Corridor Cubbyhole Run

An instantly recognizable form of Death Course. Three things must occur in conjunction:

• A long segment (sometimes an entire level, especially if it's a Side Scroller) through which the player must travel to reach their objective;
• A hazard that occurs at regular, predictable intervals, which will delay or injure the protagonist in some manner (sometimes even a One-Hit Kill) if he's caught in the open when it strikes.
• A variety of "safe" zones scattered throughout the area, behind which the protagonist can take cover to avoid the hazard in question.

The most common hazards include giant laser beam in futuristic settings, giant flames, fireballs, rising and falling liquid, and rolling boulders or other such objects.

See also Convenient Cranny and By Wall That Is Holey. Not to be confused with Scooby-Dooby Doors.

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Examples:

Action Games

• Bayonetta has a couple of these, featuring corridors where spears shoot through the floor in repeating patterns, requiring the player to spot the pattern and move to the safe spots to make it through unscathed.
• Blaster Master Zero has one in Area 9, where the player has to dodge Acceleration Blast volleys by Invem Sophia until they can break the amplifier at the end.
• Hostages (a.k.a. Hostage: Rescue Mission): The snipers of your team need to avoid the searchlights from the terrorist embassy as they walk along the street. Almost like there's no back to the buildings they take cover in — and you also need to cross all three sides of the embassy before continuing with storming the embassy.
• The prelude to the Scorpion battle in Spider-Man: The Movie. Also the Shocker one, in which you must advance down a subway tunnel and periodically hide in nooks and crannies to avoid Shocker's shockwaves. If you play as the Green Goblin, you can make it easy by gliding down the tunnel before the poor guy can shoot once.
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed features at least two: one's inside a sarlaac, whose breath will knock you backward unless you hide behind a pillar, and one occurs in the Death Star, where you're traveling through the firing line of one of the superlasers many tributary lasers.
• Subverted in Zone Of The Enders 2. Late in the game, you have to go down a corridor where a massive cannon periodically discharges energy which'll send you backwards a hefty distance and hurt you a ton. The subversion is that there are no cubbies. Instead, you have to rip off plates off the wall and block the incoming waves.

Action Adventure Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: At the Walter Raleigh, the chief warden activates a hallway filled with bursting flamethrowers that disperse while waiting for an open area. Later at The Consortium's base, a Laser Hallway moves large lasers that have to be avoided by Wall Crawling around the platforms until most of the lasers have shifted enough to open the path forward.
• In Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, the Sandy Grave has large boulders rolling down a ramp. You avoid the boulders by reaching one of the high ceiling-ed alcoves and timing your jumps to hop over the bounders.
• The Egg Corridor in Cave Story has a bottom level occupied by an Invincible Minor Minion which runs back and forth very fast and causes instantly lethal Collision Damage. There are a few cubbyholes (some empty, some obligatory, one with a Heart Container) that can only be accessed by jumping from the bottom of the corridor.
• The GBC version of Daikatana has an area where you have to run into cubbyholes to avoid rolling boulders. It's notable for being the sole hazard in the entire game that kills you instantly rather than deducting a small amount of HP.
• There's a stretch in a level (it's late in world 3) of Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure where the titular Professor must duck through the floor into cubbies in order to dodge rolling boulders.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • In the very first proper dungeon in A Link to the Past, you have to navigate a corridor of dark boulders rolling down. Areas like these appeared throughout the series in various forms.
  • The Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time has a crushing ceiling with small squares cut out of it. Unfortunately, some of those squares are occupied by Skulltulas.
  • Subverted in the Sand Temple in Spirit Tracks. Sets of two boulders close together are rolling down at regular intervals and there's a safe area halfway through, but it turns out to be a Trap Door into a Bottomless Pit. You're instead supposed to squeeze between the boulders.
• The second intro level in The Matrix: Path of Neo. You have to avoid being seen by the security and Agents as you try to get to the bottom of the building. At the beginning of the level, you have to duck into cubicles to avoid being seen. If you get seen by security you can shove them off as they try to hold you. However, if an Agent sees you, you're caught and fail the mission — though you still continue to the next mission because that's how it happened in the movie.
• This is a large portion of gameplay in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes during visits to Dark Aether. The atmosphere is severely caustic, forcing you to run between safe zones set up during the war in the backstory. The Dark Suit lessens the damage you take, and the Light Suit negates it.
• Second Sight involves several areas patrolled by guards that the player can sneak past, although charging in with guns blazing is often a viable option as well. One mission also includes a hallway full of endless Mooks with cover along both walls.
• A common hazard in StarTropics is to have to avoid giant purple boulders by hiding in alcoves in the wall while they pass.
• In Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, one level involves running down the firing of a massive mining laser while going through narrow corridors and jumping from platform to platform. An achievement is available if you manage to Force push an enemy into the laser while it's active.
• Lots of these in Tomb Raider — usually swinging blades, Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom, poison darts, or spikes that pop up from the floor.

