History Main / SidetrackedByTheGoldSaucer

* Users of the ''SomethingAwful'' forums divide into two groups: those attracted by the front page who stayed for the forums, and those who say "Wait, there's a front page?"

** Morrowind fits the bill too. Apparently, many players got lost and just wandered around in theur few first games. When you finally decide to start a game in which you'll stick to the main quest, you realise how much more fun it was to simply wander around.

*** Speaking of ''Wind Waker''... Be honest, you just spent four hours sailing around, exploring unimportant islands, looking for treasure, and filling in your map as soon as you were allowed to sail around freely.

** Parodied [[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.

** Also in HeartGold and SoulSilver is the Pokeathlon, which replaces the Hoenn and Sinnoh diversion of Pokemon Contests, which involve a different set of stats entirely, and is rightly a whole other game. Imagine a competitive beauty pageant, for Pokemon.

* Voltorb Flip is basically the king of this trope.

*** ''[=FF8=]'' is a card game with some FMVs of Squall and Rinoa attached to it.

*** New to the scene in Heartgold and Soulsilver is the "Voltorb Flip" game. Your total coins can only go up, because you're not actually betting in this game. It's also not luck-based like the slot machines, so if you can figure out the pattern, you can spend HOURS.

* Way back in SuperMarioBros3 for the NES, if you played it two player, there was a version of the original MarioBros 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.

* And as for ''{{Pokemon}}'', in the first generation games winning a large sum of coins at the casino was the only way to get [[PowerlessPromotionalPieceofGarbage Porygon]], outside of spending an even larger sum of money.

* Way back in SuperMarioBros3 for the NES, if you played it two player, there was a version of the original MarioBros game (and a couple of other two-player minigames, assigned at random). 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.

* Uhhh...[[TVTropesWillRuinYourLife the one you are reading right this second?]]

Sometimes you're handling the main quest and a game will throw in some sort of diversion for your entertainment. This minigame, sidequest, or secondary story is so absolutely addictive, interesting, or just plain fun that you'll completely forget about the main story altogether. This isn't absolutely limited to videogames either. Many websites have so many nifty things going on that you don't even care about the main site at all. These are times when the main story or quest gets derailed by what you can do on the side.

** That one massage mini-game in ''{{Final Fantasy X-2}}'' could possibly be this for some people, {{Or So I Heard}}. Others...[[WallBanger not]] [[DisContinuity so]] [[NoYay much]].

** The game after [=FF9=] could be titled "'''Blitzball!''' Also includes FinalFantasyX."
** That one massage mini-game in {{Final Fantasy X-2}} could possibly be this for some people, {{Or So I Heard}}. Others...[[WallBanger not]] [[DisContinuity so]] [[NoYay much]].

*** Blitzball in FFX-2 may have been even more addictive than it was before, despite your no longer directly controlling the players.

*** FFTA2 has a main storyline?

** Subverted in Final Fantasy XIII. In Chapter 8, two of your party members visit [[GoldenSaucer Nautilus Park]], [[MissedMomentOfAwesome but before you can get around to really doing anything,]] [[spoiler: you get captured by soldiers and the rest of your party has to rescue them]]

** This is given a ContinuityNod in DissidiaFinalFantasy. In the Arcade Mode's game manual, [[FinalFantasyVII Cait Sith]] tells you, "Unlike Gold Saucer, it doesnae cost a gil to play--but [[TakeYourTime dinnae forget the whole Cosmos-and-Chaos dust-up!]]"
** No one mentions [=FFIX=]'s Tetra Master card game? It got so popular that PlayOnline released a pay-to-play online version of it along with FFXI.

* [[FishingMinigame The Fishing Hole]] in ''TheLegendOfZelda: Ocarina of Time'' is well-known for its absurdly addictive properties. Even after winning the available prizes, you can waste ages in there, looking for the elusive Hylian Loach...
** The Fishing Hole returned in Twilight Princess. Still awesome, and this time using the Wii controls in surprisingly intuitive ways.
**Another example from TheLegendOfZelda is the Pictograph/Nintendo Gallery mega-sidequest in ''The Wind Waker''.

* DeadSpace (yes, [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel that]] DeadSpace) has a mini-game known as "Zero-G Basketball" or "Z-Ball." Even though the player character is playing by himself, it's still a lot of fun.

* CityOfHeroes 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 WorldOfWarCraft, 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.

* After beating the first playthrough of AWitchsTale, you get to play a game of Black Jack against all the other characters.