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.
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.
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.
The minigames in shenmue/yakuza. They are literally full games.
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
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.
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.
The Chao racing from Sonic Adventure on the dream cast. You could take the memory card out and use it as a tamagotchi to care for the little guy and make it train so it gets faster and stronger in the real game.
It got no better than that.
Treedude in superhot
And… Umm
Mario party
The mini pinball game, at the top-right of the Family Guy pinball table(2007).
It is fast paced and well put together.
That really makes me laugh and cry
Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal had a side scrolling Captain Quark game that was quite good