Adventure Games

• In Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, protagonist Zöe Castillo is forced to complete one of these twice during her infiltration of WATICorp. The first time, she has to avoid guard robots in order to get into the corporation's main labs; the second time, she has to avoid a security assault squadron in order to get out.
• The first MediEvil has a mountain with infinite boulders rolling down it, spawned from enchanted gargoyle statues, in the third level. In a bit of a subversion, you can just smash some of the boulders with the club.
• The second boss in Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure has a Breath Weapon of the Kill It with Ice variety, and the player must regularly take cover behind various ice mirrors to avoid getting frozen solid.

Fighting Games & Beat 'Em Ups

• In Express Raider's Beat 'em Up levels, you periodically have to duck under hanging signs and tunnel portals.
• The Super Nintendo game of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (Nintendo) has a Wave-Motion Gun hallway in the second level, which forces the player to duck down repeatedly. At the end of the hallway, the Power Ranger has to physically destroy the weapon as well, in order to progress.
• Mortal Kombat: Armageddon has at least one in its Konquest mode, where Taven runs down a corridor as fireballs are shot at him.
• In Ninja Gaiden (Arcade)'s second stage, Ryu has to dodge through several lanes of highway traffic.
• Streets Of Rage 3 has one in a subway station, where you have to dodge incoming trains.
• Level 4 of Viewtiful Joe. You're in a submarine, and torpedoes are being shot at you. Especially irritating because it's also an Escort Mission; if the moving platform following you doesn't make it to safety, you need to backtrack all the way to the beginning of the sequence and get a new one.

First-Person Shooters

• In many games of the Call of Duty, enemies constantly respawn out-of-view until you reach the spawn point, forcing you to advance from cover to cover while picking them off.
• Number Six in Alien vs. Predator at one point has to navigate a large tunnel with a massive fan at one end by leaping between the vents that line the tunnel walls rather than simply running down the wall. As she approaches the tunnel, the danger is shown with an Alien getting pulled up into the fan and being completely mulched.
• Descent 3 has a sequence where you have to fly your Pyro-GL through subway tunnels that periodically have trains going through them. It was made worse by the fact that the trains came at you head-on and the timing was extremely strict, making the sequence so maddeningly difficult that many players gave up then and there.
• Deus Ex:
  • In several missions, escaped lab animals can be found in the ventilation ducts or sewer systems, and you need to dodge in and out of side openings to avoid being caught by them in long straight segments.
  • The corridors of Majestic-12 headquarters are patrolled by humans and security robots. At some points, you can sneak through gratings in the floor or hide just out of sight of a guard at one end of his patrol.
  • The catwalks and corridors of the ship in the Brooklyn Naval Shipyards are Corridor Cubbyhole Runs with occasional ventilation duct openings, alcoves holding cargo, or side passages. The corridors are regularly patrolled by the ship's crew, almost all of whom are armed.
• Half-Life:
  • In the original Half-Life, the generator for the rocket test chamber is located in a cylindrical room with a deadly horizontal fan zipping around its circumference. Turning on the generator requires you to climb some ladders, and getting to the ladders puts you in the path of the fan.
  • Half-Life 2: While escaping from the mines under Ravenholm, Gordon runs across a sort of trolley with a spinning blade mounted on top traveling up and down a set of train tracks. While it poses a legitimate threat to him, it is much more effective at chopping up zombies, so activating it is still the better choice.
  • Half-Life 2: Episode Two: The sequence where Gordon must evade the Antlion Guardian by ducking into a series of antlion hatcheries. And then, the last tunnel (a mineshaft access rather than more antlion tunnels) is barred, and you have to break through before the Guardian catches you... That's when you're happy to still have an SMG grenade.
• Left 4 Dead has a strategy that involves everyone on the team dashing from one cubbyhole to the next, dealing with zombies while safely behind cover. Works well, if you can find a well-organized group of random players who all follow orders well.
• The level "Escape from Trondheim" in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault features a long corridor with Respawning Enemies at the end, thus you must run from alcove to alcove while advancing and fighting them off.
• At the end of the fourth chapter of Mirror's Edge, Faith dodges several subway trains this way, then avoids obstacles while riding on the roof of one of said trains. Then after you get off the last train, it reverses and tries to run you over once more.

