Fun fact about being a full-time wheelchair user: I had a very rigorous wheelchair course as part of my initial rehabilitation for my complete spinal cord injury. Aside from learning how to go up and down curbs of various heights, as well as navigating rough and uneven terrain, there was a lot of focus on perfecting wheelies. (The point of that was to no longer rely on "anti-tipper" bars that keep the user from falling backwards - to the point of removing them forever.) I was even given set timed goals that I had to beat.
That's amazing! I love that that was part of your rehab- seems smart. I need to use a chair periodically (hip injury), but I've never had any proper training so I'm still nervous of curbs and steep inclines (I don't even have anti-tippers for comfort). I wish my rehab had included that training. I've also never pulled off a wheelie, and I'm impressed by anyone who can! My dad was good at them, though he had polio as a kid so he had a lot of time to practice, and a child's fearlessness and bored energy to burn off. He was also fond of telling the story of the time he had a wheelchair race down the hospital hallway with another kid and managed to break a nurse's leg... yeah, he had _way_ too much chaotic energy as a kid!
Only tangentially related: we once had a speaker at a school assembly who was a Paralympics tennis player. At the end, the teachers asked if anyone had any questions. After 5 full seconds of silence, a younger lad asked "can you do a wheelie?". The staff were sufficiently embarrassed that kids were always prepped with pre-written questions for all future visitors. He was very nice about it, and he did indeed do the wheelie, but 15 years on I think about that moment a lot.
See, THAT sounds like the perfect video game intro - rehab acting as the tutorial to movement, environmental interaction, and combat! Why is there not an action, sci-fi RPG with a chair-using protagonist whose chair can get upgrades and accessories over time? WHEELCHAIRS WOULD BE THE PERFECT MIX OF VEHICLE, ARMOUR, WEAPON, AND CUSTOMIZATION! but noooo, needing to use a disability aid is too scary for mainstream audiences. :/
@@dorabrooks76 I was a skater before my injury (unrelated) so I’m a bit reckless in my chair. My university campus is quite hilly, so I definitely go full speed and often drift around corners (grab one wheel and lock it up lol). I messed up my weight balance on a turn one time and launched outta my chair in sight of quite a few people. Probably made their hearts drop in terror seeing that, but I was also taught how to get into a chair from the floor so I got back up like nothing happened. I can’t wait to do stuff like that again post-pandemic!
@@FrankyBabes Honestly, I wish people were less squeamish about that kind of stuff. Of course we play with our mobility aids! The point of them is to allow us to do more! Imo, it was way more rude of the staff to control the kids afterward than it was for the kid to be interested. They're kids.... If they're not allowed to ask questions, we have less opportunity to connect with them so that they don't grow up to be adults who are anxious about talking to disabled people as equals. -_-
@@annana6098 It's been a long time since I played OoT, but can't you skip through his dialogue with the same button that automatically inputs "no"? I remember his speeches being a complete non-issue.
3:09 “For sheer relentless non-excitement” I really love how exaggerated andy talks in a mellow and calm but also enthusiastic tone, it’s just an amazing combination
"Licking envelopes can be fun. You can see how many you can lick in an hour and then try to break that record." -- Seymour Skinner, multimillionaire video game designer.
I love how Undertale put snail races in as a critique of the sort of racing mini-game that exists in games, and Shenmue III basically said, "Yes! That's our new mini-game!"
Shenmue has never been good. It was a tech demo for the Dreamcast which was impressive for the time. But it's gsmeplay was shit. The entire franchise is made up of those types of shitty minigamea.
“Young, sprightly hands of 42 year old...” HEY just because the hands of people my age cramp up on occasion for no reason doesn’t mean they aren’t young and sprightly. No, I am not in denial.
I despise fishing in most games, where it's just staring at the bobber and stabbing the button at the right time. Boring as hell. A few games add some strategy and mechanics to it, which makes it more interesting and fun, but also more time consuming, overall, I prefer it to the most boring and slow quicktime event ever.
