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.
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.
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.
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.
The minigames in shenmue/yakuza. They are literally full games.
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!
I loved the FF8 card game. It was so sad that you had to choose to used up some cards if you wanted some equipments if I recall correctly. It would be nice to not have to choose to keep all cards or have all equipments os spells
If you liked it enough, you could win another copy after you refined it by playing against the right people. I think there was only one card you couldn’t get back again, and all the rest were fair game.
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.
I think DOOM Eternal has DOOM 2 inside of it… which then has
shatfenfrudeWolfenstein inside of it. (ignore the spelling 😅)edit: I forgot the name and accidentally tried to type the German word for laughing
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!
That’s a really nice touch
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
Geometry Wars in Project Gotham Racing 2.
Treedude in superhot
And… Umm
Mario party
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.
