Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"Cortez, you're humanity's last hope for survival '''AND YOU'RE PLAYING A SLOT MACHINE!'''"''|'''''[[Time Splitters]]: Future Perfect''''' }}

Related to [[Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny]]. See also [[Just One More Level]] and [[Quicksand Box]]. It will normally happen in the [[Minigame Zone]]. A [[Virtual Paper Doll]], particularly one with a lot of customization options, can easily become one of these if you're the sort of player who cares about that. Compare and contrast [[Plot Detour]] where this IS the content.

** The card game in ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]''. Many players clocked more time playing Triple Triad than playing the rest of the game put together, possibly because ''FF8'''s Junctioning system made Triple Triad the local flavor of [[Level Grinding]]. It's lampshaded on at least one occasion; start a card game with Ellone on the Lunar Station, with all hell about to break loose thanks to the Lunar Cry, and she'll reply incredulously, "You wanna play cards ''now''?!"

{{quote| '''[[The Spoony Experiment|The Spoony One]]''': ''"EVERYONE, FALL BACK! THEY'RE COMING AT US FROM ALL SIDES! WE NEED A BARRIER BETWEEN US AND THE SNAKES what, cards? Yeah, I got a minute."''}}

** That one massage mini-game in ''[[Final Fantasy X -2]]''.

*** Blitzball in ''[[Final Fantasy X -2|FFX-2]]'' may have been even more addictive than it was before, despite no longer being able to directly control the players.

*** Arguably playedPlayed straight with the Missions that become available in Chapter 11. Completing them all can take more time than some players are willing to spend.

* The ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' series is loaded with these...

** The Vigilante Car Chase.

** The [[Nintendo Hard|nigh impossible]] Ambulance Rescue minigame.<ref>Unless you're playing ''[[Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas|San Andreas]]'', where carrying it out in a small rural town is a snap</ref>

** Parodied [https://web.archive.org/web/20100515212144/http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1923420 here], where Link is too busy either fishing or chasing chickens to do ''anything'' that actually involves saving Hyrule.

* Any game with a casino is prone to this; such as ''[[Dragon Quest VIII]]''.

** ''[[Dragon Quest VII]]'' was much, ''much'' worse than VIII. One word -- pokerword—poker. They brought it back for the remake of IV, but they [[Nerf|nerfednerf]]ed the double-or-nothing feature.

** Breeding. Trying to hatch the perfect Pokémon sometimes is more fun than the battling. [[HotImprobable Skitty-On-WailordSpecies ActionCompatibility|And sometimes wondering how it even works]] is a whole different ballgame.

** Chao Raising in the ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog|Sonic Adventure]]'' games. For some people, it's the only reason why they still play those games.

* The obscure Nintendo 64 platformer ''[[Rocket Robot On Wheels]]'' was '''full''' of this stuff.

** In the first world, "Clowny Island," there's a mini-game that lets you build custom roller coasters for the titular robot to ride in. While there is a goal to it (the coaster's path must hit certain targets), more than one reviewer has noted its extreme distraction potential. "Just one more coaster, I swear!"

** The fifth world, "Pyramid Scheme," features, in its [[Lethal Lava Land]] half, the "Glider Bike"--A—A motorcycle with BAT WINGS that FLIES. If you think you can resist the allure of flying around inside a volcano while doing aerial tricks on a motorcycle, you are very, very wrong.

* There are a number of stylus-using minigames in ''[[New Super Mario Brothers]]'' for the DS.

** Not to mention theThe Dark Assembly in the various games. There are two ways to handle it. One is to basically force every bill you could ever want through - this turns the area into yet another place to go level grind (with getting some sort of improvement in addition to levels). The other is an in-game version of [[Bribing Your Way to Victory]], in which you use the spoils you're not using from other level-grinding trips as bribes to get everything past without fighting. Each version is self-perpetuating, as well - the senators remember what happened to them in previous votes, so they'll be more prone to blocking your bills if fought before (necessitating another fight) and more prone to passing your bills if sufficiently bribed in the past (giving you the chance to bribe other senators).

** And in [[Fallout: New Vegas]], if you like gambling, on a new game you can start walking towards the Strip, easily collect 2000 caps on the way for the entry check, and spend the rest of the game gambling at slots, roulette, or blackjack, sleeping in the casinos and buying marked up food from casino bars, until you run out of money. Just like real life Vegas.

*** Characters with Luck of at least 7 will probably run into the jackpot limits and get barred from gambling in about an hour of gameplay or two. The devs put this in to keep the players from breaking the in-game economy, but it also has the effect of blunting this trope.

** The Oblivion Gates themselves can be diversion for those rune-hunting, gathering daedric herbs, or going for [[Hundred-Percent100% Completion]]. That's why you do all of that, open the Gates, and ''do it again with more monsters''.

