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{{trope}}
[[File:FatalRacing33.png|link=Fatal Racing|
{{quote|''"How much farther do we have to go?! This place goes on forever! Ah, there's no point in complaining about it. We must press onward! [[Tempting Fate|After all, how much more could there be?]]"''
▲{{quote|''"How much farther do we have to go?! This place goes on forever! Ah, there's no point in complaining about it. We must press onward! [[Tempting Fate|After all, how much more could there be?]]"''<br />
▲|'''[[Exposition Fairy|Ezlo]]''', ''[[The Legend of Zelda the Minish Cap]]''}}
So, you've been spending about four hours charging through the [[Bonus Dungeon]]. It must be over soon, right? It's been about sixteen rooms worth of dungeon, you've fought past at least three [[Sub Boss|Mini bosses]], battled heroically past hordes of [[Goddamned Bats]] and [[Demonic Spiders]] and just have to be near the [[Boss Battle|boss]], right?
Nope, this is the
While Marathon Levels can be [[That One Level|easy to hate]], [[Tropes Are Not Bad|don't judge them too harshly]]. These levels can be some of the [[Best Level Ever|best-designed levels]] in the game (sometimes), though they can also be susceptible to [[Space
See also [[Marathon Boss]], the boss version. Not to be confused with a level in ''[[Marathon
▲See also [[Marathon Boss]], the boss version. Not to be confused with a level in ''[[Marathon (Video Game)|Marathon]]''. [[Check Point Starvation]] can make these levels quite maddening, and heaven help you if it's combined with [[Bladder of Steel]].
{{examples}}
== [[Action Adventure]] ==
* [[
** Any [[One Hundred Percent|completionist]] who's ever played the game has spent untold additional hours getting the stray beads. Specifically, a set of three beads requires you to fight through a total of thirty demon gates in groups of ten each. The first set isn't bad... fifteen minutes to half an hour depending on your skills. The third one however is at least an hour and a half of the toughest enemies in the game, below bosses. You can't save, and if you leave after finishing any gates you have to start the stage over.
** Oni Island, the fifth dungeon, is the longest in the game. Lots of racing segments, tricky obstacles, fairly tough enemy battles, and [[That One Boss]]. Even getting to the place takes a while.
* ''[[Ecco the Dolphin]]'' has at least one: the infamous "Welcome to the Machine" from the first game. It's a five-minute long [[Auto
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'':
** The Palace of Winds in ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
** The Water Temple ([[Scrappy Level|big surprise]]) from ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
** City in the Sky is the longest dungeon in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
* The Silenced Cathedral in ''[[Soul Reaver]]'' is the only area that has two warp gates linked to it instead of just one. It's a huge, sprawling maze of a place full of puzzles (both [[Block Puzzle|block]] and otherwise) and the creepy, [[Wall Crawl|wall-climbing]] Zephonim vampires. It takes about two hours to complete if you know what you're doing, and it's only the ''second'' stage of the game!
** And that's the final version. It was supposed to be even longer, but a good portion of the Cathedral was [[Dummied Out]] due to various reasons.
* Chapter 19 in ''[[Kid Icarus: Uprising]]'' consists of climing a very tall tower from the bottom floor. Constantly lampsheded by Pit repeatedly asking his [[Mission Control]] "Are we there yet?" (and annoying the hell out of her) and saying "This place is so huge, [[Medium Awareness|we even had a loading screen back there!]]"
{{quote|
== [[Action Game]] ==
* Barkhang Monastery and Temple of Xian in ''[[Tomb Raider]] 2'', some of the climactic levels in the game and each frequently regarded as a [[Best Level Ever]].
** At least half the levels in ''[[Tomb Raider]] 3'' classify as marathon levels by the standards of the rest of the franchise (and the genre as a whole for that matter), this, combined with [[Nintendo Hard]] is the main reason behind its [[Love It or Hate It]] reputation.
* ''[[Devil May Cry]] 3'' has the Bloody Palace which is 9999 levels. Fortunately you can skip 100 levels at a time.
* Similarly, ''[[Bayonetta]]'' has [[Bonus Level of Heaven|Angel Slayer]], which is divided into {{spoiler|51}} levels, with a brutal boss every 10 levels and no saves in between. Didn't like [[That One Boss|Jeanne]] alone? Well, now fight three of her! As for the [[Bonus Boss|finale]], what could possibly be more dangerous than three Jeannes? That's right — {{spoiler|[[Mirror Boss|Another]] [[Oh Crap|Bayonetta]]}}.
* Nearly every single level of ''[[Ninja Gaiden]] II'' is this to an extent, few of them taking less than half an hour to beat. The most brutal however is chapter 11, an endless gauntlet where you will be assaulted by ''armies'' of mooks every ten meters, with a healthy dose of [[Check Point Starvation]] and a boss at the end. This is usually considered the [[Best Level Ever]] by hardcore fans on the series.
== [[Beat'Em Up]] ==
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== [[Driving Game]] ==
* ''BAJA: Edge of Control'' has ''3-hour long'' BAJA 1000 races. Keep in mind that these races are on extremely rough terrain, with trucks that require players to monitor heat, clutch damage, suspension damage...
