Asklemmy

Not a minigame, but Maniac Mansion being within The Day of the Tentacle is probably my fav.

The full 4K version of Timesplitters 2 inside Homefront: The Revolution, but you have to play something like 75% of Homefront to reach it. I'll reach it one of these days.

Caravan from Fallout: New Vegas has a notoriously bad tutorial, but is easy enough to grasp and fun as an early-game money source. Would have benefited from a Gwent-style sidequest chain.

Triple triad card game from FF8? Also the card game in FF9, I forgot which is which.

Probably not what you are asking for, but the character creation process in the Traveller ttRPG is a great mini game. You basically take a person from 18 to however old you want, and their life path is dictated by your choices and random dice outcomes. It's a lot of fun. You can end up with a retired admiral, a prisoner or criminal, psionic, etc. Going through this process with a table of friends let's you build in rich fun connections along the way. The actual RPG then starts with mature, connected characters with a history, instead of 4 randos meeting in a tavern. In the classic Traveller you can even die in character creation. Current iterations removed the death component but you can be maimed from accidents in your career and start the game with a mountain of medical debt.

The minigames in shenmue/yakuza. They are literally full games.

I think DOOM Eternal has DOOM 2 inside of it... which then has ~~shatfenfrude~~ Wolfenstein inside of it. (ignore the spelling 😅)

edit: I forgot the name and accidentally tried to type the German word for laughing

Playing Receiver in Receiver 2 was a fun surprise.

Pretty much every minigame in Majora's Mask is making you forget the world is ending

Geometry Wars in Project Gotham Racing 2.

Yakuza games are the only good Mahjong simulator. I’ve always thought Sega/RGK Studios should release a standalone one based on Yakuza.

All other Mahjong games are shitty western mahjong match tile games.

The Chao racing from Sonic Adventure on the dream cast. You could take the memory card out and use it as a tamagotchi to care for the little guy and make it train so it gets faster and stronger in the real game.

It got no better than that.

The mini pinball game, at the top-right of the Family Guy pinball table(2007).

It is fast paced and well put together.

Treedude in superhot

And... Umm

Mario party

Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal had a side scrolling Captain Quark game that was quite good

I thought of another one. There is a minigame in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 called Tiger! Tiger that is great. it is basically an arcade game where getting certain scores gives you credits that can be redeemed for upgrades for some characters. The minigame is randomized and has three different difficulty tiers and is overall really well done.

Not sure if it will count, but the Ancient Cave in Lufia 2 (SNES) was a game in and of itself. It was basically a roguelike dungeon. 100 random floors, it reverts you to level 1 and there were rare special items you could sometimes find in runs that could be brought back in. Beating the Ancient Cave is much, much harder and more rewarding than beating the game itself (storyline aside).

The hunting game in Oregon Trail.

Demontower, found within Night in the Woods. That could easily be a standalone short game

Didn’t rocket league originate from a minigame ?

The tile placement game in Satisfactory is worth a mention. I never fully understood the points system, so I never really rode the game to decent scores, but it was a fun break from the vast size of the rest of the game.

The cornfield photo minigame in mario party ds

the game.

Don't know if it would count since it's used in a couple levels, I think, but PVZ Reflourished, Caliginous Carnival. The levels where you essentially have to pay attention to the zombies beneath the hats and guess which is the weaker one in order to make the spawns easier to deal with. Rinse and repeat multiple rounds until you win. Would absolutely love to see that done more.

Also, along the lines of PVZ, iZombie is definitely up there for my favorite minigame in the series and in general. It absolutely sucks both versions of PVZ2 killed it (unless I'm wrong and the Chinese version still has the old PVP mode, but even then wasn't nearly as fun as the original minigame, nor anywhere near as balanced when half the time you'd find other players had level 4/5 plants that instantly destroy everything in 0.001 nanoseconds).

Let's be real, Witcher 3 is just a Gwent launcher.

Also I've definitely played more Pazaak than KOTOR.

I loved the Chao Garden in the Sonic Adventure games.

Triple triad from Final Fantasy 8.

It’s always fishing.

Maniac Mansion: day of the tentacle includes the full first maniac Mansion game on weird Ed's computer in the room with him and the hamster

EverQuest /gems and /pizza

Who are you so wise in the ways of gwent?