** ''[[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim]]'' has loads of dragons even before you get the main quest really rolling, and they're a real nuisance if you [[Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training|didn't get good at killing things or surviving attacks]] and are just trying to catch butterflies for your potion shop or explore to get [[Hundred-Percent100% Completion]]. You can own shops, become nobility, rise to head every guild, hunt random-encounter dragons and find every Wall to add to your Shouts, etc., and all that's '''''un'''''[[Game Mod|modded]].

*** The main quest is worth doing early for the perks, but when ending civil war is a ''side quest'', [[Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny]] is easy and addictive.

* ''[[Xenosaga]] Episode I's'' card minigame is incredibly addictive.

* In ''[[Super Mario RPG]]'', after a certain point you can go back to the first town and buy a Gameboy game from a kid who had been playing it the whole game(he sells it to you because he finally beat it). It's an insanely addictive ''[[Space Invaders]]'' clone where you can create giant combos for MASSIVE POINTS.

* ''[[Super Paper Mario]]'' has the arcade. Just... the arcade. Four insanely addictive and incredibly ''fun'' minigames. Many players would only leave to spend their tokens on that which they could sell, do so, then return with more money. Even if they eventually got bored of the game they were playing, there were still three more.

** ''[[Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep]]'' has more distracting and addictive minigames than you can shake a stick at. Command Board can suck away hours of playtime each time the player unlocks a new game board. And then there's Disney Town, which is basically the Gold Saucer of Kingdom Hearts-- fullHearts—full of incredibly fun and addicting minigames. And that's not even including the multiplayer aspect in the Mirage Arena, which lets the player do all of this and more with friends... suffice it to say, it's very, ''very'' easy to completely disregard the story.

* Absolutely ANY games with [[Level Editor|Level Editors]]s and/or create a character modes. Seriously, any sandbox type game with these features (any theme park or rollercoaster game, ''[[Spore]]''), will have probably more people using the features than the single player mode, and for ''[[Super Smash Bros.]] Brawl'' alone there are a heck of a lot of people spending more time on the Stage Builder than the main game itself.

** ''[[StarcraftStarCraft]]'' is of special note because of this aspect. More people play custom UMS games online than play the game the way it was meant. Likewise, ''[[Warcraft]] 3'''s [[Defense of the Ancients]] mod has taken on a life of its own.

*** Taken to [[Up to Eleven]] in ''[[Star Craft 2]]'' in which you can potentially create your own unique games, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9TeB4Zb_sw like this masterpiece]. You have to wonder about the hours spent on creating those mods. The major hindrance, however, [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|is the small size]] for posting on Battle.net.

** Not to mention that itIt has one of the shops where you can buy the Hourglass item, adding time to the ever-ticking time limit at the top of the screen. You can't just waste hours here, you can buy them and waste more!

** Similarly, there are many of us who have popped the disc for [[Metal Gear Solid]] 3 and ended up catching monkeys for hours on end.

*** Not to mention inIn both Star Ocean 2 and 3 you can go back and visit places I think you can't return to normally, either because ''the planet no longer exists'', or the location is on a different planet. Now add on that in every city you can disband your team and interact to get special endings. [[SO 2]] had 81 possible endings, only available through team-city interactions.

* The Millenium Puzzle/Puzzle Box in the ''[[Wild ArmsARMs]]'' series. Many tales are heard of gamers stopping in the thick of the plot upon opening up new sections of the map just to seek and solve every Puzzle Box they can at that point.

* ''[[Suikoden II]]'' and the [[Cooking Duel|Cooking Duels]]s with Hai Yo. Shame that there weren't more of it.

** ''[[Suikoden II]]'' also had the Whack-A-Mole game which gives out [[Dishing Out Dirt|Earth-resistant]] equipment (the final dungeon has a monster with rather nasty Earth-element attacks), and the Rope Climbing Game which gives out [[Lethal Joke Items]] that boost certain [[Combination Attack|Combination Attacks]]s and avoid friendly fire from the [[Game Breaker|most powerful]] [[Combination Attack|Combination Attacks]]s in the game.

** And then they released ''[[Call of Duty]]'' for iPhone. Which game? ''[[Modern Warfare]]''? No. ''[[Nazi Zombies]]''. Many people played the campaign once or twice, online a handful of times, and ''[[Nazi Zombies]]'' for hours.

* The minigames at the festival in [[Wild ArmsARMs]] take up way too much time. It's perhaps fortunate that you can only play them while the festival is going on.

* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' has the invention system and in-game market. Instead of, oh, saving (or terrorizing) the City, some players log in just craft and sell in-game items. For in-game money. Just to buy more expensive things to sell for higher prices to get MORE in-game money. All while paying REAL money every month to do this.