* ''[[
** The Rainbow Road track in ''[[
** The All Cup Tour in ''Mario Kart: Double Dash!!'', featuring all 16 tracks, which takes about 45 minutes to do on 50cc.
* The ''[[Gran Turismo]]'' series had this with the Special Stage Route 11 for the first three games, later replacing it with the [[Real Life]] Nürburgring Nordschleife and the Le Mans circuit (including a version with the original and uninterrupted ''six-mile straight''), both of them measuring around the 25 kilometers.
** And then there are the [[Exactly What It Says
** And Special Stage Route 7 in ''GT 5'', although it's mostly straightaways.
* ''[[Wangan Midnight]] Maximum Tune'' has the Metropolitian Highway (Tokyo) time attack course, which combines all four Tokyo courses and takes over 12 minutes to complete with a fully-tuned car. ''Maximum Tune 3'' adds the Kanagawa version, which is a 7-minute runthrough of Yokohane Line and Wangan Line. Due to their lengths, playing one of these courses requires you to insert an additional credit.
* ''[[Fatal Racing]]'''s 3rd bonus race takes around 15 minutes to finish on [[Easy Mode Mockery|Girlie mode]]... and over 40 minutes on a good day on [[Harder Than Hard|Impossible]], with low damage. Every other course can be finished (1st place, all laps done) in under 15 minutes on Impossible, even with high damage and a full house of 16 cars (15 or 14 computers). It is highly suspected that this is due to a mistake in the course's configuration.
* Endurance races in the ''[[Forza Motorsport]]'' series, the longest of which are the 17 lap(238
* ''[[Ridge Racer]] V'' has the 99 Trial mode, which is literally a 99-lap race around the Sunny Beach course. You need to get first place in the race to get the ultimate prize (It's just an in-game trophy, which the game built up way too much).
* ''[[Need for Speed|Need for Speed: Shift]]'' has one set of races designed to infuriate anyone going for 100% completion: Endurance. It consists of 5 races: 3 of them are 10 laps on ostensibly long tracks (the famed SPA GP being one of them), one of them is 30 laps on a tiny figure-eight track, and 3 laps on the legendary Nordschleife. THEN you get to challenge the 'Endurance champion' to complete the race sets. Even with heavily modified Tier 3 vehicles, the entire thing will take you a good
* ''[[FUEL]]'' has Endurance races, which take at least 20 minutes to complete, but then there is the Mt. Rainier Endurance race, the last of them all, where you have to cover 100 miles of offroading up and down mountainsides in a Muscle Car that is built for going offroad. It takes an hour and 15 minutes to finish. made worse by the level getting glitchy from the chunk loading process.
* The aptly named Gigatrack in ''[[Trials Evolution]]''. In a game where 2 minutes is normally the average track length, this one can take well over 15 minutes to complete.
== [[Fighting Game]] ==
* The Great Maze from ''[[Super Smash Bros.]] Brawl''. It marks a shift from shorter, individual platforming levels to a larger [[Metroidvania]]-styled labyrinth of interconnected areas. There are save points throughout the level though, and it's not necessarily meant to be played all in one go. Which is good, because the Great Maze alone takes up '''one-third''' of the "Subspace Emissary" story mode.
** Also from the ''Smash Bros'' franchise is 15-minute melee/brawl. [[Exactly What It Says
* The "100 Fight Kumite" mode in ''[[Street Fighter]] Alpha 3 MAX'' pits you against 100 fighters, with no continues or pause breaks. Win or lose, you have to complete every single fight for your score to be recorded.
* ''[[Bushido Blade]]'' features a 100-enemy slasher mode. Quite difficult since it's possible to be killed with a single well-placed attack, finishing this unlocks a hidden character.
== [[First-Person Shooter]] ==
* ''[[
* The Cetan Ship in ''[[Perfect Dark]]'' is huge, features a difficult [[Escort Mission]], and has enemies with cloaking devices or very tiny anklebiting aliens who attack you in dark places. Worse yet, the level is actually longer on the higher difficulty settings, both extending the time spent there and decreasing the odds of success.
* The Library in ''[[Halo]]'' does seem to go on for ages and ages...
** Get comfy, because Halo 3's The Covenant is the longest level, not only in Halo 3, but in the entire series. On [[Harder Than Hard|Legendary Difficulty]], it can take over ''two hours'' to complete.
** Assault on the Control Room. Then you do it backwards, in Two Betrayals.
* The ''[[
** The Great Pyramid in ''The First Encounter'' can take a while to complete. However, not only the final level is marathon level. Metropolis and Karnak are just extremely long and have the highest enemy counts in the game.
** Grand Cathedral from ''The Second Encounter''. The next-to-last [[The War Sequence|War Sequence]], in particular, is a real endurance-tester. ''Second Encounter'' also has the City of the Gods, Ziggurat, Courtyards of Gilgamesh and Tower of Babel, all of them which can take about an hour to complete on first playthrough.
