Sole Entertainment Option

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A trope found mostly in role-playing games or adventure games, where the world's population consists almost solely in communities and towns throughout the world. The hero/party will visit all sorts of towns, ancient civilizations, futuristic/technological utopias, war-ridden dystopias, small towns, metropolises... but generally, there will either be only one form of entertainment or one city where entertainment can be found. Many times, this will be the largest town (but not always), but you can expect that whichever city this can be found, and whatever the form of entertainment is, you will at some point be forced plot-wise to take a part in it.

The odd thing concerning this trope is that, usually, most everyone in the world enjoys the activity. This becomes even odder if the form of entertainment exists solely in one town in the whole world.

Examples of Sole Entertainment Option include:

Role-Playing Games

• Final Fantasy, really starting with Final Fantasy VI, made this a regular feature.
  • In Final Fantasy VI, the player has to lead Celes through an opera in order to entice Setzer and his Airship to where the party is. This really is the only form of entertainment, other than the Colosseum, that the world will experience.
  • Final Fantasy VII strangely does not have this worldwide entertainment in the largest city, Midgar. Rather, they have an entire amusement park just outside one of the smallest cities in the game. And believe me, nothing spells entertainment better than trying to force Chocobos to go the way you want them to go.
  • Final Fantasy VIII doesn't really have a city that specializes in the Card Game of the Week, but each city has its own rules. Regardless of this fact, practically everyone plays. Not only that, but people carry all of their cards around with them as they aimlessly walk around.
  • Final Fantasy X constitutes the most bizarre example, as it makes the entertainment, Blitzball, very integral to the plot. And yet, though every city has a team that plays in it, there's only one place in the world to play it.
  • Final Fantasy XIII has Nautilus, a huge entertainment city on Cocoon that is full of little spherical transports,the Pompa Sancta parade, lots of lights (of course), an amusement park and a chocobo and sheep petting zoo among other things. Not that you ever get the opportunity to actually stick around and enjoy it.
• Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga has a video arcade in Little Fungitown, and a cinema in the middle of nowhere.
  • Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time houses their arcade in a freakin' VOLCANO
• Pokémon does this in several games, in the RPGs especially.
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue Celadon City has the Game Corner, which is the closest thing to this trope.
  • Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire have the various Pokemon Contests in different locations, with the main Contest Hall in Lilycove City. In Emerald all the Contest types are found in Lilycove City. Their upgraded brethren, Super Contests, are found in Hearthome City only.
  • With Pokémon Black and White all of what can be classed as entertainment is in Nimbasa City - which includes a Theme Park, Dance Hall, Sports Arena and the Region's local variation of the Battle Tower. The Gym Leader's hideout is even part of the roller-coaster! Other forms of entertainment are few and far between.
• Handled somewhat entertainingly in Breath of Fire III: At first, there appears to be only the Contest of Champions to take people's minds off of things (and after the Time Skip it ceases to run). But after the Time Skip, Ryu's journey takes him to Syn City, the "illegal" town, which seems to have an active red-light district. The implication is that the citizens of the world have the world's oldest pastime to entertain themselves. (Let us ignore the Squick factor of there being only one hooker and instead extrapolate the existence of others!)
• Legend of Legaia has an entire tower (town) based off of this. The top area was above the Mist so everybody lived up there. Sol has three or four different activities, but the rest of the towns in the game have little to no entertainment.
• Golden Sun has the optional little gambling games in Tolbi, and the not-quite-so-optional Colloso, which is reminiscent of gladiator fights. The sequel brings back the gambling games.
• Most Dragon Quest games have exactly one (sometimes two) casinos in the world.
• The bubble-world of the first Gothic has a single fighting arena in the Old Camp. The Sect Camp is composed of narcotics-users, and their whole religious cult around the Sleeper, so they have something to occupy their time with. The New Camp is most egregious: asides from mining and rice-growing, there's not much to do. (Well, except for going to the pub.)
  • In the German version, the Old Camp had (on the gallow platform at the entrance to the inner keep) the real world Medieval Metal Band In Extremo, performing their song Herr Manelig. This was cut from all other language versions due to copyright problems.
• In Morrowind there is one strip club in all of Vvardenfell. Other forms of entertainment seem to be nonexistent.
  • Ingame books describe or contain several plays, suggesting that theatre is popular, and there are many singers, poets and musical instruments scattered around the game. However, the game engine wouldn't be capable of showing the characters actually doing any of these things until Skyrim (NPCs couldn't even eat, drink or talk to each other until Oblivion).

Turn Based Strategy

• In an older PlayStation 2/Xbox/Gamecube title, Gladius, YOU were the entertainment, being a school of gladiators and fighting in arenas throughout the game.
  • Gladiator Begins, a PSP title released in 2010, has a similar set-up.

Non-Video Games Examples

• In the Wizarding World of the Harry Potter books, there is only one sport, Quidditch (with an American game, Quodpot, mirroring the Cricket/Baseball and Association Football/American Football divides in the Muggle world). Likewise, there is only one publicly available broadcast network, the WWN.
  • When you consider that the entirety of the British Wizarding World isn't much bigger than a single mid-size town, it almost seems reasonable.
• In pretty much every comedy set in Medieval the only form of entertainment seems to be watching executions and witch trials.
  • Hey, be fair, sometimes they go to jousting matches too.