Hack and Slashers

• Drakengard 2 has a variation in a Puzzle Boss battle against a Seed of Resurrection: The seed charges and releases One-Hit Kill energy shockwaves, and the only way to survive is to take cover behind matching elemental crystals surrounding the area.
• The God of War series features these often — Kratos needs to make his way down corridors with hazards including an endless supply of spherical boulders, a fire-breathing statue, and a Hydra.
• No More Heroes:
  • In the first game, The Speed Buster battle. Travis has to smash his way into abandoned, ruined houses on either side of a street to avoid blasts from the bag lady/witch's Wave-Motion Gun.
  • No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: The battle against the returned, Emergency Transformation form of Letz Shake is a variation; it is a circular area rather than a corridor, but the rest of the criteria is there. His main attack is sending a massive shockwave through the entire arena, and if you haven't made it to one of the few stable chunks of ground in the area when that happens, say bye-bye to half your health.

MMORPGs

• Runescape:
  • There's one in the quest Icthlarin's Little Helper, where the corridor is two spaces wide and traps that take up one space each litter the corridor. Have fun trying to make it past the trapdoors without a guide.
  • There's another example in the Ritual of the Mahjarrat quest, where players must traverse a tropical jungle that is periodically blasted with fireballs by a trio of humanoid dragons, and staying behind the cover of the trees is the only way to avoid the fate of the player's NPC ally, Sir Ten Death.

Party Games

• Mario Party:
  • Mario Party: Island Tour: Banzai Bill's Mad Mountain. There are two segments of the board that are each in the line of fire by a Banzai Bill's cannon; and if a character throws their dice and gets the side of a Bill, then the Banzai will fire away from the cannon it's currently positioned and knock off anyone in its trajectory; a character can avoid the large enemy by hiding on one of the many caves that act like safe zones. If a character lands onto an Event Space located between the two segments, the Bill will stop occupying its current cannon to reappear into the other.
  • Mario Party 10: In Mario Party mode, the Homestretch of Chaos Castle is one straight bridge leading to Bowser's throne, where he awaits the players. The bridge features spaces on both raised and lowered portions of the bridge. After each player rolls their Dice Block, Bowser will launch a massive fireball that goes across the entire bridge, and if Team Mario's vehicle lands on a raised space, the fireball will hit them, and the current Captain will lose half their Mini-Stars, so players must aim to land on the lowered spaces in order to avoid them.