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** Prime 3 has Phaaze, where you have to go through an area for half an hour without saving, THEN beat the final bosses, which can take up to another 20 minutes if not more. Thankfully, dying only puts you back at the bosses - too bad it's the first of the three!
* ''The Super Spy'' has only two missions, but both take a long time to beat. The first mission takes place in a three story building with a basement, and the second mission takes place in a 16 story skyscraper. Even rushing through the buildings and skipping all non-essential rooms can still take several minutes to clear.
* ''[[Turok (
* ''[[Medal of Honor]]: Airborne'''s seven missions are quite long (with additional segments after completion of the initial objectives), as well as being nonlinear and [[Nintendo Hard]](even on Normal).
* The Golden Lion (probably the longest) and other long levels in ''[[Medal of Honor]]: Frontline'', since there are no in-level save opportunities.
* The Caverns in ''[[
* Some custom ''[[Doom]]'' maps can take a long time to beat. ''Deus Vult II'' comes to mind, with maps like "Stargate" and "Unholy Cathedral"; playing them for the first time can take over an hour.
** And then, there is the [http://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/57974-memorial-by-eternal/ Memorial] map, which is essentially all 32 levels of Doom II packed into one megamap. Even if you're absolutely familiar with the maps, you'll be going at it for a while.
* Likewise, ''[[Left 4 Dead]] 2'' has a custom campaign, ''Suicide Blitz 2'', which takes about twice as long as a Valve-created campaign. Even worse, you're down to three party members because one of them is carrying [[Companion Cube|Gnome Chompsky]] [''sic''] to the end of the campaign, where it unlocks an [[Easter Egg]], and is thus unable to use guns. (Or he could put the gnome down to shoot... and have it fall [[Behind the Black|through the level geometry]] and be [[Lost Forever]].)
* In ''[[
== [[Hack and Slash]] ==
* The Rank 4 and 2 stages in ''[[No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle
== [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPGs]] ==
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' raid instances, particularly the early ones. Molten Core, the first of their kind, could maybe be cleared in two hours or so if you had a well-equipped group that was capable of cutting through the trash mobs quickly...though if your group had the gear to pull that off, they probably didn't need anything from the dungeon in the first place. Parodied in ''[[Penny Arcade]]'' as Time Sink Cavern.
** Blackrock Depths also qualifies, a gigantic disorienting underground labyrinth of a city it was always just that place you had to go to get attuned, or to get the repair bot schematic or to farm dark iron ore etc. Point is the place was so damned huge non-linear and its major points of interest so widely dispersed nobody really ran it, they just used often quite unusual tactics (such as swimming in lava) to make their way to a particular thing they needed for endgame progression then left. While every other endgame instance was run ceaselessly it was extremely rare to meet anyone who had ever actually seen let alone fought the final boss of Blackrock Depths since honestly the gear from the place wasn't even very good. Gnomeragon followed much the same pattern, but since it never contained anything important to endgame progression it just never got run period.
* ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' has Fernswarthy's Basement, an infinite-floor dungeon. The current record is about 11000 floors deep. Subverted somewhat in that you can always stop and go back to the exact same floor you just left.
* In ''[[City of Heroes]]'', the task force you can get from Doctor Quaterfield is twenty-four missions long, with several "defeat all enemies" missions and repetitive maps. Based on the official formula for calculating completion rewards, the median time for running it is over six hours.
** In order to encourage more people to play it the developers had two options: make it shorter by cutting out the redundant missions or increase the reward at the end. Guess which option they chose.
** The "six hours" time is typical for current runs, after seven years of increasing player skill, increasing character power, and added fast-travel options. When it was originally added to the game, completion times upwards of ten hours were common, including around two hours just spent traveling to mission locations. However, by the end of ''COH''{{'}}s original run (and continuing after its 2019 resurrection), the inclusion of new travel powers including multiple whole-team mission teleports made it possible to complete the task force in three hours or less.
* The Fissure of Woe from ''[[Guild Wars]]'' can take several hours to complete even with a fairly-well prepared group.
** Domain of Anguish could potentially take
* ''[[Vindictus]]'' has Resenlian's Labyrinth; which also features [[Cut and Paste Environments]] and [[Doppelganger
* [[Star
* [[Wizard 101]] has a few instances that can qualify but the worst has to be The Tower of the Helephant. It has seven floors (just above the average size of a dungeon). The kicker is that two of the three bosses in there [[Puzzle Boss|do not]] [[Secret AI Moves|play fair]]. The first boss is actually a [[Dual Boss]] that only one of the bosses can be harmed without a 90% resistance to all attacks while the other can cause your spells to lose an additional 50% from their hit chance, if any your spells fail (even after the first of the pair dies) then you're punished with an attack that rapidly drains of more health than most schools have max health. And after the first of the two dies, the second flings about an extremely powerful storm spell. And the final boss calls in a minion every turn and can use a strong attack that hit's all players. With a fairly powerful and skilled group it can still take up to four hours to complete and teammates are expected to die during the dungeon.
== [[Platform Game]] ==
* The French Amiga game ''[[Nicky Boom]]'' (recently resurrected for cell phones) invokes this for ''every'' level. It's quite good.
