High Speed Battle

In video games, a High Speed Battle typically results when the player and an enemy have jumped into vehicles and continue to duke it out, in a manner of speaking. Two possible iterations exist:

• The first version is that the player is chasing the villain, with the intent of stopping them for one reason or another.
• The second version involves the player being chased by the villain, with the intent of escaping.

Not entirely restricted to action games, as many RPGs will have either sequences or mini-games based around a High Speed Battle. Also frequently seen in movies. Advancing Boss of Doom, Chasing Your Tail, and Cat and Mouse Boss are slower-paced variations. Also, many of the examples simply involve characters who can run really, really, really fast.

Examples of High Speed Battle include:

• Parasite Eve has a boss battle in which you're on a speeding horse-and-carraige, with the boss floating above you shooting laser beams down onto you. Said carriage is very small, and it is very difficult to dodge the beams. Although the actual speed of the carriage doesn't look that fast, just wait until the FMV after the boss battle where it shows you how fast you were really going.
  • This game also has a scene where you leap off of a building to avoid an incoming jet that's about to smash into the rooftop and onto a scaffolding, which plummets to the ground at terminal velocity. Kill the enemies before you hit bottom (so Aya can use the brake), or die indeed.
• In Final Fantasy VI, you're fighting several enemies and a boss whilst you're on a minecart escaping from a Magitech factory. Another is the fight against phantom train, where your characters are fighting a train's locomotive while running away from it, on the railroad tracks. Oh, and if that wasn't cool enough, Sabin can suplex it. While it's trying to run him down.
• In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud hops on a motorcycle while his party jumps into a truck, as they attempt to escape the city of Midgar. This is the second version: Shrina security forces on motorcycles chase after the party in a mini-game, while Cloud slashes them with the Buster Sword.
  • Speaking of Final Fantasy VII, do elevators count?
    • Considering the battle in particular can take a few minutes, this troper would probably say no. Doesn't look like a particularly high speed elevator...
• The eighth Touhou game, Imperishable Night, has a stage in which the scrolling background speeds up immediately following the Mid Boss fight, causing a rather unsettling change of tempo. If you can ignore the background (which at this point is glowing a frenzied red), all the danmaku is moving at its normal speed, while the background just gives it a feel of moving much faster. It works.
• The entire game of Pursuit Force and its sequel, Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice, involves a cop for the eponymous police agency chasing down criminals and killing or arresting them. Rather unique in the implementation, however, as the cop can leap from one vehicle to another with ease while driving as speeds of (usually) at least 150 miles per hour.
• In Mega Man Legends 2, you have to face off against the Bonnes AND Glyde who join forces to make an armoured battletrain, the Gemeinschaft, which you must destroy while shooting from atop of your own modified train.
• Metal Gear Solid ends with Solid Snake escaping the Shadow Moses facility by Jeep, while shooting down pursuing enemies (and, eventually, Liquid Snake).
  • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots features a callback to this, only instead of a Jeep, Snake's piloting REX itself, and has to plow through an army of Gekkos to escape.
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater also features such a chase involving Snake and EVA escaping an exploding base with enemy soldiers and the Big Bad in the Shagohod in hot pursuit.
  • Yet another MGS4 chase is a callback to this one, with EVA, in her Crowning Moment of Awesome, racing through a city on a motorcycle, with Snake covering her from the back seat, as they try to evade and escape Liquid's troops.
• The final battle between Sonic and Shadow in Sonic Adventure 2 involves them racing on foot along a collapsing walkway.
  • The first boss of Sonic and Knuckles involves chasing Robotnik while dodging spiked ropes.
  • Excluding the final boss (which is also arguably one of the easiest bosses in the game for exactly that reason), all of Sonic Advance 2's bosses are organized like this.
  • The battle with Metal Sonic in Sonic the Hedgehog CD is a race.
  • The fights with the Egg Hawk, Egg Albatross, and Egg Emperor in Sonic Heroes are mild examples of this; the Egg Hawk and Egg Emperor will stop for roughly half a minute at certain points on the battle track to launch a stationary assault.
  • All but one of the bosses in Sonic and the Secret Rings also work this way. King Arthur in Sonic and the Black Knight also does this... and he calls out Sonic for running away?
  • Pick any Eggman boss in Sonic Unleashed except for the Egg Dragoon, who is the only one fought as the Werehog. For the second variety, any time the Egg Interceptor makes an appearance in the PS360 version (the WiiS2 version uses a mix of the two).
  • In Sonic Colors, there's the fight with the Frigates Orcan and Skullian, as well as the final battle with the Nega-Wisp Armor.
  • The HD version of Sonic Generations turns Egg Dragoon and |Silver into High Speed Battles, while the 3DS version does it with the Egg Emperor... Recent Sonic games like this trope a lot.
• Green's stage in Gunstar Heroes takes place while driving along a mine shaft in a strange insectoid vehicle.
• The second boss in Wario Land: Shake It! is one of these.