Platformers

• In The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures, periodically appearing and disappearing Death Blocks are used for this purpose.
• Banjo-Tooie has a giant dinosaur foot that will knock you to one HP if you have more than that, and kill you if you don't. You can hide in a series of footprint-shaped holes, forcing you to play this when getting across with solo Kazooie (as a pair, you can just activate Wonderwing, and a solo Banjo has to get creative with Snooze Pack to get across.)
• Bug has a segment where the titular character has to avoid slowly-growing snowballs rolling down a snow-covered hill.
• Castle of Illusion on the Sega Genesis has several of these, of the "dodge large rolling obstruction by jumping into a hole" variety. One involves a narrow passageway with a periodically rising and falling torrent of water that doesn't kill Mickey if he gets caught in it but sweeps him back some distance.
• Crash Bandicoot (1996) has this in Toxic Waste: most barrels are yellow and bounce on the catwalk, while others are brown and roll along the floor. It gets to That One Level material when going for the Gem, which has to be done without losing a life whilst trying to judge where the barrels will land. The remake fixed this by having visibly damaged spots on the catwalk so you can tell where the barrels will land.
• Distorted Travesty has this in the final level, in the form of the Spinning Color Wheels of Death. At regular intervals (that vary from room to room), wheels in the background would flash a certain color several times. When this happens, you have until the end of the third flash to get to a safe zone of that color, or else suffer massive amounts of unblockable damage. Several rooms are designed such that you have to progress at a specific pace or you will not be able to find the proper safe zone.
• "Tidal Terror" in Donkey Kong Country Returns: Large tidal waves crash into the level at regular intervals, and anything (including enemies and items) that isn't behind cover gets washed out of the level.
• Stage 8 of Dynamite Headdy includes two rooms where Headdy is making his way through a missile bay. Two options for avoiding the missiles exist: You either shrink Headdy down and hide in holes in the floor, or grab the spike head and repeatedly grapple the ceiling until the missile passes. The latter is faster, but the former is safer.
• In Jetpack, the fifth level has a variant of this: a pair of missiles fly back and forth across the length of each platform, and the short ladders connecting them are the player's only refuge.
• The Kirby franchise:
  • One section of planet Shiver Star in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards contains an area where the ceiling slams down into the floor at regular intervals. The floor has holes roughly Kirby's height which you can take refuge in to keep from getting crushed to death, and the holes get further apart as you progress.
  • One of the Sand Canyon levels in Kirby Mass Attack has a very dense wind periodically occurring and cover must be taken from it. There's also a miniboss fought this way, but underwater.
  • Kirby: Triple Deluxe has a section in World 3 where a wall slowly rises, eventually slamming Kirby into the screen if he doesn't get into one of the holes in the wall in time. This causes heavy damage, as well as causing your Copy Ability to be lost permanently (the wall smashes it, too).
• LittleBigPlanet:
  • The "combat" in the Metal Gear Solid level pack consists almost entirely of hiding in the stage background, popping out when it's safe to take a quick potshot before returning to your cubbyhole.
  • The Serpent Shrine level, there is a section where you must travel along a passage where a fiery serpent passes through at intervals, except the cubbyholes, in this case, are in the ceiling and you must grab a winch to pull up to safety.
• In the cave level of McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure, there are flows of water that cause Ronald to lose health if he stands under them, complete with countdown timers to warn him when they're going to go off. Thankfully, there are safety zones he can stand under to protect himself when the water flows.
• Mega Man:
  • Mega Man X5. Burn Dinorex's stage (a volcano) has a corridor like this, complete with rock barricades. Stray too far from them during the periodic lava flows, and you get instantly fried.
  • Mega Man Zero 4 had the Particle Beam stage where you entered a solar-powered Wave-Motion Gun through the barrel. Better hide when it fired...
  • Mega Man X6 — That One Level, Metal Shark Player's stage — the ground is a conveyor belt, there are instant-death spikes in addition to the crushing danger, and various Nightmare effects can add super-slippery or nigh-invulnerable crates or metal blocks that are in the way.
