Multi-Mook Melee

"You're the species... I'm the extinction!"

Multi-Mook Melee is when, instead of or in addition to a Boss Rush, the player may fight a seemingly endless stream of Mooks, Blue Mooks, Cave Mooks, Elite Mooks, Giant Mooks, Mini Mooks, Metal Mooks, Fire Mooks, Ice Mooks, Lightning Mooks, King Mooks, Minibosses and the like, which may slowly become tougher. This may be featured in the plot (almost any game with an arena is bound to have this) or as a minigame, bonus feature or multiplayer mode.

Generally come in two flavors:

1. Constant stream variety, often referred to as a "horde mode", which takes place in a single room or location with little-to-no rest in between the waves of mooks. In fact, when one mook is defeated, a replacement may immediately take its place.
2. Multi room variety, where the player enters a room, battles a set number of mooks, and then moves on to the next one. Some Multi-Mook Melee of this variety give the player a chance to catch their breath before the next group of mooks.

When Multi-Mook Melee is exaggerated, you have The War Sequence, which has you fighting virtually hundreds of mooks at once. When you're surrounded on all sides, expect to Hold the Line and do some Radial Ass Kicking.

And, of course, you have the ever-popular hybrid of 3M and Strategy: Tower Defense.

Compare to Wolfpack Boss.

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Examples:

Action Adventure

• ANNO: Mutationem: In the final area prior to the last fight, Ann is tasked to protect Sigrid from the oncoming waves of enemies and mechs that are brought in by C until Sigrid can gather enough energy to use her ability to weaken C and force him into his One-Winged Angel form.
• In Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis, some missions task you with defeating all the enemies scattered around the stage.
• Castlevania: Many of the post-Symphony of the Night games have optional Multi-Mook Melee areas. Circle of the Moon has the Battle Arena, a multiple-room area where you are drained of your MP and thus not allowed to use DSS cards. There are several floors of monsters to fight through, but between floors there's a one-way path to leave the area prematurely. Dawn of Sorrow has a mode where you can place monsters in a series of rooms, as long as you have at least one of that monster's soul. However, each monster has a point value assigned to it, and no more than 8 points' worth of monsters can be in a single room. Portrait of Ruin combines the Boss Rush and Multi-Mook Melee in its Boss Rush mode, with boss rooms separated by passages with normal enemies. There's also a specific area, the Nest of Evil, which is basically an extremely long Multi-Mook Melee with sets of rooms, and one of the bosses from Dawn of Sorrow at the end of each set. After each set of rooms is a teleporter, so you don't have to do the entire Nest of Evil at once. Order of Ecclesia has a similar unlockable area, the Large Cave.
• This is a common element in 3D The Legend of Zelda games.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker:
    • There's the moment when you get the Master Sword; time unfreezes, and the horde of enemies that were assaulting the castle now want you dead; namely, you have to defeat a total of eight Moblins and eight Darknuts so you can leave.
    • The Savage Labyrinth is a 50-floor Mini-Dungeon where Link has to duke it out against enemies of all varieties; you enter a room that has some enemies in it, you kill them, then you move down a floor, rinse and repeat until you get to a rest room with no enemies and some healing. The first 30 floors are required to get one of the Triforce Charts, but the last 20 are optional, more difficult due to the stronger enemies, and thus Bonus Dungeon material. The reward for full completion is a yellow Rupee in the Japanese version of the original game, a Heart Piece in the overseas version, and the Hero's Charm (obtainable in a different way in the original game) in all regions in the Wii U remake.
    • The cave located in Shark Island is filled with several enemies, ranging from Miniblins to Darknuts and Wizzrobes. It is the longest enemy gauntlet outside the Savage Labyrinth, and can only be accessed by pressing four switches (each of a different kind and requiring a different item) quickly. The reward is only 100 Rupees.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The Cave of Ordeals is a 50-floor location that operates in the same way as its spiritual predecessor, the Savage Labyrinth from The Wind Waker: You enter a floor, defeat all enemies present, then descend to the following floor, defeat its enemies, and repeat. But it's completely optional and, in order to access every floor, the main items of all dungeons up to and including City in the Sky must be collected. Completing every ten floors will release fairies in one of the Spirit Springs in Hyrule, and completing all of them will net Link unlimited supplies of Great Fairy's Tears. To clear the 50th floor, Link has to fight three (four in later visits) Darknuts at once, which is the hardest challenge in the game. The Wii U remake adds in the Cave of Shadows, which works similarly, except that Link is forced to stay in wolf form.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks has the Take 'Em All On minigame, which is a gauntlet divided into three tiers of varying duration. The highest tier adds bosses thrown in for good measure as well as the usual enemies.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has one as well. Descending through the Sealed Grounds in an effort to keep Ghirahim from extracting Zelda's soul while taking out wave after wave of Bokoblins, Moblins and otherwise.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds has the Treacherous Tower, which is a variation on the multi-floor caves; in addition to costing money to enter, you have to choose how many floors you go through at the start, and you only get your Rupees at the end rather than at various points in the middle. At its core, though, it's still the classic "kill the enemies in each room, rinse and repeat" type dungeon. The prize for the Beginner difficulty level is only a handful of Rupees, but Intermediate rewards Link with a Piece of Heart, while Advanced rewards him by upgrading his Lamp (first completion) and Bug Net (second completion).
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: As part of the Master Trials DLC, Link can accept the Trial of the Sword as soon as he pulls the Master Sword out of its pedestal. This challenge takes place within the Sword Monk's Shrine, and revolves around defeating all enemies in each floor. Some of the floors have either an overworld boss or a very powerful lone enemy instead.
• Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon has the unlockable missions, one per mansion, which revolve around capturing all ghosts present as quickly as possible. Each mission is unlocked after all Boos in a particular mansion are captured and its boss is defeated. The game also has a mission of this kind near the end of the fifth mansion, in which Luigi has to capture all ghosts before they overrun the whole area and time runs out (the urgency is because the world's spacetime is starting to shatter due to King Boo's machinations).
• Nobody Saves the World: Many of the Demi-Dungeons have you fighting waves of enemies in place of a Boss Battle.
• The dark realm in Onimusha is essentially this, with you fighting 20 waves of harder and harder enemies in the first game, and up to 100 in the fourth.
• Metroid: Other M has a hallway just before the control bridge (Phantoon boss arena), where you face some of the more powerful foes of the game. Fortunately, it should mostly be a laugh, as about half of them can be killed with a single Screw Attack, and the rest with a Power Bomb.
• One of the bosses for the Game Boy Advance adaptation of The Hobbit is a heart on a wall which you can't reach and have to repeatedly shoot. It's made much more difficult by the fact that unless you occasionally take some time out to kill the HORDE of animate vines which try to kill you, you will die. Particularly considering they can spawn in the way of your shots. Which, if you're using the targetted long-range explosive ones, is a bad thing.
• Ōkami has the Demon Gate Trials — three optional areas where the player must defeat ten waves of enemies, without much time to rest or heal in between. Brutal? Yes, but if you want 100% Completion...
• There's the constant stream variety in the first level of The Matrix: Path of Neo it starts as just simple security guards, police and much more powerful enemies until it works it's way up to Agent Smith. It's the games difficulty selection mode because if you beat Agent Smith you can play on hard mode, if you die before you get middle or easy mode.
• Sundered has Endless Hordes zones, subsections of the game’s three regions where the player will face an endless horde of the local enemies. Dozens of enemies will be onscreen simultaneously, and new enemies will continue to spawn in until the player leaves the area. These zones also serve as a Peninsula of Power Leveling.
• Star Wars:
  • Star Wars: The Force Unleashed features a big hangar directly at the beginning of the last level with multiple Chicken walkers, Purge/Evo- and Jettroopers and some standard Stormies. You are able to skip this completely by dropping through the floor, but it is interesting to see how far you come with your strengths and to level up.
  • Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order: When exploring the Fortress Inquisitorius, the enemy density is much greater than in earlier parts of the game, and you will frequently have to fight up to a dozen enemies at a time. Of particular note is the Inquisitor Dojo where Stormtroopers, Scouts, and Purge Troopers come at you in waves.
• Terraria: A lot of the events in this game. There's the Frost and Pumpkin moon, where you fight hordes of ridiculously hard Christmas and Halloween themed enemies respectively, the Frost Legion, where you fight hordes of snowmen mobsters, the Goblin Army event where you fight a goblin army. There's also the crossover event from Dungeon Defenders, where you fight waves of The Old One's Army, and all this is barely scratching the surface.
• One battle in Ys IV: Mask of the Sun had you face off against a legion of Romun soldiers on a small platform.

