I still feel that FFX wins the award for epic fail in its mini-games. Tedious, frustrating, usually boring, and the only benefit is acquiring the ultimate weapons (which you don't need) or items to build ultimate equipment (which you don't need).

I like the majority of IX's minigames: the play fight is fun and entertaining, jump rope is cute if a little frustrating, frog catching is more amusing than it should be, the monster arena was fun and challenging, Chocobo Hot and Cold is probably one of my top favorite Chocobo minigames, Froggy Red Light Green Light was hilarious.

The only one I despise is Tetra Master cause its a terrible card game that isn't fun, you can't build proper strategies, the grainy graphics combined with its tiny print makes reading the stats on the cards difficult and the randomness of it all makes me feel like the game was created as a communist version of Triple Triad where good players of the TT are punished for being good and children who can't do math can now finally win without real effort. The game is as fun as drawing straws. Not to mention it doesn't offer any gameplay benefits outside of the Treno tournament...

Besides that one blemish, I feel the mini-games in IX are something all the games should aspire to.