Sushi-Go-Round: Pokémon Stadium
Cover image provided by Moby Games
At the risk of sounding like a “member berry,” do you remember when there were only 151 Pokemon? If you do, you probably remember Pokemon Stadium for the Nintendo 64 console. If you don’t, you can play it on the Nintendo Switch (and you should because it’s a fun videogame).
Released for the Nintendo 64 on 30 April 1999, Pokemon Stadium is, like the original Pocket Monsters franchise, a fantasy, science fiction, turn based, role playing videogame about capturing animals and monsters in the wild and then training them for fights at the competitive level. However what was unique about Pokemon Stadium was that players could, using an expansion to the N64 controller (which the colorful box called a “Transfer Pac”), plug in their Pokemon Blue, Red, and Yellow cartridges and use their own Pokemon for competing in tournaments. This sort of interconsole play was unheard of and, needless to say, only poured more fuel on the Pokemon fire.
And gazing into that flame was yours truly.
The sheer thrill that there was going to be a 3D Pokemon game that I could actually play drove my young mind to sheer madness. Setting the game up, plugging my Blue Version cartridge into the controller, and hopping into battles was a straight bonkers-electric-fantastic vibe that I enjoyed to the last drop. I would purposefully train my teams up just so that I could watch them fight in free battles or even attempt fights against Gym leaders. I note for the historical record that I got as far as Sabrina, the psychic pokemon gym leader, and arrived a stalemate as her Kadabra, if I may use the parlance of the south, “wupped my tail.”
I distinctly remember that Kadabra used the move “kinesis” which reduces move accuracy. That Kadabra used that move literally 30 times in a row. I’m not even kidding. The fight virtually stopped because my Blastoise couldn’t hit and the Kadabra just kept using status ailments.
I eventually gave up, annoyed that my usual strategy of sheer unending offense had failed me. Plus, there were other games to play.
This essay could quickly devolve into nostalgia before I have the chance to blink, but allow me at least one moment to indulge as I recall the first night playing the game. My parents had a small television set at the end of their bed with a built-in VCR and they would often have John Wayne movies playing at night on a loop to help them sleep. The night I received Pokemon Stadium as a present I set up my N64 to it, plugged the cartridge in, and spent the next few hours staring at that by-now abysmally small television set with the bent rabbit ears. Playing into the night at some point I realized my parents had turned off the light and had actually fallen asleep while I was playing. I felt comfortably and blissfully alone as I marveled at a Blastoise, MY Blastoise, use Hydro Pump against a Nine-Tails or a Haunter, MY Haunter, use Lick against a Voltorb. The sheer joy of playing Pokemon now had a literal new dimension and I was more than happy to disappear into it.
Despite these fond memories, cutting through the nostalgia and drenching my memory in cold, accurate hindsight has reminded me that I mostly played Pokemon Stadium for the minigames.
In a section called “Kid’s Club” there were nine mini-games. For example, there was “Clefairy Says” a memorization game, “Snore War” a rhythm game involving Drowzee’s using hypnosis, and “Magikarp Splash'' a game based on the physics involved with well time button pressing.
I played all of these mini-games regularly, more so than the actual game(which I’ll talk more about later in this essay), but the one I remember playing the most was “Sushi-go-round.”
Here’s what happens.
The player controls one of four Likitungs in a circle where trays of sushi slowly rotate (think of a revolving sushi bar) and the goal is simple: eat as much sushi as you can. This at first sounds easy, and it is, however the challenge becomes timing my Likitung’s “licks” correctly, and also regularly having to fight the other Likitungs space in the ring. If Likitung is in the wrong spot his tongue will miss the sushi entirely and since the game is timed every second, and lick, counts. Further challenges include some sushi rolls which will make Likitung turn green and scream in a nauseous fit, and also cups of wasabi that are so spicy they will immediately turn Likitung red and send him screaming until he cools down. In both of these instances I immediately lose control of the Likitung sprite and have to wait for his gastro-intestinal despair to end before I can resume eating.
The goal of this game is to wrack up the highest bill by eating the most, and/or the most expensive sushi. But I have to be honest, there were numerous rounds where I would purposefully eat the wasabi over and over again. It was just really funny dude. Liktung’s sprite was so squishy and cute and watching the poor thing run around in circles while screaming was funny.
Sadistic, I know, but funny nonetheless.
Moving the Likitung sprite was fun, and not simply when I was torturing the poor creature with food. Again, Likitung was cute. He’s literally a big pink blob with a tongue as long as he is and pressing A extends the tongue forward like a Chameleon snapping up a fly. The action animation is funny to watch, but the sound it produces is a charming “muah” that’s repeated every few milliseconds as all four of these Pokemon fight desperately for position in the Sushi circle.
And on the note of sound the player is greeted with a shouting Sushi chef who announces the beginning and end of the game, and occasionally cheers or makes announcements in Japanese during the rounds. These loud cries create an effect so that after a few seconds I begin to perceive like I’m playing a Japanese game-show rather than a science fiction videogame about monsters eating sushi. This sound element, coupled with the sounds of Likitungs inhaling roll after roll of sushi creates this auditory kinetic energy so that, even in my worst game I feel the sheer energy and momentum of this eating contest. This energy became a joyful ride of a videogame, so much so that returning to the actual competitive fights of the main game was kind of a let-down.
