History Main / SidetrackedByTheGoldSaucer

* Wiki/TVTropes operates on this basis. How many times have you [[WikiWalk clicked into a link to another page and forget the page you were reading before]]? Mitigated somewhat by the "open in new tab" option on the right-click menu... until you can't open any more tabs. Or you realize that your tab bar is getting cluttered and use the equally-handy "Close Other Tabs" option. Of course, most people simply use the mouse wheel button, saving a lot of time doing both things... good luck browsing a site like this using a mousepad without this function.

* And in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'', if you like gambling, on a new game you can start walking towards the Strip ([[SequenceBreaking mountaineering past]] [[BeefGate the Cazadores and Deathclaws]]), 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.

** ''VideoGame/PuttPutt Goes to the Moon.'' Bear Stormin'. Good heaven almighty, Bear Stormin'. An arcade-styled [[AutoScrollingLevel Auto Scrolling Game]] where you play as a OneHitPointWonder trying to desperately keep your fuel up while everything else [[EverythingTryingToKillYou tries to kill you]]. It starts off easy enough, then, later on, it quits pulling any punches and descends into a NintendoHard mess of ridiculousness. Many have outright admitted it they enjoyed it more than the game surrounding it. In fact, it even got a reskin for the later ''Putt-Putt and VideoGame/FattyBear's Activity Pack'', and of ''course'' it was the most played game in the (15-minigame) compilation, ramping the difficulty UpToEleven.

* In case you're bored of shooting people or robots and capturing points and briefcases in ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'', there's a ton of [[GameMod custom game modes]] out there to endlessly enjoy. You could play Prop Hunt, where one team is disguised as random props and the other team must hunt them down. Or there's Vs. Saxton Hale, which pits every player against one super-powerful boss character. There's Deathrun, pitting players through a DeathCourse full of traps triggered by one person. Maybe fighting off zombies in Zombie Fortress is your thing. You could play ''VideoGame/WarioWare''-style mini-games. If you want to just shoot people but in more insane ways, there are: servers where ''every'' attack yields a CriticalHit; the [=UberUpgrades=] mod, which allows you to upgrade yourself and your weapons to insane heights; the Randomizer mod, which randomizes all your weapons; or the [[UpToEleven x10]] mod, which multiples most weapon stats by ten and grants other weapons ridiculous bonuses. If you're a trader, not a fighter, there's plenty of trade maps where the emphasis is on trading or exploring the often expansive and detailed maps. If you play on these kinds of servers too long, you might forget how to function if you return to a normal server...

*** Taken to UpToEleven in ''VideoGame/StarCraftII'' in which you can potentially create your own unique games, [[https://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, [[StopHavingFunGuys is the small size]] for posting on [=Battle.net=].

* ''VideoGame/SystemShock'' has a variety of mini-games you can find. Most are simple (like Tic-Tac-Toe), but one is an [[UpToEleven entire]] ''VideoGame/WingCommander'' spin-off with a thirteen-mission campaign. Hope you didn't opt for the time limit on the main game. The sequel has some as well, including an ''VideoGame/{{Ultima}}'' clone that's several hours long. For extra coolness, play this while a hacked turret blazes away at foes.

* Photographing all the wildlife and plants in ''VideoGame/TheAmazonTrail'' for OneHundredPercentCompletion can become this. There are ''so many'' and some are quite rare. You can easily spend an hour on one very short leg of the journey just clicking on "Explore," scanning, waiting for anything that might pop up from underwater or fly in from offscreen, returning to the river...and immediately clicking "Explore" again. Same goes for fishing until you manage to catch the pirarucu, who can easily take five minutes to show up...''if'' he shows up.