Action Game

• The Matrix: Path of Neo contains several. Early ones are training exercises for battling multiple opponents, which is useful later on when it's Neo versus hundreds of Smiths at a time.
• Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance has several levels where instead of having you proceed through an area fighting enemies in the way, instead confines you to a single circle. And them throws hordes and hordes of the same enemy (gladiators, skeletons, cyclops, whatever the level's theme is) where you must kill around north of 30 of them before you're allowed to proceed.
• Several areas in God of War, but especially the second phase of the Ares boss battle, wherein Kratos has to defend his family from a very long stream of... himselfs. If they manage to kill your family, well... Have a Nice Death.
• Ninja Gaiden gives you the joy of the 60 fiend challenge which is exactly what it sounds like. And in hard mode it becomes 80 fiend challenges. In very hard, 100. In Master Ninja, 120. Ninja Gaiden 2 on Xbox 360 has the tests of valor which are the same principle except you're teleported in a closed arena with no escape (these were removed in Sigma 2 though).
• Batman: Arkham Series:
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum:
    • The corridor leading to the final boss contains 20 really tough Mooks, all of whom are applauding you on Joker's orders and / or anticipation of the upcoming fight. None of them will attack you unless you throw the first punch. Due to the cramped space, it takes endurance and a lot of patience to survive. It can be helped a little by spraying the floor with Explosive Gel first though.
    • There's a more traditional version of this at one point in the game, where elevators keep delivering waves of mooks.
    • There's also a challenge map that provides an endless supply of mooks to fight.
  • In Batman: Arkham Origins, one special challenge involves having to take down 100 of Penguin's mooks, with the counter going up every time you render one unconscious through takedown or stiff beating. The lineup includes nearly every opponent you fight in the game except for Enforcers.
• Bayonetta 2 has the Witch Trials, which can be played after completing the game. Each of these chapters consist of a series of fights against increasingly powerful enemies, and there are extra perks to further push the challenge: Each Trial's difficulty is predetermined, so while the first three chapters are reasonable for the casual player, the last two will a lot harder since they're set on Infinite Climax difficulty. Secondly, no continues can be used, so if Bayonetta's HP is depleted just once, it's Game Over and the current chapter has to be restarted.

Beat 'Em Up

• Castle Crashers is all about this when you're not fighting a boss, and sometimes when you are.
• Many Beat 'em Up games have at least one room (if not the entire game) like this. Most bosses come with an endless escort of mooks to prevent the player from abusing the boss' AI with impunity.
• The final areas of most Double Dragon games, which mix this with Boss Rush.
• The Dynasty Warriors series and its spinoffs thrive on this trope, pitting the player against opposing officers, with both sides supplemented by volumes of mooks.
• Fighting Force has you fight group of mooks after mooks around the level map.

Fighting Games

• The Trope Namer is Super Smash Bros., which has "Fighting Polygon Team" "Multi-Man Melee", "Multi-Man Brawl", "Multi-Man Smash" and "Mob Smash". In them, the challenger has to duke out against the respective Quirky Mini Boss Squad of each game (Polygonal models in 64, Wire Frames in Melee, Alloys in Brawl, and Mii Fighters in 4 and Ultimate). Several variations of the mode also exist, the worst being the "Cruel Melee/Brawl/Smash" in which you face massively overpowered enemies without any items, and defeating even one foe is considered an achievement. Both Melee and Brawl also require players to knock out 5 mooks in a single session of the Cruel mode in order to unlock a trophy (and 10 in Brawl for a sticker). Famously, there was an April Fools' Day joke saying that Sonic and Tails were unlockable in Melee by KO'ing 20 mooks in Cruel Melee, which was eventually proven false. Likely as a nod to this joke, the Wii U version of Smash 4 allows you to unlock the Duck Hunt character (as well as their stage) by defeating one Mii Fighter (hard enough on its own) in Cruel Smash.
• Rivals of Aether, as part of its Smash inspiration, has the Fighting Abyss Team, which are fought in an endless gauntlet where the special rules change as each wave is defeated, from facing a horde of weak ones to a single armored one to sending them into portals that appear to fending them off while following a light for a set period of time.
• The battle against The Dragon and the Final Boss of Magical Battle Arena begins with you taking down waves of Gadget Drones until you've taken down enough of them for the boss to come out.
• Some M.U.G.E.N creators have gotten rather creative and have made some of these to be used as boss fights. In fact, with some lines of code, it's possible to turn almost any character into a horde of easily-beaten clones that keep on coming.
• One of the bonus story mode stages in Soulcalibur III pits you against 30 Lizardmen, each of them much weaker than the playable Lizardman Aeon Calcos. This encounter is available in a possible path for almost every character.
• Them's Fightin' Herds: There are parts in story mode where the protagonists have to fight a series of different Predators in a row. Arizona has two in two different acts of her chapter.