* [[Lampshade Hanging]] in the ''[[
** Level 6-5 of the original ''Yoshi's Island'' is called The Very Loooooong Cave.
** And a level in ''Yoshi's Island DS'' is called The Cave That Never Ends.
** A bonus level in the remake of the original for the GBA is called "Endless World of Yoshis". How endless? Even the Tool Assisted Speedrun takes over 7 minutes to finish the level (which is amazingly long for a non autoscrolling 2D platformer). It is also [[Nintendo Hard]], and even has elements of [[Platform Hell]].
* [[Sonic the Hedgehog]] uses this trope a lot.
** Eggmanland in the HD versions of ''[[
** As far as the classic games go, Sandopolis Zone of ''[[Sonic 3 and Knuckles
*** Death Egg Zone Act 2 is not significantly longer than the Sandopolis stages, and after defeating the zone boss you immediately move on to the final boss, carrying whatever rings you may still have. Problem is that your time also carries over. You restart the final boss with a fresh clock if you time out, but there are [[One-Hit-Point Wonder|no rings]]...
*** There's also Act 2 of Carnival Night Zone, which is apparently designed to make you waste time, and get a time out while fighting Robotnik at the end. ''Especially'' if you get stuck at the infamous [[Guide Dang It|Barrel of Doom]]... Knuckles's CNZ Act 2 is almost comic in comparison. It can literally take less than 70 seconds (no boss).
** Metropolis Zone in ''[[
** Nearly every level in ''[[
*** The fact that most levels take more than 10 minutes is especially notable because the Genesis games gave you a [[Nonstandard Game Over|Time Out]] if you took longer than 10 minutes. It's extremely off-putting when playing the game for the first time and not realizing how long each level takes; [[Paranoia Fuel|the clock constantly ticking upward, with you expecting it to kill you if it reaches 10 minutes is somewhat stressful]], to say the least.
*** And there's the Power Plant.
*** Bingo Highway. If you want the emblem for level B you need to collect twenty chips. The first nineteen are tricky. but if you're not lucky enough to notice the one {{spoiler|almost taped to the ceiling in a position you can only see when rotating the camera 180 degrees}} then you can stripe a good hour of the remainder of your life.
*** Final Fortress, which also crosses over with [[That One Level]].
** [[
** [[
* The Slumberland [[Absurdly Spacious Sewer|sewer area]] in ''[[Glider PRO]]'' was an obvious [[Scrappy Level]], and not so much because it was difficult or maze-
* ''Every single level'' in the Wii Platformer/art game ''[[
* ''[[
* Most of the levels in ''[[Wario Land
* ''Super [[Metroid]] [[ROM Hack|Redesign]]'' has the escape sequence [[Timed Mission|timer]] extended from 3 minutes to 25 minutes. ''There is a very good reason for this.''
* ''[[Katamari Damacy|We Love Katamari]]'' has two. There's the 17-minute As Large As Possible 5" level in which you create the big bang itself. It lasts about twice as long as any other level in the game and feels really long, which in this case is a good thing. Then, there's the Million Roses level which has you [[Exactly What It Says
* ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]:
** The bigger ''[[Super Mario World (
** The final level in the original ''[[Super Mario Bros. (
** World 8-1 (also in the first ''Super Mario Bros'': Long stage + only 300 "seconds" = guaranteed chance of hearing that ditty advertising that your timer is running low.
** World 6 in ''[[
** "The Sinking Lava Spire", the first [[Lethal Lava Land|Melty Molten Galaxy]] mission of ''[[
** SMWCentral's 9th Door Contest had this as a surprisingly common feature. Since they were supposed to be comparable to the 8 doors in [[Super Mario World (
{{quote|
** ''YUMP 2'' has the Yellow Switch Palace. The normal entrance to the switch is blocked off, so Mario has to take a detour. That detour takes him across many sections, to the point where the journey is considered about as long as a feature-length film.
* ''[[I Wanna Be the Guy]]'' has the [[Harder Than Hard|Impossible]] difficulty, which is exactly the same as Hard (and, for that matter, all the other [[Difficulty Levels]]) but [[Check Point Starvation|removes all save points]], making the entire game into one extremely long
* The Dragon City from ''The [[Spyro the Dragon|Legend Of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon]].'' While it's only somewhat more lengthy than other levels, it's extremely ''chaotic,'' and the later half of it is basically an endless stream of combat. Not to mention constant running back and forth between several places you need to be on a strict time limit.
* ''[[Castlevania III:
* Click Clock Wood from ''[[Banjo
* Ultimate Mode in [[Super Monkey Ball]] Deluxe,where you have to go through all of the Beginner, Advance, and Expert stages in one sitting. You are able to save, but it possibly won't help that much. Also, this is the only way to unlock the Master stages.
== [[Puzzle Game]] ==
* ''Puzzle Gallery: At the Carnival'' has the Grease Burger attraction. Solving a 3x3 word square may be difficult, but this puzzle set gives ''twenty seven'' of them in a row.
* ''[[Tetris the Grand Master]] ACE'' has the Another Road, a set of missions that can take over 15 minutes to clear.