** There are a lot of things about ''[[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV GTAIV]]'' you can find on Website/YouTube: Horrific one-car accidents, horrific two-car accidents, horrific multiple-car accidents, horrific motorcycle accidents, horrific helicopter accidents, vehicular homicide, insane successful stunt jumps, insane unsuccessful stunt jumps, helicopters plummeting out of the sky for various reasons, falls off of buildings, falls out of helicopters, falls from the edge of space, slamming into buildings at high speed, shoving people down stairs, off of cliffs, and into traffic, cops doing ridiculous dance routines, shooting each other, and jumping to their deaths, the protagonists (Niko, Johnny and Luis) getting ejected from cars or falling hundreds of metres to their doom while [[LargeHam screaming hilariously]], outrageous ragdoll physics, frictionless/zero gravity chaos, massive tidal waves, and people and cars being launched skyward by playground equipment via the legendary [[GoodBadBugs Swingset Glitch]]. Things you will ''not'' find: "Missions", "side missions", "bowling", "talking", or whatever the heck it is you're supposed to do in ''GTAIV''.

** Things about ''[[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV GTAIV]]'' will find on Website/YouTube: Horrific one-car accidents, horrific two-car accidents, horrific multiple-car accidents, horrific motorcycle accidents, horrific helicopter accidents, vehicular homicide, insane successful stunt jumps, insane unsuccessful stunt jumps, helicopters plummeting out of the sky for various reasons, falls off of buildings, falls out of helicopters, falls from the edge of space, slamming into buildings at high speed, shoving people down stairs, off of cliffs, and into traffic, cops doing ridiculous dance routines, shooting each other, and jumping to their deaths, the protagonists (Niko, Johnny and Luis) getting ejected from cars or falling hundreds of metres to their doom while [[LargeHam screaming hilariously]], outrageous ragdoll physics, frictionless/zero gravity chaos, massive tidal waves, and people and cars being launched skyward by playground equipment via the legendary [[GoodBadBugs Swingset Glitch]]. Things you will ''not'' find: "Missions", "side missions", "bowling", "talking", or whatever the heck it is you're supposed to do in ''GTAIV''.

* ''Franchise/Kirby'':

* ''[[VideoGame/Kirby64TheCrystalShards 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.
** It helps that the 100-Yard Hop minigame has the Gourmet Race theme from ''VideoGame/KirbySuperStar'' as its BGM.
** ''VideoGame/KirbyTripleDeluxe'' contains a ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros''-like mini-game involving playing as Kirbys with permanent abilities. It's exactly as distracting as it sounds.
*** So much, in fact, that ''Kirby Fighters'' received a [[UpdatedRerelease standalone update]] on the Nintendo eShop as ''Kirby Fighters Deluxe''. The same applies, though to a lesser degree, with ''[[RhythmGame Dedede's Drum Dash]]'', which similarly was re-released as ''Dedede's Drum Dash Deluxe''.

[[caption-width-right:276:"Cloud, I know you're really into that snowboarding game, but can we please, please, '''''PLEASE''''' take some time to go out and stop [[BigBad Sephiroth]] from [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIT destroying the world]]?"\\

[[caption-width-right:276:"Cloud, can we please, please, ''please'' take some time out to go and stop Sephiroth from destroying the world?"\\

[-[[https://www.deviantart.com/ahvia/art/SNOWBOARDING-121743512 Art]] by [[https://www.deviantart.com/ahvia Ahiva]]-]]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Xenoblade}}'', hoo boy. This game may well hold the record for just how ''early'' it's possible to get sidetracked: the first town alone contains literally ''dozens'' of sidequests, as well as around 50 unique, named [=NPCs=] to register in a chart ''detailing their relationships with all other [=NPCs=]!'' A player could spend '''hours''' doing sidequests '''before even leaving the first town!''' By the time one is done with sidequests and moves on with the main story (if only for having no more quests to ''do''), the party can easily be many hours and about a dozen levels past what the game expects.