* Similar to the ''[[City of Heroes]]'' example above, in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', players will often spend just as much time leveling their professions as they will actually leveling normally. It becomes really bad when one reaches the current end level content of the game, where gathering the materials and recipes necessary to improve your professions is actually tied directly to the high level daily quests and dungeons, making it almost a subversion of this trope. However, there are plenty of people who prefer simply loitering about the local auction house and simply buying whatever they need from the more active players, just so they can hang out in the Trade chat channel and barter their wares...you know, rather than actually play the game they spend real money on each month. On the other hand, players will also specifically create characters that just go out and gather materials so they can sell them to the higher level characters looking to improve their professions. This method is even recommended to beginning players, both so they can level faster without having to go out of their way to level their professions (purposefully subverting this trope) and so they can get a bit of extra money during their low level grind.

* ''[[Kirby 64 The Crystal Shards|Kirby 64]]'' contains, for no adequately explained reason, three mini-games in addition to the main game. That doesn't stop them from being a total time-suck, and great fun if you happen to play them with your friends.

* Way back in ''[[Super Mario Bros 3]]'' for the NES, if you played it two player, there was a version of the original ''[[Mario Bros.]]'' game (and, if you played enough times to get through the very long repeating rotation of modes, a couple of other two-player minigames). You selected it by going to your 'opponent'/co-player on the map, and clicking, or by clicking as they tried to run past you! Whoever won the minigame got to have the next turn, and the players moved so that the winner got the location where the battle was fought. So (depending on where the players were on the map) you could be trapped in an endless cycle of battling to play the next level. Not to mention youYou could steal the emblems you win at the end of levels so you could also start a cycle to get those back.

* ''[[Fire Emblem: theThe Sacred Stones]]'' had the Tower of Valni, the Lagdou Ruins, and random battles on the world map. In order to unlock them, one did have to play part of the way into the main game, but after that you could go through them as many times as you wanted. It helps that the ruins and tower both had rare treasure in them and that certain random battles could be used to steal items from enemies with a glitch.

* The main menu of ''Sumotori'' can keep you entertained for hours. It might even be more time than you will spend actually playing the main game, because each round lasts only a few seconds. However, after each round, the opponents try to bow, [[Hilarity Ensues|and THAT''that'' is when the fun starts]]. And then there's the secret mode...

* The ''[[Ryu ga Gotoku|Yakuza]]'' series is most likely the king of this trope. There are dozens of different minigames to play through, each wildly different. Batting cages, casino games, Japanese casino games (like cee-lo), mahjong, arcade games, even crane games where can win little stuffed toys. There's also an entire golfing game to play through, karaoke songs to sing, diners to visit for completion purposes, hostess parlors to visit (and ladies to woo), and more. Then there's also the arena to fight in. It's far too easy to simply sink in days and days and days worth of gameing time just getting sidetracked as you, a complete and utter badass Yakuza boss, play golf or try to win stuffed animals.

* While there is technically no way to actually 'beat' ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'', and most of the game is doing whatever you think is fun, there are some things people do that go above and beyond simple 'Because I felt like it'. These are called Mega Projects. They can range from closing the Fortress off from the outside world and flooding the map,<ref>with either water or magma; whatever tickles your fancy</ref>, to creating a massive stone ceiling blocking out all that pesky sunlight, to constructing statues of Dwarves (and, in one extremely surreal case, the [[Elves vs. Dwarves|Elven King]] [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|of the Dwarves]]) that are hundreds of feet tall, made of pure gold, and with magma for eyes).

* The Strongbad Email feature has overshadowed the other features on ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' - with the possible exception of ''[[Teen Girl Squad]]''.

{{quote| '''Pat:''' You're like, the worst person I have known in my entire life.<br />

'''Matt:''' Well this is fun.<br />

* In [https://web.archive.org/web/20101213193908/http://bukucomics.com/loserz/go/159 this strip] of ''[[Loserz]]'', Erik (the creator) demonstrates this principle.

* Katie Tiedrich of ''[[Awkward Zombie]]'' [httphttps://www.awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=040510/no-pokemon-allowed-in-my-pokemon-game has this problem.]

* In the [[Yogscast]] Minecraft series Simon and Lewis are ''regularly'' distracted by shiny things to the point of [[Lampshaded|lampshading it]].

{{quote| "There's a giant iron block over there I wonder if I could mine it... no, no, we don't have time!" }}

* [[Google]]. [[Punctuated! forFor! Emphasis!|And]]. ''[[Pac-Man]]''. Released to [[Milestone Celebration|commemorate the 30th anniversary]] of ''[[Pac-Man]]'', it managed to do enough side-tracking to '''[https://web.archive.org/web/20131024052429/http://blog.rescuetime.com/2010/05/24/the-tragic-cost-of-google-pac-man-4-82-million-hours/ cause approximately 4,819,352 hours of lost time, with a cost of $120,483,800.]'''

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