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** Endless Setlist 2: All 80+ songs on the ''[[Rock Band]] 2'' disc, in a row! [[Bladder of Steel|And no pausing]]!
** There are also a lot of individual songs (some DLC) that are real long:
*** ''[[Guitar Hero]] 3: Legends of Rock'': "[[Dragon Force (video game)|Through the Fire and Flames]]" is over 7 minutes long and has a [[Harder Than Hard]] note chart. Worth ''3722'' notes.
*** "The Camera Eye" by Rush (Rock Band DLC) is over 10 minutes long.
*** Jailbreak (live) (from the Rock Band AC/DC track pack) is over 14 minutes (though Jailbreak does have a long bridge that might have been exciting to watch at Donnington, but is essentially the music equivalent of a [[Space
*** ''Guitar Hero: World Tour'' has [[Dream Theater
*** ''Guitar Hero 5'' has "Do You Feel Like We Do" ([[Fake Difficulty|LIVE]]) by Peter Frampton, which is over 14 minutes looooong.
*** Can you say "Free Bird"?
*** ''The Beatles: Rock Band'' has the entire Abbey Road album available as DLC. This includes the B-side suite, which you can either play separate sections of... or you can play the whole thing joined together as the Abbey Road Medley, which will take over 16 minutes.
*** "Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock" let you play Rush's [[Epic Rocking|21-minute long masterpiece]] 2112... which you have to play in seven separate sections. ''Rock Band 3'' too released 2112 as its inaugural DLC for the year [[Exty Years From Now|2012]]... which you can play as one uninterrupted track, PLUS with Pro Guitar and Pro Bass.
* ''[[Beatmania IIDX]]'' has "Scripted Connection=> (Long Mix)", a 5 1/2-minute song that combines all three versions of "Scripted Connection."
* ''[[Dance Dance Revolution]] 5th MIX'' and some versions of ''[[Pop'n
** Some Oni courses on [[
** The arcade version of ''DDRMAX2'' also had the Oni Road course, which was the longest course ever in an arcade DDR, made up of 10 of the hardest songs in the game at the time and ending with [[That One Boss|Maxx Unlimited]]. It was over 15 minutes long and contained 3,783 steps (if you count jumps as one step). And it was playable on a single credit, which was probably why it was removed from later versions.
** In the Wii game Hottest Party 3/MUSIC FIT, players can do this to themselves as a [[Self-Imposed Challenge]]. There are two songs that are about 4 minutes long each, which are megamixes of the best or most popular songs from Hottest Party 1 and 2 respectively. Doing 6 of these in a row in a custom non-stop course? Hope you have a lot of energy, and I hope you didn't pick Expert!
* ''[[Pump It Up]]'' NX Absolute has a Special Stage called Beat No. 4 Full Version. It's five minutes long and contains somewhere between 1000 and 2000 steps (it's difficult to be sure because of the way that Pump it Up counts freeze arrows). Fortunately, the Crazy chart has a mostly empty section in the middle to give you a breather. The Nightmare chart, on the other hand... doesn't.
* Literally ''any'' long piece of music will become one if you load it up in ''[[
** Not to mention DJ mixes.
** ''[[Beat Hazard]]'' also includes a Survival mode that continues until you run out of music or lives.
** ''[[
== [[Roguelike]] ==
* The ''[[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon]]'' games have a few 50-floor dungeons that push any player's patience, but the 99-floor dungeons take the cake.
** The Orre games have Mt. Battle - you are forced to ascend the first Area as per the story, but afterwards you can go back there and scale 100 battles' worth of trainers. You can save on your way up, and transfer to and from each zone on demand, but if you want a special prize from the region, you need to do it all in one run (saves are permitted, mercifully).
* ''[[ADOM]]'' has the [[Exactly What It Says
* The ultimate goal of ''[[
== [[Role
* Absolutely ANY multi-level gauntlet area in a game, apparently. ''[[Paper Mario (
** In ''[[
*** These are made worse by the difficulty gradually increasing...
** A ''Mario World'' hack (Demo World The Legend Continues) has a 100 floor tower for Big Boo in a similar style, and there's another which is literally called the pit of 100 trials.
** The Savage Labyrinth was especially punishing, because ''30'' out of its 50 floors are mandatory to finish the game.
* ''[[
* Most [[Bonus Dungeon
** At least ''[[Final Fantasy X
* The last dungeon of ''[[
** That's not even counting the extra dungeon in the basement (which contains the [[Infinity+1 Sword|infinity plus one equipment]]). But you can save right outside it, so it's still not nearly as bad as the final dungeon.
*** The game sort of intends that you go there first. NOT doing so is an exercise in madness.
* The Azure Sky Tower in ''[[
** Dream Avenue in the second one works similarly (though thank the gods, the number of floors are fixed). This one depends on enemy layout however - since you'll want ''them'' to trip the switches that may drop the key, or ''nuke anything around it''.
** Vambery in ''Lunar Knights'' too, but you can do it in 10-floor segments. No hunting here - just kill everything in a small section, and you move on. Problem is that the area level is scaled to the floor level.
