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Currently, most gamers could care less about mini-games. The purpose of most mini-games is to simply provide a diversion from the overall experience so that the player can take a break from normal game play without actually stopping the game. However, mini-games provide a huge potential to both game makers and game players alike. With PC hardware becoming exponentially more powerful than the hardware that powered game systems from a decade ago, the console emulator market is booming. ROM sites are popping up much faster than game companies can shut them down. Better venues for obtaining old games, such as abandonware sites like abandonia.com or abandongames.com are also proliferating through the Internet. The average demographic for active gamers is now more in the 18-24 year old range than the 12-16 range of Nintendo’s heyday. These gamers have a nostalgic longing to play games from the 80s and 90s, such as the original Legend of Zelda, or Final Fantasy. Unfortunately, most gamers either have to steal the games, wait for them to come out in a historic game package, or hunt them down at used game stores to play on quirky, antiquated console systems. It would be much better if some of the old titles were “comped” to us, simply for buying the latest game of the series.

It isn’t hard to take an analysis of the power of mini-games and apply it to maintaining intellectual property rights. How great would it have been if instead of Duality, the main character of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas could have played Grand Theft Auto I on an arcade machine? The original GTA title is very different from the existing versions, it isn’t making Rockstar any money, and those of us who remember the first two installments recall them in a positive light. Although the current GTA titles don’t need any bump in their replay value, including the original version of the series would provide gamers hours of additional entertainment. The intellectual property of Rockstar would be further protected, pirating of their old titles would decrease since the game would be available within their new titles, and the overall value of the current games would increase. Furthermore, if the gamer enjoyed the latest game as well as the first version of the game, they might be apt to buy the remaining games that were released in between the two. Plus, if game companies want to be overly commercial about it, the past titles could be included as mini-games in “limited edition” versions of the current games, although we certainly don’t recommend going that route.

All of this talk of including out of print video games within the latest titles in their series raises another important question: should they still take the form of mini-games? What if the next GTA game includes the GTA I and GTA II titles as mini-games? What if the next Legend of Zelda offering includes hidden copies of the first three Zelda titles? Won’t gamers grow tired of having to unlock or find the original games that were promised to them? Right now the inclusion of old titles within new games, or even the inclusion of small new games within larger games is a bonus. Its fun to stumble across a hidden feature of a game that allows you to take some time away from what you were playing. If the expectation of including old games is created, gamers may not find these easter eggs to be entertaining. Gamers may demand that the old games be included in the main menu of the new game – at first as an unlock-able item, then later as an outright bonus feature. Then won’t we have come full-circle? If we make it to that point, mini-games will start back over, taking on the form that they currently take on.

Maybe that won’t happen, though. Maybe developers will occasionally include old versions of their games in the new editions, and gamers will be satisfied. If this is the path that is taken, inevitably some sequel of a sequel of a sequel will someday be produced that includes the original title of the series, where the original game (despite last-generation graphics and sound) will stand out as the more entertaining of the two games. This could be a nightmare for a game developer once the players realize that they just dropped fifty bucks on a game that is so terrible that the gamer spends ninety percent of their play time enjoying the first game of the series that is included as a mini-game, rather than the new title that they really spent the money on.

Despite disaster scenarios or the possibility that the inclusion of mini-games will simply degrade to bonus feature menu-items, gamers can probably expect developers to start including more mini-games into upcoming titles – if for no other reason than to simply keep the gamer playing their game. Perhaps mini-games will simply lead the video game industry to take a cue from the movie and music industries, which have existed for far longer, and prompt publishers to start producing more boxed-sets of popular series. Another possibility is that developers will follow the lead of GTA and begin including more departure-type mini-games within their titles. The advantage to this is that developers can start exploring more experimental game ideas to include as mini-games. If the big game development houses can’t justify backing experimental games, then perhaps they can allow their developers to have carte blanche in designing mini-games to include as diversions from the big-budget title that they are contracted to work on. No matter what the future holds for mini-games, we can almost be guaranteed that they will find their way into more games in the future.

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