* With the way LetsPlay/{{Chuggaaconroy}} formats his videos as part-Let's Play part-Walkthrough, almost always going for 100% in every game he plays, he's ''very'' prone to falling victim to this trope, notably in games like ''VideoGame/{{Okami}}'', ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword Skyward Sword]]'', and ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2''. This habit of his is something he [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] ''very'' often.
* Creator/{{ProZD}} makes a joke about this trope in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq20WAuTUdQ Sidetracked by sidequests]]", where [[PlayerCharacter Dennis]] can't be bothered to play through the main story because he's to busy trying to find all of the game's pinecones. The joke returns in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4P2N5fyqbo facing the final boss after doing every single sidequest]]" where getting distracted by all of the game's sidequests results in Dennis [[AntiClimax one-shotting]] [[BigBad King Dragon]] because he's now overleveled. Oh, and [[BrickJoke he also found all 900 pinecones]].

* ''VideoGame/StardewValley'' has two arcade machines that you can play: "Journey of the Prairie King", a Wild West-themed shoot-em-up, and "Junimo Cart" a MinecartMadness minigame. There's also the hidden Casino, where you can play slots or CalicoJack, a variant of Blackjack.

** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemFates'' has the Gold Saucer ''being'' it's hub world in the form of My Castle! Aside from the metric butt-ton of customization and upgrade options, you get to partake in the lottery, fight in the arena, cook to give stat bonuses to your units, decorating your soldiers with accessories, visit other castles to battle, trade, gain skills and buy items as part of ''Fates''' SocializationBonus, and [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers visiting the sauna]] and [[AccidentalPervert occassionally (by accident)]] [[BreadEggsMilkSquick peeping on the opposite sex there]]. Because of the genuine perks associated with maintaining your hub world, the genuine fun involved and it's out-of-the-way presence compared to the main story (to the point that ''Fates'' willingly invokes GameplayAndStorySegregation to make the existence of My Castle mesh with the narrative, in a series that invokes GameplayAndStoryIntegration wherever possible) means it's not unheard of in the slightest to hear players rack up ''way'' more time in My Castle than the main campaign!

** ''[[VideoGame/PokemonStadium Pokémon Stadium]]'' (1 ''and'' 2) have addictive mini-games, to the point that one of the main complaints about ''Pokémon Battle Revolution'' and why it sucks is that it has no mini-games.

** On that note, the side quests as a whole for ''The Witcher 3'' are generally regarded by critics and fans as one of the best collection of side quests in all of gaming, with even some of the most humble side quests having a presentation, writing and moral complexity and nuance that rivals most other games' main story quests. Many players have talked about completely losing themselves in the sheer number of compelling and addictive side content that were just as tantalizing as the main narrative.

** On that note, the side quests as a whole for ''The Witcher 3'' are generally regarded by critics and fans as one of the best collection of side quests in all of gaming, with even some of the most humble side quests having a presentation, writing and moral complexity and nuance that rivals most other games' main story quests. Many players have talked about completely losing themselves in the sheer number of compelling side content that were just as tantalizing as the main narrative.

** On that note, the side quests as a whole for ''The Witcher 3'' are generally regarded by critics and fans as one of the best collection of side quests in all of gaming, with even the most humble side quests having writing and moral nuance that rivals most other games' main story quests. Many players have talked about completely losing themselves in the sheer number of compelling side content that were just as tantalizing as the main narrative.

* Parodied in the Website/{{Collegehumor}} video ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbUqEPUZ-ds The Legend of Link's Distractions]]''. It's basically a case of RealityEnsues that shows just what would happen if Link is too busy either fishing or chasing chickens to do ''anything'' that actually involves saving Hyrule.

** Already no stranger to create-a-whatsit modes, the ''WWE'' wrestling game series has recently added in a create-a-story mode. For anyone who's ever said they could pull better plot twists [[AssPull out of their ass]] than [[ShockingSwerve Vince Russo could actually sit down and write]], it's both a dream come true ''and'' the sputtering death of whatever social life they had.

* ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty: World at War'' had the ''VideoGame/NaziZombies'' unlockable survival mini game. Given this has online leaderboards and co-op multiplayer, one can literally spend hours playing sometimes instead of the normal modes. Then it got people [[GameMod making their own maps]] for the PC version... then it got three downloadable bonus maps to buy (or get for free [[RunningGag for the PC version]]), complete with traps such as electro-shock fences and swinging maces, and various power ups...