19. 3D Brawler

The Kotaku staff largely hates this minigame, but I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for it. Build an arena and I’ll show up I guess, arms swinging and all. Call it my knack for fighters despite my lack of any fighting skills, but I can’t turn down a good bout. It’s especially hard when fighting looks as cool as it does here. with 3D Brawler’s high-definition polygonal fighters. It’s easily where I spent the majority of my time in the Golden Saucer. Fighting games often have a high skill ceiling that I can’t reach, which makes 3D Brawler’s simple Punch-Out-inspired control scheme my ideal level of complexity. On the flip side, the minigame doesn’t evolve much beyond reading simple directional tells, meaning that the only way it meaningfully grows is by speeding things up. Unfortunately, I’m no longer as spry on the sticks as I was in my teenage years, so I face planted more than I succeeded, even if I did have a blast. — Moises Taveras