money source. Would have benefited from a Gwent-style sidequest chain.
I always thought it was cool that you could play the original maniac mansion in day of the tentacle.
The surprisingly deep copy of Balatro in "Dave the Diver" is pretty good.
I like Knucklebones in Cult of the Lamb.
I honestly really liked the Zen garden in Plants vs Zombies
Yakuza games are the only good Mahjong simulator. I’ve always thought Sega/RGK Studios should release a standalone one based on Yakuza.
All other Mahjong games are shitty western mahjong match tile games.
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