The Best Minigames of All Time - Ultimate Guide
Minigames are a fun and exciting part of many video games, though they haven’t always been. Back in the early days of gaming, developers had just a few kilobytes of data to work with on a cartridge, so they had to ration how they used it.
For example, the legendary Super Mario Land 2 - 6 Golden Coins game for the Nintendo Game Boy was half a megabyte, despite having a huge number of different levels and bonus rounds. That contrasts very sharply with Grand Theft Auto V which requires 100 gigabytes of free space on a computer to install and run.
The march toward these much larger game sizes began in the mid-1990s onwards, as consoles and computers started to be capable of handling larger games. With exponentially more resources available to them, developers of the time began to include minigames, often made of elements that were cut from the main game or were extensions of it.
Some minigames were nothing to write home about but some were so good that they overshadowed the main part. Here are some of those games.
The Nintendo DS saw several of the Japanese company’s blockbuster franchises enjoy a rebirth. Mario Kart, Yoshi, and Animal Crossing all got a new lease of life on the portable console’s two-screen set-up.
Another piece of Nintendo IP that got brought back out for the DS was the Super Mario platformer. Inventively titled New Super Mario Bros., the game combined all the classic features of the platform genre with better graphics, new powerups, and some fun minigames.
Among these minigames was picture poker. This simple but exciting game works similar to other variants of poker that you might expect to find in a casino or an online card room. It kept all the same features, including pre-defined combinations that are ranked in value that the player is required to try and make. However, unlike most versions, it’s played against just one other player — Luigi and uses Mario-themed cards instead of a traditional deck.
Grand Theft Auto is packed with minigames and side missions ranging from the vigilante missions that require you to moonlight as a law enforcer to the photo op Easter eggs found dotted around San Fierro.
In Vice City, things are no different. Among the minigames included in this, players get the opportunity to race a range of different remote control vehicles. To activate them, Tommy had to get into the corresponding van which would appear at specific locations around the map.
Players would then have to race between different checkpoints, usually in competition with other RC vehicles.
The missions themselves are fun because the unique handling of the tiny cars, planes, and helicopters made them tricky to master. But mischievous players found other fun things to do with them since these RC toys could be driven/flown away from the designated course and could be blown up at the press of a button.
Many Vice City players have, therefore, spend time dive-bombing passers-by or sneaking up on rival gangs just to witness the ensuing carnage.
Grand Theft Auto is often credited with being the pioneer in open-world crime games, but while Rockstar was still creating titles with 2D top-down views, Reflections was creating a living, breathing city in full 3D.
Released for the PlayStation June 1999, players got to step into the shoes of an undercover cop who acted as a wheelman for hire. The main part of the game was called “Undercover” which presented the player with a series of missions that grew increasingly difficult.
But it also contained a free-roaming “Take a Ride” mode and some minigames called “Driving Games”. Among them was Survival, which challenges the player to escape the pursuit of some overly aggressive cops that crash into them at break-neck speeds, causing their cars to flip and be flung absurd distances.
High scores were often measured in seconds rather than minutes, but that didn’t matter as it turned into chaos almost immediately, much to the amusement of the player.
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For example, the legendary Super Mario Land 2 - 6 Golden Coins game for the Nintendo Game Boy was half a megabyte, despite having a huge number of different levels and bonus rounds. That contrasts very sharply with Grand Theft Auto V which requires 100 gigabytes of free space on a computer to install and run.
The march toward these much larger game sizes began in the mid-1990s onwards, as consoles and computers started to be capable of handling larger games. With exponentially more resources available to them, developers of the time began to include minigames, often made of elements that were cut from the main game or were extensions of it.
Some minigames were nothing to write home about but some were so good that they overshadowed the main part. Here are some of those games.
New Super Mario Bros. - Picture Poker
The Nintendo DS saw several of the Japanese company’s blockbuster franchises enjoy a rebirth. Mario Kart, Yoshi, and Animal Crossing all got a new lease of life on the portable console’s two-screen set-up.
Another piece of Nintendo IP that got brought back out for the DS was the Super Mario platformer. Inventively titled New Super Mario Bros., the game combined all the classic features of the platform genre with better graphics, new powerups, and some fun minigames.
Among these minigames was picture poker. This simple but exciting game works similar to other variants of poker that you might expect to find in a casino or an online card room. It kept all the same features, including pre-defined combinations that are ranked in value that the player is required to try and make. However, unlike most versions, it’s played against just one other player — Luigi and uses Mario-themed cards instead of a traditional deck.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - RC Missions
Grand Theft Auto is packed with minigames and side missions ranging from the vigilante missions that require you to moonlight as a law enforcer to the photo op Easter eggs found dotted around San Fierro.
In Vice City, things are no different. Among the minigames included in this, players get the opportunity to race a range of different remote control vehicles. To activate them, Tommy had to get into the corresponding van which would appear at specific locations around the map.
Players would then have to race between different checkpoints, usually in competition with other RC vehicles.
The missions themselves are fun because the unique handling of the tiny cars, planes, and helicopters made them tricky to master. But mischievous players found other fun things to do with them since these RC toys could be driven/flown away from the designated course and could be blown up at the press of a button.
Many Vice City players have, therefore, spend time dive-bombing passers-by or sneaking up on rival gangs just to witness the ensuing carnage.
Driver - Survival
Grand Theft Auto is often credited with being the pioneer in open-world crime games, but while Rockstar was still creating titles with 2D top-down views, Reflections was creating a living, breathing city in full 3D.
Released for the PlayStation June 1999, players got to step into the shoes of an undercover cop who acted as a wheelman for hire. The main part of the game was called “Undercover” which presented the player with a series of missions that grew increasingly difficult.
But it also contained a free-roaming “Take a Ride” mode and some minigames called “Driving Games”. Among them was Survival, which challenges the player to escape the pursuit of some overly aggressive cops that crash into them at break-neck speeds, causing their cars to flip and be flung absurd distances.
High scores were often measured in seconds rather than minutes, but that didn’t matter as it turned into chaos almost immediately, much to the amusement of the player.
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