Actually, I’m not going to hedge my bets. Playing the tournaments after these mini-games was an anti-climax, and I wound up playing them more than the rest of the game.
Sushi-go-Round was designed to be quick play, but the sheer energy of the game itself made the rest of Pokemon Stadium seem, if I’m being honest, tedious and dry. Why grind my Blastoise to level 30, when I can inhale sushi and laugh when my opponent turns green?
Looking at this minigame, and the eight others in the Kid’s Club, the numbers just added up. Pokemon Stadium was fun, but I spent far more time with these mini-games because they offered a deeper, and more satisfying sense of play. While the main appeal of Pokemon was the challenges of the battles, the minigames offered a pre-Warioware sense of random gameplay that was enticing as they were absurd.
Mini-games are supposed to be, by design, a way to allow the player to cool down, metaphorically speaking, and provide a quick, easy challenge that lessens the dramatic weight of the rest of the game. Some examples include Chao World from Sonic 2 Adventure Battle which involves the player raising little chibi alien babies. “Beachstickball” in A Short Hike has the protagonist Claire (who’s an adorable little bird by the way) using found twigs to propel a ball back and forth over a net with a pair of kids who just invented the game and are more or less making the rules up as they go along. Final Fantasy VII includes Chocobo racing Mini-games which involve Cloud literally racing opponents on the backs of the iconic bipedal birds. In Cyberpunk 2077 there are racing games, fighting games, and even arcade machines which include full games players can play between the main missions or side gigs. These examples are simply to demonstrate that most mini-games in videogames are designed to encourage light play, but never at the cost of the rest of the actual game itself.
There was a flaw with Pokemon Stadium then because once I discovered Kids Club, I didn’t look back to the rest of the game. And that’s probably because the rest of the game is about competition, something I didn’t really enjoy or have much opportunities to explore.
This is to say, I was a lonely kid.
The content of the Kid’s Club mini-games in Pokemon Stadium eliminated the competitive fighting aspect of the rest of the game since I rarely played videogames with any kid my own age. What few kids in my neighborhood who wanted to play with me weren’t averse to videogames, but they wanted to play outside and they usually wanted to play sports like baseball. I never understood this, mostly because one of them had Goldeneye and that game ruled. I enjoyed the outdoors and sports as much as I enjoyed experiencing intensive dental repair work, and their refusal to stay inside and play Goldeneye eventually led to a bitter parting of ways that I still think about to this day.
That and they wanted me to climb a fence into a neighbor's backyard which I always thought was weird. But whatever.
It wasn’t until seventh grade when I met the guy who would become my best friend all the way up through college that I actually played videogames with other people. As such, even when I bought multiplayer games my options were typically to play alone, or else maybe play with my little sister.
The bottom line here is, games that were structured around competition had little appeal to me because I never had any reliable or consistent person to play games with. Again, I was a pretty lonely kid. The competitions of Pokemon Stadium were a reminder of this reality, whereas the mini-games were just wacky and ridiculous nonsense that encouraged play for its own sake.
I want to be clear, I didn’t just play Sushi-Go-Round whenever I opened Pokemon Stadium. If I’m being honest, and if I had possessed the foresight to generate a spreadsheet to track time spent on particular components of gameplay, I probably played Pokemon Stadium mostly to play the Gameboy cartridge on my television set. Alas, because I had yet to embrace the weird, pathetic data nerd that I am, I have no spreadsheet to prove this, just the unreliable narrator of my personal memory. What I can’t deny is that whenever I think about playing this game, Sushi-Go-Round and the other eight Kids Club mini-games are the first element that comes to mind.
The energy and absurdity of four Likitungs gobbling down sushi outshined the “serious” competitive gameplay of the rest of the levels of Pokemon Stadium. While other boys were grinding their Charizards so that they could prepare for the inevitable fight with the deity-adjacent Mewtwo, I was making a chubby Likitung chug wasabi and laughing. Loss in a Pokemon battle would mean a financial loss, a bruised ego, and the implication that I would have to grind my Pokemon in battle after battle just for the chance to try to fight again. Loss in Sushi-Go-Round meant watching my nauseous Likitung wobble on the floor while the victor smiled and tapped his rotund belly in satisfaction.
Ultimately these differences are just a matter of philosophical perspective. Competitive game players will, and did, find something enjoyable about the main game of Pokemon Stadium, but as I reflect back to that time and what I needed and wanted from videogames, Sushi-Go-Round provided a lovely dose of absurdity to my existence where it was desperately needed.
Mini-games can be derisively dismissed (alliteration not intended I promise) as empty filler, or at worst a distraction from the actual meat of the videogame. This is an argument that, like any argument, can be accurate or overblown depending on how it’s delivered. In regard to this essay, I would argue that Sushi-Go-Round was not filler by any means, but in fact was a lovely addition to a game that was about enhancing the experience of playing Pokemon, and contributing to the overall aesthetic. Pokemon was a world and videogame centered around competition; Sushi-Go-Round didn’t abandon that competition. Rather it recognised that some players would never take that competition too seriously, and some of them were looking for something a little more lighthearted.
Likitung turning green and shrieking a boisterous “Ewwwwwwwww” was slapstick humor at its best, and it reminded me that I could enjoy a videogame comfortably in solitude, and that that wouldn’t be a tragedy.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
3.3.2025
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