• One of the stages in Super Smash Bros. Melee (and reappearing in Brawl) is set atop not-to-scale F-Zero cars mid-race. Just not letting the stage kill you is hard enough!
  • Brawl makes this stage hilarious for one reason: Sonic with a Bunny Hood can actually outrun the stage.
  • Wario-Man (Wario's super form) can also do this on his bike.
  • The Subspace Emissary in Brawl features a high speed battle atop Captain Falcon's Falcon Flyer while Meta Ridley is flying behind you trying to take you down. Your character(s) will constantly be pushed to the left by a wind effect throughout the battle. Did we mention that you have only two minutes to defeat Meta Ridley?
• La-Mulana: The battle against the third area's boss, Ellmac, is a high-speed battle with Ellmac running after Lemeza as Lemeza rolls away from it on a mine-cart. Even the battle's music track is called "High-Speed Beast." There's also Bahamut (no, not that Bahamut), who you fight on a high-speed fish-powered boat, and Palenque, who is an Unexpected Shmup Boss who you fight in a corridor while dodging Deadly Walls.
• Romancing SaGa 3 has a fight where three of your characters must ride atop a skull car in order to attack another skull car that has gone berserk.
• This is the climactic end to Revenge of Meta-Knight, one of the games on Kirby Super Star. You hop onto your buddy Wheelie and race to the end of the ship you've been spending the whole game destroying, trying to get off before it crashes into the ocean, whilst Meta-Knight, who you just defeated, turns into... err...Meta-Bat and flies after you, shooting stuff at you to try and kill you. Oh yeah, and it's timed too.
• Stage 4 of Contra III: The Alien Wars sees the heroes riding hoverbikes at breakneck speeds, fighting Red Falcon's Jet Pack-wearing, tank-riding Mooks. Later on, a massive air fortress catches up, and the soldiers must destroy the artillery emplacements on its belly... after which the battle takes to the skies and throws all common sense out the window.
  • Contra: Hard Corps has a lot of these. To name a few, there are stages where you ride hoverbikes on highways and the sea, said hoverbikes can also turn into slightly anthropomorphic robots that continue to run at the same speed they were moving while hovering, and there's a fight on a train including a boss fight with a giant robot that runs ahead of the train and eventually pulls a Trainstopping move while it continues to fight you! All of this comes with some of the best music to ever grace the Genesis, as well.
  • Stage 2 of Shattered Soldier does homage to both of those; the first half being a reprise of the hoverbike Battleship Raid, and the second a battle alongside and on top a train, ending in a rematch with said giant robot.
• In Wild ARMs 3, they ramped up the movement via Horseback with very little difference to the regular gameplay, and Sandcraft battles that had a few difference in how to attack and such, but still the same basic gameplay.
  • Moving on horseback had the peculiar but nice effect that you could never be back attacked, or wind up entering the battle with only one character. It also sped up your characters' attack speed slightly, presumably because they themselves weren't running (being on horseback and all), whilst the enemies were.
    • It also made the spellcasting animation glitch a little—the last few frames loop. Still, the first time you realize that, yes, you can enter battle on horseback, it's awesome.
• Thunder Force II's Stage 2-2 has you fly down a highway (with poles that you can crash into if you fly too low), and Stage 4-2 makes you speed through tight corridors.
  • Thunder Force III's Gorgon and Haides stages have, roughly halfway through each stage, a high-speed segment. In both cases, it's a chance to grab a particularly rare item (such as a shield or a 1-Up), which tends to stay stationary relative to the stage, giving you only a small fraction of a second to grab it.
  • Thunder Force IV's stage 1 boss is fought over a lake at high speed.
• Call of Duty 4 ends with you and your companions escaping a missile launch facility in trucks after destroying two missiles in mid-air, while being chased by an army, including an attack chopper.
  • Most if not all of the Call of Duty games feature at least one vehicle chase sequence. Modern Warfare 2 just might take the cake, though, with a high-speed snowmobile chase, a unarmed sprint through Rio, a truck chase in an airplane graveyard, and an insane motorboat chase.
• A mission in Jedi Academy consists of you fighting off (or fleeing from, your choice) mercenaries on speeders.
• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves has an; an extended gunfight taking place in the backs of a dozen speeding trucks—each one exploding as Nate jumps to the next!
• Riding Duels (Turbo Duels in the dub) in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's are this as applied to Duel Monsters. Or to put it another way... CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES!
• Both Just Cause games feature these as a regular occurrence, giving the player the ability to climb about on vehicles and leap on to other ones. And that's to say nothing of the havoc you can wreak with your grappling hook...
• The bike levels in Musashi: Samurai Legend.
• James Bond 007 Everything Or Nothing: The Pontchartrain Bridge. To wit: You've just destroyed Yayakov's nanobot facility out in the bayou. You notice Jaws hop into a nanobot-filled tanker truck and head out on the freeway (the Bridge) in a last-ditch attempt to carry out Diavolo's plans. What do you do? You hop onto your Q-Bike and give chase, avoiding civilian cars and henchmen in cars and on bikes. All of this in excess of 200 mph.
• Most of the Gradius games contain a "high speed" stage where the screen scrolls twice as fast as normal.