** All three require you to finish the entire section before you can save - die or use a Fool Card/Escape, and the whole thing doesn't count. Souped-up bosses also appear at the end of both Dream Avenue and Vambery, up to the last miniboss in Dream Avenue, up to a L99 version of the ''final boss'' in Vambery.
* ''[[
* ''[[
* Seeing how you can play through most levels and subquests of ''[[Vampire
* ''[[
* The Pharos Lighthouse in ''[[
* ''[[Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne]]'' has the [[Disc One Final Dungeon|Obelisk]] (145 floors) [[It Got Worse|and the]] [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon|Tower of Kagutsuchi]] ([[Number of the Beast|666]] floors). Although they both have elevators that'll take you past a good majority of those floors, it's certainly going to ''feel'' like you're walking up [[It's All Upstairs From Here|each and every one]] yourself. Also, as if to emphasise its sheer length, while the Tower has three large Terminals, the Obelisk only has S-terminals, which means if you have to go back down for whatever reason, you have to start the entire dungeon ''all over again''. And it's not like they're not filled with incredibly annoying puzzles, extremely difficult bosses, powerful Mooks and a ludicrously high random encounter rate]].
** ''[[Digital Devil Saga]]'' ups the ante with [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon]], the Karma Temple. It's three times the size of any other dungeon, filled with the toughest encounters in the game and multiple mid-bosses, and features confusing mazes filled with false walls, invisible teleportation circles and damage floors. Also, it has very few save points and only two healing stations: one at the start and one at the two-thirds point.
* ''[[
** And there are a few in ''[[Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
* At least half the dungeons in ''[[Avalon Code]]''. When you're only 15 hours in and the dungeon consists of over 25 screens, each with their own mini-puzzle and monster battles, you know you've got a long haul ahead.
* ''[[Wild
* The Eternal Tower in ''[[Phantasy Star]] Zero'' certainly lives up to its name. It's 101 floors long and while each one is short it eventually adds up. There's no saving so you can't turn off your DS during this. You can't use telepipes and can only return to town after beating a boss after every 10 floors. If you want the full rewards you have to beat it a total of three times, once for each difficulty.
** And to top it all off, you HAVE to beat it on Hard if you want to play on [[Harder Than Hard|Super difficulty]] offline, once for each character you have. Thank God for the DS' Sleep Mode function...
* Missions in ''[[
** Here's a great idea: have the players fight 1000 elite Shinra troops meted out into consecutive groups of 9 and 1! [[Gameplay and Story Segregation|It makes one dubious of the ending.]]
* The last dungeon of ''[[
* The Sky Museum level from ''[[Persona 2]]'', has this combined with a [[Timed Mission|time limit]].
* The True Moon in ''[[Final Fantasy IV:
* ''[[
* ''[[Dragon Age]]'' doesn't exactly have short levels to begin with, but completing Orzammar in it's entirety is twice as long and twice as hard as anything else in the game, involving a huge amount of time spent running around both city and subterranean roads, encountering hordes of enemies and sidequests, several bosses (often lumped in quick succession), and a freaking tournament. It is exhausting.
** While not as mind-bogglingly ''gigantic'' as Orzammar, the Circle Tower deserves a mention. It would be a typical ''[[Dragon Age]]'' level if it weren't for the fact that in the middle you suddenly get sent into the Fade and ''separated from your party'', requiring you to first track down multiple Fade forms to shapeshift into, a process which in and of itself requires you to enter every part of the Fade about seventeen different times, and find all your party. When that's done you get to go back to the Circle Tower and complete the level. Oh, and once you enter the Tower, you have to do the ''whole thing'' without returning to camp for supplies or to switch out party members, something even Orzammar lets you do.
* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' doesn't have very many main quests to start out with, so most of the missions are slightly longer than usual. However, Noveria makes up the bulk of the game. You must manage to find a way into a garage after breaking into a back office and finding computer evidence. Then, you must drive your vehicle all the way to a ruin site, repair a broken computer terminal, then use that in order to take a train to a human colony. You must then find some health supplies for an infection that has broken out, and THEN you finally fight Matriarch Benezia, the boss.
** And not only that, there's loads of geth and rachni that you must fight along the way.
* ''[[
* The [[Bonus Dungeon|Demon Shaft]] in ''[[
* ''[[
* Any time you go into an Oblivion Gate in ''[[The Elder Scrolls IV]]''. You have to go around and find a way to get to the main tower where the Sigil Stone is before you can get inside, then you have to fight your way up (which can take hours since your enemies level up with you) and then take the stone.
* ''[[Infinite Undiscovery]]'' has the bonus dungeon, the Seraphic Gate. While it's only 17 floors deep, and most of the floors aren't particularly huge, the enemies are all very powerful, and simply running from them all is a good way to get your party members killed (you must sheath your weapons to run). The floors that ARE big are very big, some of which take over 5 minutes to run through without fighting anything. There's only one save point (halfway down and just past a difficult bonus boss), one teleporter back to the surface (in the save room, also meaning there's no easy way out if you're simply farming for experience or item drops), and the super powerful boss of the dungeon, Ethereal Queen, can only be fought if you first beat another difficult boss immediately before her. And the dungeon's longest and most dangerous floors are AFTER the save point, meaning if you lose to Queenie, you've got another long slog ahead of you. The worst part? If you want full gamerscore, you have to kill her on Hard and Infinity mode, both of which can't be unlocked until you beat the game on the difficulty before it, meaning you have to beat the game 3 times (the Gate only opens up when you beat the game and load your save).
