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Welcome to Orient Express. We're arriving at destination any time now. For now, please enjoy luxurious travel.
It's very common for our protagonists to find their way onto a train. After all, it's a prime location for adventure. You're stuck in a confined space, and you're unable to leave once the train is moving. You may have to show your ticket or passport, you may be held up by a bunch of robbers, you never know who you're going to meet, and nobody is ever completely sure if that strange-looking toilet door is correctly shut.
After you've run around on the train for long enough, the only way left to go is up, often leading to a Traintop Battle. The music will often have a gallop rhythm.
Not to be confused with Rail Shooter.
Examples of Locomotive Level include:
- Contra: Hard Corps had this as one of its stages, ending with a Humongous Mecha boss. Shattered Soldier also had a train top stage with a Humongous Mecha as the boss, in an obvious homage to Hard Corps.
- Several levels in the Mega Man X and Zero games.
- Charge Man's stage from Mega Man 5. It's worth mentioning that Charge Man himself is an anthropomorphic train.
- One level in the original Blood.
- And several levels in its sequel.
- Gordon Freeman spends a lot of time on trains, although never during active gameplay. The original game famously started with him in an elevated tram; the sequel had him arrive in City 17 on a train; and in Episode One, he and Alyx hitched a ride on a Combine train, and later used a rebel-operated train to escape from the city. Actually considering the whole gimmick of the original game is that you're free-moving at all times, even when you can really only go one way... What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic
- The level On A Rail of the original game did involve active gameplay for Gordon
- One level of Ape Escape 3 took place partially in/around a train.
- A level in Wario Land 2, and two levels in Wario Land Shake It!
- The first planet encountered in the "Toy Time Galaxy" level from Super Mario Galaxy has a large model train on it.
- A chapter in Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door took place mostly on a train.
- One of the Doc Ock fights in the Spider-Man 2 game took place on a train, and by proxy a portion of the film of the same name did as well.
- Sunset Park Act 3 from Sonic Triple Trouble.
- Grand Theft Auto San Andreas has three: you hitch a ride on a train and steal it's cargo, you're on a motorcycle keeping up alongside the train, the last is on on a jetpack flying around the train. There are side-missions where you can drive a train, but nothing interesting happens. At all. Unless you intentionally crash the thing.
- The ghostly train to the afterlife from Final Fantasy VI, which is a boss in itself (and can be suplexed).
- Again in Final Fantasy VII had the team take a train onto for the guards to catch up with them leaving out terrorists want-to-be heroes make a dash for it. There also is a haunted area named the Train Graveyard, full of derelict trains.
- In Final Fantasy VIII there's the Timber Owls SEED mission (plus a bossfight) that takes place on two separate trains.
- A good chunk of the second Professor Layton game, Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, takes place on the Molentary Express, the most luxurious train in the world.
- In Sonic Heroes, either Rail Canyon or Bullet Station had this as part of the level.
- The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, as the name suggests, has some of these.
- Unreal Tournament. (Stock map, not a custom one so it counts).
- Spiritual successor AS-Convoy in Unreal Tournament 2004 is of a similar concept, albeit with a Base on Wheels and its attendant vehicles rather than a train.
- The original Viewtiful Joe has a train sequence in the latter half of the 5th world.
- Skies of Arcadia has a train sequence as well while escaping from the Big Bad who slowly causally walks towards you.
- Duke Nukem Manhatten Project Has the start of one of the levels on the roof of a train and later (possibly in the same level) there is a boss fight on top of a much shorter train.
- Golden Eye 1997, imaginatively titled "Train," which has Bond battling through a converted missile train in order to save Natalya.
- The From Russia with Love game had a level that began on a train and led to a station - also titled "Train".
- A level in James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing.
- Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose for the SNES, in the Western-themed level.
- Hamton's Auto Scrolling Level in Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Trouble in Wackyland for the NES, which is also a Traintop Battle.
- The game of Back to The Future III.
- Jedi Academy had a level where you had to disarm a bomb on a crowded train, and then stop the bad guys from ramming it into the station.