• Ori:
  • Ori and the Blind Forest has several corridors with falling boulders, insta-kill lasers, or Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom that you have to dodge by ducking into cubbyholes or waiting between them. The Forlorn Ruins Escape Sequence has you running from one tree to the next for shelter from Kuro's One-Hit Kill attacks.
  • Ori and the Will of the Wisps uses this trope to avoid being killed in/by the darkness in Mouldwood Depths, and evade Shriek in the Feeding Grounds.
• Pitfall 2 has at least ten "floors" in a row which entirely consisted of walking across the screen as a bat flew towards Harry and having to run Harry under the bat only if the wings were flapping up.
• The main portion of Black Velvetopia in Psychonauts. It's set in the alleyway of a crowded Spanish town, and a rampaging bull stampedes down it every minute or so. You'd best be in the side streets when it passes, or else you'll be knocked all the way back to the beginning. After you beat the level's boss, though, the dysfunction that spawned said bull will be gone, and you can walk the streets free as a bird.
• Secret Agent Clank features a couple of levels where, at predictable intervals, the enemies will look in Clank's direction. Dotted along these levels (or level segments) there will be hiding places.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • A great deal of the final level of Shadow the Hedgehog (Eggman's fortress) are like this, especially if you choose to destroy the place and fill it with lava.
  • Sonic Colors: In the Sweet Mountain level, gigantic missiles are deployed one by one as you try to go forward. You must stay below the trajectory, or bounce really high, to avoid getting hit.
  • An early segment in Egg Gate in Sonic Forces has Sonic running down a long hallway within the Death Egg with a crushing ceiling, except there are gaps here and there. Given Sonic's speed, these gaps are spaced a bit further apart than is normal in other platforming games.
• The Meadows in Spike's Peak.
• The NES version of Strider has you dodging Advancing Spiked Walls of Doom in at least two levels.
• Super Mario Bros.
  • Super Mario Bros. 3 has some of this action in the very first fortress: a crushing ceiling that's slightly higher in a few places.
  • Super Mario World: A part of Ludwig's Castle in the fourth world has Mario or Luigi run to the left quickly before the spike-filled ceiling, which gradually falls down, gets him. There's an ON/OFF switch halfway that makes the ceiling rise for a few seconds, but afterwards its effect expires and the ceiling will go down again.
  • Super Mario 64 has this in a pyramid in Shifting Sand Land, and an easier version in Bob-Omb's Battlefield while climbing the hill.
  • New Super Mario Bros.: There are giant screen-filling wooden logs smashing down with Mario having to duck in an indent in the floor, and in the areas with the spiked pillars there are chainsaws going along a line in the points between them.
  • New Super Mario Bros. Wii: Some of the fortresses feature spiked, rotating pillars that stab upward/downward/sideways at regular intervals. Naturally, there's always a safe place to stand, but getting there can be a challenge.
  • Super Mario Galaxy 2 features a pair of areas in the Clockwork Ruins Galaxy in which enormous stone wheels roll down a hill Mario must traverse. There is one alcove in the first hill to take shelter in, and the wheels themselves have Mario-sized cutouts to aim for.
  • Princess Peach: Showtime! has the battle with Light Fang, where Peach has to evade its searchlight gaze by hiding behind various walls, some of which its tail can break. If spotted for long enough, Light Fang will grayscale all non-cover areas and rewind time by a few seconds; if she's caught out during the greyscale, Peach takes a hit and gets rewound, too. Zapping a small Darkle coil disables the boss and its minions momentarily; zapping a large coil disrupts it and leaves its core exposed.
• Super Meat Boy gets plenty of mileage out of this trope, using sawblades, lasers, etc. as the hazard.
• The hallway before the Final Boss in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989) features Laser Soldiers spawning every 10 seconds. Most of the time they can be avoided, but sometimes you have to fight them, which is a pain.
• The "Space Opera" stage of Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose! has an auto-scrolling section in a space battle with ships in the background occasionally firing at the screen; Buster has to stand in front of blast shields to protect himself.