* Fallout3's final mission, Who Dares Wins, is about the length of two regular missions, consisting of {{spoiler|Sneaking into the Metro Station, then reaching the Enclave's final base, getting into their mobile platform, and either recalibrating the targetting system or letting it destroy what's left of the Pentagon}}. Also, if you're higher levels, you will meet about 4-5 [[Demonic Spiders|Feral Ghoul Reavers]]...at once. Not even those Sentry Bots can save you.
* ''[[Baten Kaitos]] Origins'' has [[Eternal Engine|Tarazed]]. It's far larger than any of the other levels, and all the rooms look the same. It's practically guaranteed to take at least a couple of hours to get through, and the only way to save is to head all the way back to the central hub, which takes even longer. Also, [[Demonic Spiders|Machina Auto-Turrets]] roam the halls, and can easily wipe your party if you can't kill them off quickly. If you haven't guessed, the first half of Tarazed is [[That One Level]]. On the bright side, the music that plays is easily one of the best songs in the game.
* ''[[
* The original ''[[
* Several levels in ''[[Diablo]] 2'' qualify in the higher difficulties, but the most egregious is the Durance of Hate second floor. What makes this example especially annoying is that, besides its incredible length (its area is several times a regular level), there's a chance for it to be filled of [[Demonic Spiders|Stygian Dolls]]. Good luck making through that incredibly long level while fighting them every three rooms.
* The thankfully optional Gladsheim in [[Tales of Symphonia
* In ''[[Magi Nation]]'', we have the Shadow Hold. How bad is it? The Shadow Geysers and other dungeons are only about 20-30 mins. The Shadow Hold is at the very least ''three times that long'', with enough dead-ends and false openings to lead anyone insane. It's so bad, it's actually ''optional''.
* Some dungeons in [[Dungeon Siege]] can take a long time to complete, especially the later ones. One of the worst offenders is the Goblin steampunk dungeon, where your party has to hack through giant mob after giant mob of high-level enemies. Even if you get fed up with it and decide to just rush through, it will still take at least 15 minutes until you finally reach the end.
* ''[[Idea no Hi]]'' lacks save points in any area you can't leave freely after entering to avoid [[Unwinnable]] or breaking the mood by letting the party grind and rest repeatedly on situations like a sinking ship, the nightmare domain of [[A Nightmare on Elm Street|Freddy]] or when locked in a cell. A result is these long dungeons all have to be completed in a single go with no resupplies.
== [[Shoot
* The entirety of the original ''[[Ikari Warriors]]''. The second and third games had reasonably shorter levels.
* The glider/shmup level of ''[[Batman
* While previous ''[[Metal Slug]]'' games would settle for having six reasonably sized levels (five normal and one FINAL MISSION!), ''[[Metal Slug]] 3'' smooshed together the last two levels into a gigantic fifth and final mission, which starts with your PC's aerial assault on the enemy's rocket base, has its first false ending with a reenactment of the original ''[[Metal Slug]]'' final battle, launches you into space in a cutscene, runs you through a mock vertical Shmup section, crashes you into the enemy spaceship, has you assault the alien hordes within alongside the mooks you were just killing five minutes ago, gives you another faux final boss, forces you to escape the self-destructing spaceship, throws hordes of clones of your previously abducted PC at you, throws hordes of ZOMBIE clones of your previously abducted PC at you, before sucking you out of an airlock and then FINALLY giving you the actual final boss...
* Almost every non-[[Shoot'Em Up]] level in ''Turrican II''.
** Which is a good thing, since it's possible to go from the start of World 1-1 to the final boss in 30 minutes. Half the fun of the game is searching for the bajillion secret areas and shortcuts. The penultimate level is a true marathon, though, with almost no secrets and a forced trek through every corner of the record-length stage without any of the [[Crowning Music of Awesome]] that the rest of the game consists of.
* ''[[R
* The Training mode in ''[[Raiden]] DX'' is one continuous, 15-minutes long level, which may not be as long as some of the other examples on this page, but is very long for a [[Shoot'Em Up]].
* Any level in [[Toaplan]]'s ''Truxton'' games.
== [[Simulation Game]] ==
* The infamous ''Desert Bus'', part of the unreleased prank game compilation ''[[Penn & Teller]]'s Smoke & Mirrors''. Surviving the entire eight-hour drive earns you one point, at which point you turn around and drive back the ''other'' way for eight hours. There is no end to the game, or to the torture. Adding insult to misery is the fact that the bus veers slightly to the right while driving, meaning you [[Bladder of Steel|must stay at the "wheel" the entire time]], or risk running off the road, at which point you will be towed back to your starting point. ''In real time.''