@@graywolfdracon both BoF 3 and 4 have amazing fishing systems, and the main objective of fishing is getting op equips way sooner than possible, if you're diligent enough
Mario Odyssey has a section involving a skipping rope too in New Donk City, but thankfully it only requires 100 jumps to get the moon. Of course, if you want to add more challenge, you could always try doing it whilst riding a moped
Shenmue 1, Carrying books. They didn't make it exciting by making it a quick time event, just extremely stressful and an easy way to raise your blood pressure.
@@simplydavemn I blame the existence of the notorious video game series cliffhanger with this game series. Poor Eli Vance, RC-1207/Sev, the guys in Psi-Ops: The Blackgate Conspiracy, and the American Resistance in Freedom Fighters...
CrossCode has an amazing mini-game called the Trial of Patience in one of the last regions of the game where a bug asks you to push a button after a certain number of times a Japanese bamboo pipe smacks a rock. Meanwhile your companions will be having a conversation where they repeat numbers, creatures in the background will have duels with loud smacking noises and some will fly through the foreground in your, the player's visual path, and the pipe itself smacks the rock at random intervals.
Sticking with the Final Fantasy theme, FFX made the mundane task of not getting hit by lightning a minigame - and if you want to unlock Lulu's celestial weapon (or the achievement on the HD remaster) this means doing it 200 times in a row, which means that three separate generations of FFX players know this pain
Glad someone mentioned this, I hate that bit especially cause you have to finish in one go.... And let's not forget those other mini-games, butterfly catching and chocobo racing (with the awfully tricky finish under 0 seconds...)
So I know this game isn't exactly well known, but... Grandia? There's a bit where you're traveling on a ship, and there's a mini game where you have to swab the deck
@@vincevvn Ikr? I only really know about it because my family owned a copy of the first game, so my sister and I played it growing up. So it has a ton of nostalgia for me.
What about that time that Professor Oak made us do literally his entire job for him by spending weeks or months doing "data entry" from scratch? But unlike these examples, it's also the entire purpose of the game. And you can't even do it, since the games miss some out and force you to play a different game for a bit if you want to complete your unpaid data entry internship successfully.
Scary thing is he's still getting paid to send a 10 year old to fight gangsters and deities just so he can give you a pat on the back for getting as many as you could.
I remember some of the minigames in Final Fantasy X that you needed to complete to fully upgrade everyone's ultimate weapon. Some of them were actual challenges like blitzball or dodging lightning. But running around Macalania Woods trying to catch butterflies was really bizarre and one of the more infuriating ones due to how the controls on a PS2 game worked.
I was fine with the butterflies. The lightning was the one that drove me to madness, since one mistake reset the entire process. It reminds me of the jump rope in this list, and I despise it.
To this day, my mother loathes the chocobo theme because it reminds her of just how much time she spent trying to get Tidus’s legendary weapon from racing.
@@CptWindwalker82 yeah, the pullup thing with James is super tedious and boring. At least the claw game had some hilarious dialog with Zaeed and the random asari he wins a prize for lol
I'm saving MY OX-points up to get the "Jane & Mike coerce Andy into streaming a full playthrough of Vampire The Masquerade" plushie set. Man it's gonna be so rad, cleared space on the display shelf above the mantle in anticipation for it.
This entire list could be MP minigames. Vacuuming the house, dusting the house, inflating a balloon, shaking a can, jump roping, counting toads on a train, etc. The fun never ends.
Doing the pullups in Mass Effect 3: Citadel DLC. It was somehow worse than trying to do pullups in real life, because at least in real life I get stronger. Worth it to crush James' ego, though.
I loved the football game in FFX. I even went back and replayed the game so I could unlock the jet shot and win the tournament, I was so happy with it afterwards!
@@isaacgleeth3609 Except gambling is actually illegal in Japan: the pachinko parlours are only allowed to exchange the winnings for physical prizes like ticket arcades in the west. Instead they have a place next door they use as a loophole. Pachislot places do something similar with tokens.
@@OtakuUnitedStudio You have a point. I still needed to point that out though. If anything, the Pachinko loophole is a precursor to lootboxes in the west, or people buying up all the ticket arcade goods and selling them.
In Asheron's Call there was a quest to tip over a cow 100 times. After you complete it you got two rewards: a) A tipped Cow Housing Item b) The title "Obviously Bored"
And chopping wood. Pretty much all the mini games. But if you got good, you could earn enough money as a bartender to start investing in real estate, so it was worth the time.