Racing Games

• In Mario Kart Wii: There's a Bowser's Castle course with an unusual version of this trope: fireballs are being shot straight down a corridor, and the track weaves back and forth through the fireballs' path.

Rail Shooters

• At the beginning of Time Crisis II's Stage 1-2, you have to shoot and dodge through a barrage of barrels. Stage 2-2, on a train, involves dodging passing obstacles.

Real-Time Strategy

• Dawn Of War: Dark Crusade: The approach to the Imperial Guard's HQ is guarded by a big frickin' laser that can instantly destroy anything that it hits. One strategy is to cross the firing trench at intervals, fighting through legions of enemies on either side; the other strategy is to destroy the cannon's energy source, which you can reach before you're in firing range of the cannon itself.
  • More importantly: if you do deal with the energy source, you can seize control of the cannon. Enemy forces advancing through the firing trench? Not for long.
• Little King's Story features an area where you must make one of these while dodging the boss's lethal beard.

RPGs

• These corridors turn up quite often in Boktai.
• BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm has two — the first is a path in Mt. Dramatica’s cave system littered with rolling boulders, while the second is a gauntlet of fireballs on the Wayback Machine.
• The Death Peak sequence in Chrono Trigger involves a slippery slope where wind will blow your party off the screen if you don't hide behind trees.
  • Much earlier, when Crono is trying to escape from Guardia Castle's dungeon, he can sneak up on guards when their backs are turned and hide in nooks in the wall when they turn around. Or he can just fight them (they're not very tough) if the bonus healing items for knocking them out aren't too important.
• FromSoftware's games:
  • The Dark Souls series:
    • Dark Souls II has this in the Executioner's Chariot boss fight, taking place on a "track" of sorts that the chariot circles endlessly. Thanks to spikes on its wheels, the Chariot itself is so wide that you'll need to hide in the indents in the walls to avoid being trampled, which is almost always instant death. You have to dip in and out of the indents to reach a switch that causes the Chariot to crash. In true Souls fashion, this one ups the difficulty, as skeletons will mob you as you wait for the chariot to pass, which can't even be permanently killed until you defeat the necromancers, and neither enemies are pushovers.
    • Dark Souls III welcomes you to the Ringed City proper in its final DLC by presenting you with an open corridor where a small army of ghost archers will, at intervals, spawn into existence, fire a few volleys, and disappear. The intervals are quite short, and the volleys can very effectively stunlock you to death, leaving sprinting between small "boxes" of gravestones your only option; naturally, there are small holes in the gravestones, so you can still take some damage while doing this, you just won't instantly die like you would if you were caught out in the open. If you can get to the side corridor you can go up and kill the giant who's summoning the ghost archers, at least.
  • Elden Ring has the Hero's Grave dungeons, which require the player to avoid giant stone chariots riding back and forth along a slope by ducking into safe spots. Touching one of these chariots, of course, is instant death. Some of these safe spots aren't very safe either with enemies in them.
• In Fallout: New Vegas, when approaching Nellis Air Force Base, you have to use the ruined houses as shelter from the Boomers' artillery barrages. In parts of the Dead Money DLC, you will find yourself doing this to avoid the invincible patrolling holograms and speakers that set off your bomb collar if you linger near them too long.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy VI does this with an enormous "boulder" ceiling in Gogo's Cave, which has small holes to hide in when it comes crashing down. Thankfully, random encounters are turned off in this room.
  • Final Fantasy VII has a version of this if you break into Shinra's front door: after hiding behind statues manually to get by guards, Cloud must call Barrett and Tifa across, timing it so they don't get seen. Used again in the Temple of the Ancients, where there's a hallway with boulders rolling down it every few seconds. Instead of ducking into a cubbyhole, you have to stand still in the right places so that the boulders pass harmlessly over your head (thanks to big pieces that have been cut out of them).
• Golden Sun: The Lost Age springs a couple of these on the player. In Jupiter and Mars Lighthouse, twisters are fired out from women's mouths and there's a twisty path that intersects the twisters' line of travel.
• Mass Effect 3 features one on Tuchanka. You're running toward a Reaper and must occasionally take cover from its lasers. There's also the entire segment of the geth dreadnought mission that you spend traversing the length of the ship through a giant, kilometers-long gun, which is currently firing at quarian vessels. With every shot, you have to take cover to avoid the huge wave of electrical discharge zooming down the corridor.
• Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar and Cybeast Falzar: BlastMan.EXE's stage consists of said Navi periodically summoning telegraphed fire storms that MegaMan.EXE must hide from by hiding behind conveniently-placed metal blocks in the area. He'll also use this attack during his boss battle, but fortunately there's also a metal block on the battlefield for Mega to hide behind.
• Märchen Forest: Mylne and the Forest Gift: On the second floor, the Randomly Generated Levels may make one room be this, with the thing to dodge being giant spiked balls.
• Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs: Avalanches periodically occur on the slopes of Mount Sorbet and you have to take refuge from them behind large rocks. You also have to cross large ponds of water in Mount Layuda between periodic lightning strikes.
• SoulBlazer uses these a couple times, one of them being corridors in the fire-themed dungeon.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has a unique example in the first battle with Jade Face. He plants himself at the other end of a long corridor and will continually snipe at your party with a long-range laser. Using Shulk's visions to warn you of the incoming attacks, you have to avoid them by hiding behind walls (or using Monado Shield) while also dealing with the enemies scattered along the path.

Run And Gun

• The original Contra game featured a level with a long corridor in which large red spiked claws drop from above. Some of these have safe zones (with white immobile plate things instead) while others require the player to shuffle back and forth underneath the alternating claws.