* Many ''[[Harvest Moon]]'' games have a mine that goes down for many, many floors. The one in Friends of Mineral Town is 255 floors deep, and you have to get to the bottom in order to get one of the
** This is made much more difficult by the fact that the player character has a Stamina/Fatigue stat that brings you closer to blacking out with each action you take. Even if you can last 255 floors, your character can't without preparation.
== [[Sports Game]] ==
* ''[[
* The official [[Formula One]] computer games allow you to select what percentage of each race you actually want to do, out to a whopping 70 laps around the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace in Brazil.
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== [[Survival Horror]] ==
* ''[[Parasite Eve (
* ''[[Resident Evil 4]]'': [[That One Level|Two words: Level 4-1.]] Where to begin? Assuming that you don't backtrack to get the free Broken Butterfly magnum, you have to retrieve the last piece of a puzzle key in a room with fire-breathing horse heads to unlock a door to progress further. Then, you have to obtain 2 Grails to unlock a door, one of which protected by 2 sets of 3 suits of armor with Plagas controlling them. Then after Ashley gets kidnapped (again) you have to survive an onslaught of flying insects. THEN you have to head to a clock tower to get it running while surviving flaming rocks catapulted at you and the tower is swarming with Zealots inside and out. And when you leave the tower, you have to deal with another crowd (the leader of which has a freaking rocket launcher), then try to simply survive a locked room with TWO Heavy Armor Garradors (the other Zealots in the room are the LEAST of your worries!) And if you should survive THAT, as well as a [[Press X to Not Die]] cutscene, the last thing to do is simply survive the encounter with Salazar's 'right hand' until the elevator shows up! Count on spending at LEAST an hour playing through this nightmare. The single hardest part of this level (if not the game PERIOD) is between the start of the clock tower to surviving the cutscene, because there's no typewriters in between, so no opportunities to save. Bottom line, if you can come out of this level with your sanity intact, you have the patience of a pope. Though, in the Playstation 2 version, the programmers at least had the MERCY to put a typewriter right after the clock tower, making the fight with the 2 Garradors ''much'' easier to prepare for.
== [[Third-Person Shooter]] ==
* Gall Spaceport (the canyon level) in the Nintendo 64 game ''[[Shadows of the Empire]]'' takes almost half an hour to finish. It does have a cool boss battle with Boba Fett, though.
* The final mission in ''[[
* Rith Essa in ''[[Jet Force Gemini]]''.
== [[Turn
* Item World in the ''[[Disgaea]]'' games tend to be like this, especially in the high-numbered levels. Even if you can leave and save every ten floors, it can be a very long, tedious ten floors unless you have a huge stock of Gency Exits. If you're going for the hyperdrive, you must do 100 floors in one sitting (on the highest level item possible). ''[[Makai Kingdom]]'' is even worse - dungeons can literally be thousands of levels deep, and the most number of floors you can skip with an item is 100. (''[[Phantom Brave]]'', thankfully, has an "escape" spell - so long as the phantom that can cast it is available, that is. Savvy players Fusion it to Marona.)
** The Item World is only that bad if you actually plan to '''complete''' each floor, which is only desirable if you want to grind character levels or farm items. If you only want to improve the item you're inside, it's just as good to bypass floors. With the right equipment, skills, and strategy, most floors can be skipped in seconds, and few take more than a minute.
* Chapter 17 of ''[[Fire Emblem]]: [[Fire Emblem Tellius|Path of Radiance]]'', in the {{spoiler|massive, burnt-out Serenes Forest}}. It's the longest slog in the game and is the only chapter split into multiple stages. Four of them. Fortunately there are save points between them, and you're also allowed to call in two reinforcements from your party at each stop.
** The sequel ''Radiant Dawn'' had a ton. Chapter 1-6 is split into two stages with only a save point between them. Part 3's endgame in an interesting subversion in that it looks like (and is described as) a massive "rout all the enemies" bloodbath - there is something like 80 enemies ''to start'' and tons of reinforcements - but {{spoiler|the battle immedeately ends once any 80 units are killed thanks to an urgent plot development}}. Still, the enemy phase on every turn takes a ''long'' time. Almost every chapter in Part 4 is a tiring rout-all-enemies marathon. Lastly, there is the epic final chapter, split into 5 stages much like ''PoR'''s chapter 17, but you only get to choose 10 units (plus the 5 that are forced and one [[Non-Action Guy|Heron]]) to last all 5 maps. You still get save points and, unintuitively, access to your supply convoy inbetween.
** ''[[Fire Emblem:
** ''Every'' chapter of ''[[Fire Emblem Jugdral|Genealogy of the Holy War]]'' is a Marathon Level. The maps are atypically huge and there are always several castles to seize before you complete the chapter, among other numerous things going on in the meantime.
** ''[[Fire Emblem Elibe|Blazing Sword]]'' has two of these chapters toward the end: "Cog of Destiny", a sprawling map where you must rout the equivalent of a small army to win (with 15 people, of course), and the appropriately-named "Victory or Death", a map so big it has three different routes to your destination, and almost as many enemies - including reinforcements that ''[[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|literally appear from thin air when you step near them]]''.
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