Ever since Sega’s Sonic The Hedgehog blew our minds by introducing surprise bonus levels that allowed us to collect gold rings and chaos emeralds, it’s been a common trick for game developers to include intricate mini games within their main gaming concepts.
Seeing as we’ve already unveiled our most highly anticipated games of 2016, we thought now was a fitting time to have a look back at some of the best mini-games over the last decades. These picks range from online games of blackjack and roulette to titles based on other video games.
Gambling Action
Rockstar Games have a successful track record of adding engaging mini-games to pretty much every one of their main releases. Grand Theft Auto has excelled in providing gamers with a much-needed break from the violence with fun games of basketball and pool to play, while Red Dead Redemption really gave gamers a chance to immerse themselves in tricky but playable blackjack mini-games set within the western setting.
Such moves capitalized on the rise of online casino sites such as Lucky Nugget Casino who offer guides for those new to online roulette and other popular games such as video poker. Many other action-adventure games such as Far Cry 3 also offer players games of poker. These examples and more just goes to show how popular such traditional games are in the modern gaming arena.
Innovative Mini-Games
When game developers take on the approach of using mini-game concepts within their own games, they are instantly allowed to fully expand upon their own levels of creativity. One example of this practice lies firmly within The Mercenaries mini-game that’s featured in the classic horror game Resident Evil 4. Not only did this provide a range of different characters and ways to kill, but it also became so successful that a Mercenaries 3DS game was created.
Another iconic title that proved how much fun you can have with a mini-game was Mortal Kombat: Armageddon that momentarily allowed you to stop fighting and instead enjoy some deeply silly Mario Kart style racing through Motor Kombat.
Above all, mini-games seem to work best when they are done purely for the idea of having fun and giving the gamer a chance to use a different part of their brain for a moment. So whether it’s interrupting a game of Test Drive Overdrive to have a game of Pong via the loading screen, or even just playing some online roulette in an action-adventure game, it seems that the mini-game has an endless ability to surprise us.
What are some of your favorite or memorable mini-game moments? Please feel free to let us know in the comments section below.