Shoot 'Em Up

• Dogyuun has the fifth boss, who summons flying shield things that block your shots. These should NOT be destroyed quickly, because they're also the only things that will protect you◊ from the boss' full-screen Wave-Motion Gun.
• In Gradius V, the spider mech in Stage 3 periodically fires a rotating Wave-Motion Gun that can only be avoided by taking cover behind one of the blocks. The Blaster Cannon Core in Stage 5 periodically fires Bullet Hell at you, and the only shelter is the shower of asteroids it pulls toward itself. Between those, it fires multiple Wave Motion Guns, so you have to duck into the core's "gate" area to avoid both those and the asteroids.
• Stage 1 of Granada has two giant rollers plowing the length of one avenue, with a few small cul-de-sacs of refuge.
• During several of the flying sections of Kid Icarus: Uprising, Pit will have to swoop through narrower passages and can potentially run along floors and walls. You can even get bonus points for having Pit run in some of these sections.
• R-Type III. Stage 4 has two variations — the first is the compactor system that crushes you (stand in the green crosshair to evade it) and the second is the maze where molten metal periodically flows through at intervals.
• The final boss of Steel Empire is fought in space with asteroids periodically traversing the screen. Its Desperation Attack has it fire out massive waves of fire that can only be avoided by staying directly behind one of the asteroids (or just use your Smart Bomb for invincibility and massive damage).
• In stage 6 of Thunder Cross II, you travel through an asteroid field while the boss fires a Wave-Motion Gun at you from offscreen. At first, the laser is fired at slow intervals, but later on, you will have to use the asteroids for cover in order to survive.

Stealth-Based Games

• Metal Gear: Ghost Babel has periodic rushes of water in an Absurdly Spacious Sewer, forcing Snake to take cover. Also a viable strategy to avoid The Fury's attacks in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
• The Thief series, due to its emphasis on stealth over fighting, is replete with guards patrolling specific areas at regular intervals, who will raise an alarm if the player doesn't take some kind of cover (shadows, etc.) to avoid being spotted ... or heard.

Survival Horror

• In Dead Space, Chapters 3 and 4. First, you have to run a circular through a now-active centrifuge to reach an elevator and leave the area, ducking into large niches in the walls when the arm goes past or being torn to shreds. In the next chapter, you have to run over the outside of the Ishimura and hide behind metal walls to avoid getting splattered by asteroid impacts. Bonus points in both cases because if you take too long, you asphyxiate, while Chapter 3 also has Necromorphs pop up in each cubby. Going to one of the ADS cannons to destroy incoming asteroids also involves Isaac running down a long trench while meteors periodically pummel the surface. If Isaac is caught in the open during this, he dies.
• Resident Evil 5 has a cavernous room with two laser-like sunbeams strafing the corridors. Thankfully, the AI is smart enough to usually keep your partner out of the way, and if you can make it to the right location, you can disable the beams by sniping the Majini operating them. Of course, the AI is also dumb enough to have some enemies stand in the path of said beams.
• The Wall Snatcher escalator in Silent Hill 4. Later, you have to escort Eileen through it.

Third-Person Shooters

• Gears of War 2 has you running amok inside a giant worm while avoiding digestive teeth.
• The arena where you fight Loewenzahn in P.N.03 has divots in the floor you need to duck into to avoid its electrified spin attack.
• One level of Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy forces you (and mind-controlled Mooks) to run through a particle accelerator, complete with cubbyholes, which fires every now and then. To pass the segment, you must pull several levers, every one of which increases the accelerator's firing rate.
  • One of the boss fights also requires you to hide behind heat shields at regular intervals; the boss is a pyrokinetic woman attached to a machine that greatly amplifies her powers, and every so often the entire stage is bathed in flame except for the shields. Convection, Schmonvection probably factors in as well, there.
• In Syphon Filter, the tunnels and trains of the Washington Metro take on this role during a chase.
• The level "Death of Hope" in Transformers: War for Cybertron uses this frequently, most noticeably when fleeing from Omega Supreme, and when the Decepticons must maneuver through a tunnel that fills up with enormous amounts of heat every so often.
• In Vanquish's Act 2-5, you must ascend a ramp while chunks of debris, and occasionally entire buildings, are bouncing down towards you.
• One Corpus data-vault in Warframe is guarded by one or two laser barriers that move back and forth along a corridor featuring convenient alcoves to duck into. Dimensional Traveller Limbo can easily cheese through these by entering the Rift, needing to leave it only to disable the lasers and access the vault.
  • A Grineer data-vault on Uranus requires the Tenno to navigate to it past underwater fans that can push or pull them, often either out of bounds or into security lasers that will trip the alarms. While the intended strategy is to wait for the fans to turn off and rush past, the fans can be permanently disabled with weapon-fire, either on 4 generators on the fans' corners, or with a switch in the same corridor.