The makers of Mario Odyssey probably remembered that Final Fantasy mini game and thought “Wow let’s make that in our game only in HD and more aggravating.” The volley ball mini game is also torture. They both have to be completed fully in order to get two separate power moons, so you can’t 100% the game without doing them.
I fucking hated that mini-game in Judgement. I did THAT Friend Event twice just because I like fighting that secret boss that requires you to complete every single side mission and Friend Event. I just bring a cheat item, save, and reload if I’m not the wareme. And I have terrible luck when it comes to being the wareme.
my heart goes out to whoever had to capture the vivi jump rope game, on the plus side though that is by far the most difficult part of getting the platinum trophy on the remaster. took me ages and i may or may not have used a macro device to automate it, and that may or may not have made it more difficult.
Fable series Fishing. The fact that to get good items like silver keys or money is annoying but the tedious time it takes to get a bite THEN to reel it in is a button mashing nightmare. Also Yakuza's fishing
That one was so ridiculous I not even count that as a minigame 800 consecutive chain dashes, just short of about 1 second each and demanding average consistency of 90% to be reliable I don't even want to imagine how much training it would take to make it
You guys should do a list of mini games better than their “full” game counterparts. Ie the poker in red dead vs “full poker game” gta golf vs pga tour ect
Jumping rope in Final Fantasy probably wasn't as tedious as it was in Super Mario Odyssey. In Mario, the jump rope increases in speed every 10 jumps until you get to 50 points, at which point the speed becomes random. Getting the second moon for jumping rope is an absolute pain.
I know it isn't a mini game, but what about how a large part of Super Mario Sunshine and the Luigi's Mansion series is just cleaning up different messes?
And then Mario PArty did it again in Super Mario Party with an entirely different minigame based on having your photo taken, with Slapparazi. But I'm probably going to have to go with 'walking in a circle'. Which is an actual minigame, for a moon, in Mario Odyssey
The skipping minigame is the reason why I'll never platinum FFIX despite it being my favourite game ever TT_TT I loved skipping irl as a kid, but this minigame... it haunts me
There's an achievement in pikuniku that you can only get by playing a little game console that's actually a mini game where you bounce a ball off your little characters head consecutively until you reach 999 the only thing that happens is every hundred it changes color and it takes about 22 minutes to beat....
I've been trying to get the Skipping Queen Key item in Final Fantasy IX since 2001. I'm gonna stick my neck out and say you guys DIDN'T record that footage yourselves.
As a kingdom hearts fan, let’s talk about the multiple mini games at the start of the first and second ones. Nothing says thrilling like posting posters and having the slowest foot race.
But you have to admit, it was fun to play around on the skateboard, and the minigame with delivering mail as Roxas was fun because of that - led to me optimizing it a fair amount years ago
You know they spent a lot of time with the Yoga minigame because they force you to do it at least once before you can progress the main storyline.. arggggh
I would have lost money on a bet that something from No More Heroes would be on this list. Cutting grass, picking up litter, putting gas in cars, cleaning up graffiti... Oh yeah, and clearing land mines. ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER THINGS!!! ONE OF THESE THINGS DOES NOT BELONG!!!
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles had cow racing. It was even slower than Shen Mue's turtles. I'd also like to mention Trucks and Trailers (from SCS, the guys behind Euro Truck Sim). Not a minigame so unsuited for this list, but this is _entirely_ about parking your truck in the time limit. And it's hard as nails.
Happy to see Final Fantasy getting called out for this. I played the original Final Fantasy 7 for the first time recently and, honestly, everything about the Golden Saucer and it's rubbish mingames can get in the sea. I know it's a beloved section of a revered video game classic but anyone with fond memories of this bit of FF7 is a victim of weapons grade nostalgia. Sorry about it! ;)
Jobs in the fable series. Woodchopping, pie rolling, playing a lute and more. Just why? Granted I find them oddly relaxing but that doesn't change how weird it is that you thee hero who can throw lighting from their hands on a bloody quest of revenge and world saving stop to take a part time job.
