4 player mario kart 64: block fort: everyone was assigned a colored "fort" and we'd spend about 15-30 minutes just collecting prize boxes and loading up our own forts with boobies traps while shooting al the green shells down below. then after everyone agreed to start. it was a normal FFA.
This. I loved doing it with my friends and cousins, and it's amazing to hear somebody else used to do it.
Here're some of the metagames I played:
Bob-omb's revenge (
Mario Kart 64): The goal was to trigger an item just as you got killed and turned into a bob-omb in battle mode, and the other players had to avoid the bomb for as long as they could.
Avoid the 1-up (
Super Mario 64): It's amusing how many people did this back then. I also attempted to use the special triple jump jump to fall as long as possible and landing safely, as well as jumping off of platforms while carrying a block with the winged cap (since when you jump while holding something the winged cap makes you fall really slowly)
Red shell match (
Super Smash Bros 64): Set the item switch so that only red shells spawn, and try to survive for as long as possible. We also had a whole mini-game going about keeping dead player's powers when playing as Kirby.
Attack of the juggernaut (
Super Smash Bros Melee): three human players with our handicap set to one against a level nine AI with the highest handicap setting, and changing the damage ratio every time. It's really sad how Brawl's handicap system no longer lets us do this, since starting with 300% damage doesn't make the AI any harder to knock off-screen.
Stamina flower brawl (
Super Smash Bros Brawl): We mostly played team battles with team attack on. Setting the handicaps to automatic was hilarious, since the winning player would start with less and less health until it was impossible to win before the flower ended up killing you.
Battle mini-games (
Super Mario Bros. 3): We started the game up in two-player mode and just kept playing the battle stages over and over. We also played around with end-of-levl panels, trying to wrangle them off of the other player or just setting them loose and trying to avoid them while we could.
Purple endurance madness (
Mario Bros. arcade): The goal was to make every on-screen enemy as fast as possible (ie: making crabs angry as well as turniong them purple) and trying to last as long as possible without dying. purple flies were amazing in that they could reach some platforms that were normally off-limits to other monsters. We also played a game we liked to call "the POW guy", where we'd battle over control of the POW (most often after we filled the ground below with purple rampaging enemies).
Proximity or remote bombs only (
Goldeneye N64): I guess the title's self-explainatory.
...That's all I can remember for now (whew!). It's really fun when your group of friends comes up with crazy variations such as these. I'm totally digging the policeman mode and the 2v2 "get your team's crappy car to win" race.
. There was that multiplayer level with the really tall buildings in the background; we used the area you could break out of the invisible walls, then we'd use that charging sword glitch to climb the skyscrapers. Trying to navigate the odd, only-half-there background geometry and invisible walls was fun to figure out.