- Uncharted 2 has one.
- Mirror's Edge also has a short one.
- Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow had a level where Sam Fisher has to infiltrate and interrogate someone on a train. He inevitably ends up on top of the train, and the sides, and the bottom.
- The Last Express was set entirely on a train. The Orient Express, to be precise.
- One level in Ninja Gaiden II (NES)
- Time Splitters Future Perfect features a train level in the 1960s.
- The first boss of Persona 3, Priestess, hijacks a train you're investigating. Also a timed boss level.
- Macbeth in Lylat Wars has you following a train in the Landmaster tank. You destroy it bit by bit throughout the level, and can either face its main weapons as a boss at the end, or if you meet the bonus targets, derail it and crash it into the command centre.
- One level in Star Wars: Shadows Of The Empire takes place in one where you have to evade some static obstacles.
- One level in Final Fight takes place in a metro train as well as station.
- Also, part of one of the final dungeons in Secret of Mana takes place on an undead-infested metro train.
- Resident Evil Zero starts out on a train infested with leeches, OH and the undead. Then it crashes into a mansion full of the things. Talk about a lousy trip.
- One level in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation.
- Also Legend.
- One level in Commandos 3, where you're recovering some paintings.
- Shining Force III had a whole chapter about sneaking onto a train, people talking about trains, fighting in the train and then a big fight on top of the train for good measure. This was your standard medieval themed RPG so it makes sense it was such a big deal.
- The Egypt stage in the NES version of Strider begins with a train ride to the pyramid in question.
- A mission in Zone of the Enders: the 2nd Runner involves chasing a train before it can deliver a deadly payload to the Redshirt Army. But since you have to destroy said train, it plays more like a Battleship Raid.
- The second mission in Time Crisis 2.
- As well as the last part of the second stage in Time Crisis 3.
- The climax of Gears of War has you work your way up a train, fighting off every kind of Mook and Miniboss the game can throw at you, before the confrontation with the Final Boss.
- Broken Sword has one; it Bait And Switches a Traintop Battle, only to have you climb back down into another carriage to stop a gunman shooting Nico.
- Medal of Honor: Frontline has a level in which you must fight your way through a Nazi armoured train to reach the Big Bad at the far end. Excitingly, you can use its mounted guns to blow up other trains as they pull alongside.
- Sector 3 of Jumper Two features Ogmo thrown on a train by the Conductor. Of course, the train was designed for a very luxurious travel.
- Jean-Bison's trainyard in the second Sly Cooper game.
- Heather Mason has to fight through a train full of monsters in Silent Hill 3.
- You find yourself amidst a Train Job in Red Dead Revolver while going to Brimstone.
- One of the Boss Battles in Banjo-Tooie takes place on board Chuffy the locomotive.
- Snakes Revenge has this.
- The first level of Victoria's world in Little Big Planet 2 takes place on a train.
- On level of "Rocket Knight Adventures" has your jetpack-wearing armor-clad laser-sword-wielding possum riding a little hand-car-thingie along the rails as he tries to catch up to the evil robot train with ray guns and clawed arms. Best boss ever.
- Dissidia Duodecim has the Phantom Train from Final Fantasy VI as a level. The characters fight inside one of the cars and the seats are breakable. It's easily the most confined arena in the game, but it more or less works since the walls become partially transparent whenever doing otherwise would interfere with the camera.
- Shadows of the Empire has the Ord Mantell Junkyard level.
- Klonoa 2: Dream Champ Tournament has this for the second area.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Turtles in Time has the "Bury My Shell At Wounded Knee" level, set in a Western-timed train.
- Alice: Madness Returns has the Infernal Train level.
- In Th3 Plan, a heist game, one of the first stages is on a train going through a very long tunnel.
- Cactus McCoy has several levels on a train. And it's AWESOME.
- Monster Tale has one of these levels.
- A non-video game example: Between Water 7 and Enies Lobby, the Straw Hats have some confrontations as they travel across the sea on the Sea Trains, the Puffing Tom and Rocketman.