Turn-Based Strategy Games

• The final mission in Advance Wars 2. Those lasers the team has been dealing with in earlier missions? Sturm has one that hopped up on steroids, fires three tiles wide, and deals quite a bit of damage. It doesn't help that the terrain isn't really conducive to avoiding it.
• During one battle in Shining Force, the Laser Eye blasts everyone on a fairly narrow bridge every few turns, with a few safe spots. However, at this point, the Force includes two aerial units (Amon and Balbaroy) who can just fly behind the Laser Eye and wail on it — though they must also be leveled up enough to deal with the Pegasus Knights on their own. The player could also let the cannon fire several times, then calmly walk across the now-empty bridge and smash the Laser Eye. Or those flying units could swoop in and kill the Silver Knight that tried to kill Pelle to win the battle.

Wide Open Sandboxes

• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The corridor is up the middle of a rising plane with the cargo loader door open. The random obstacles are barrels the enemies (human?) are pushing at you.
• Ufouria: To get a key, the game forces the player to climb a cliff while boulders rain from above. The cliff has a couple of notches in it where the player can wait. Usually two rocks fall, and then there's a bit of a pause... but, at other times, three rocks fall, which is guaranteed to mess you up. And if you get hit it's down to the bottom for you.

Non-Video-Game Examples

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Ball features one in a pirate cave. The floor is covered in marked pressure plates that fire arrows out of the walls when stepped on. Goku and Krillin bypass them by jumping and then get Bulma across by extending and retracting his Power Pole with her hanging on. General Blue finds out that the real way is to find a hidden button on the wall.

Films — Live-Action

• Guest House Paradiso has the two main characters try to avoid a hallway of projectile vomiting hotel guests. ...It Makes Sense in Context.
• Judge Dredd has Sylvester Stallone and the comic sidekick trying to sneak back into town by evading an incinerator tube that activates like a flamethrower for 5 seconds once every 30 seconds, so all they have to do is get through the tube in 25 seconds from when one of the fire blasts stops.
• The Rock has Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage trying to get into Alcatraz by sneaking past a hazardous zone which if they don't get past it on a certain time sequence, it will kill them. Not mentioned why a prison has the equivalent of a smoke and fire factory or why a prison that has been shut down for over 20 years would have one still running.
• While fighting Darth Maul in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon have to navigate a gauntlet of force fields that periodically turn on and off.

Literature

• Matthew Reilly's The Six Sacred Stones contains a rare Shaft Cubbyhole Climb (a Corridor Cubbyhole Run, but vertical). It regularly drops giant boulders down the shaft and also has to be speedrun in both directions.
• Subverted in The Dresden Files: Like the Thundercats example, the last bit is timed differently.

Live-Action TV

• A live-action Game Show variant: Takeshi's Castle (and its Gag Dub MXC) featured a game where one must run up a hill-based corridor while giant foam boulders come rolling down on them, with little crevices their only way of avoiding the boulders. Slightly altered in that the crevices were occupied by guards who would try to push the contestants out in front of the boulders.

Tabletop Games

• It's relatively simple for the DM to build a trap like this in Dungeons & Dragons with the use of fire spell-based traps. Obstacle courses for rogues with high dexterity and Uncanny Dodge ability. The "Door opens and you find an arrow heading towards you" kind of obstacle course.

Web Original

• Evil Overlord List:
  63. Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.

Western Animation

• Played mostly straight in, oddly enough, an episode of the ThunderCats. A drugged Panthro has been dropped down a chasm to die and survives. The chasm ejects lethal energies at regular intervals, but there are crannies he can fit in that are mostly safe. Panthro thinks, "Got to time them, move between blasts. Thirty-four seconds, I can do this." When he reaches the top, a blast fires early, driving him to remark, "Twenty-eight seconds? That's foul play!"

Real Life

• Railroad tunnels and bridges often have alcoves at regular intervals so that maintenance and inspection teams can get out of the way of approaching trains.

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