First/Third-Person Shooters

• The first Aliens vs. Predator game for the PC was probably the first FPS/TPS game to have this as a dedicated game mode, Infestation, in which a group of Marines would hold out as long as possible against waves of Aliens, Predaliens, and Praetorians.
• Gears of War 2's "Horde Mode" re-codified the trope for modern shooters by being one of the first wide-release games to feature waves of enemies that actually shot back, directly inspiring the similar modes that have since been added to Halo and Modern Warfare, among others. It's still common to hear any other game's wave-based mode called "Horde" in casual conversation. Gears 3 added some Tower Defense elements, but kept the basic concept.
• The last level of Serious Sam: The Second Encounter does this right before the final boss fight and brings it to epic proportions, complete with the sky becoming dark and meteorites raining down during the battle as you wait for the waves to end and the door to the boss area to open. This is done twice in Serious Sam - The First Encounter as well.
• Marathon Infinity with its penultimate level "You Think You're Big Time? You're Gonna Die Big Time!". Those grey pfhor hunters are mean.
• Most Halo games have at least one moment like this:
  • Halo 2 has the battle in the Mausoleum (aka the "Breaking Benjamin room") on the "Gravemind" mission, which seems to be the series' homage to Marathon's "You Think You're Big Time" level. Mainly Elite Mooks and and Giant Mooks, including Brutes, Ultra Elites (including stealth-camouflaged ones), Spec-ops Elites, the "Honor Guard Councilor" glitched Elite (supposed to be a Gold Elite), Hunters, etc. For bonus points, it takes place in the middle of an Enemy Civil War, with Elites and Brutes duking it out with each other. Cortana advises you to sit it out, but once the music starts up, it's impossible not to jump in, guns blazing.
  • Halo: Reach has several, including the hangar battle at the end of "Long Night of Solace" which is topped off by a squad of at least four Ultra Elites, and the last part of the "Pillar of Autumn", where you fight a pair of Hunters with only shotgun and AR ammo available, four waves of Brutes including several Chieftains, and finally the Elite Field Marshal and his Zealot squadmates.
  • Later, Bungie realized they could follow Gears of War and synthesize this trope into Firefight mode. In most games from Halo 3: ODST onward, you can face just about everything the Covenant can throw at you: Grunts, Jackals, Jackal Snipers, Skirmishers (Reach), Elites, Brutes, Hunters, Drones (ODST), Engineers, Ghosts, Banshees, Wraith tanks, etc. Halo 5: Guardians ups the ante by adding not just Prometheans, but actual bosses (whom you'll have to fight at the same time as their subordinates).
• Doom:
  • Doom 64: The final standard level, The Absolution, begins as a very large horde of enemies (of all species minus Zombieman and Cyberdemon) come from three large gates to attack Doomguy. Defeating them all is necessary to begin the Final Boss battle against the Mother Demon. If certain keys were collected from the secret levels, these gates can be closed before too many enemies come into scene, allowing the player to save a lot of ammunition for the final battle.
  • Many custom "slaughter maps" are essentially series of ever-harder Multi-Mook Melees. Some fights in the map "Deus Vult" involve over 200 monsters at a time. The top contender, however, would be the infamous "nuts.wad", which goes above and beyond in this prospect, with more than ten thousand monsters crammed into a single level.
• In Left 4 Dead, It is almost inevitable that at some point your team will become overwhelmed by hordes of zombies stemming from nowhere, forcing you to resort to melee attacks.
• Call of Duty:
  • World at War has the Nazi Zombies mode, which has four characters battle unlimited hordes of zombies (and in some cases, HellHounds) in waves on the four maps, with the enemies taking more and more hits to kill and only short breaks between waves.
  • Spec-ops survival mode in Modern Warfare 3 is this. A helicopter, three Juggernauts, and several dozen mooks becomes normal fare at higher levels.
• The final level of Pathways into Darkness has you fight through one room after another filled with each type of enemy you've encountered.
• Quake combines this with an Elevator Action Sequence at the end of Episode 2, featuring a Shambler or two, depending on the difficulty), several Fiends and Zombies, and a pair of Vores. Quake IV has you fight a trio of Tanks, then Hovertanks, then Stream Protectors, before the Final Boss.
• The Proving Grounds in Descent 3 have you fight through four arenas full of mooks, each concluding with an upgraded version of the Stinger, Thresher, Sixgun, and Tailbot, respectively, as minibosses.
• The Totem defense sequences in Turok 2 combine this with a Protection Mission.
• Team Fortress 2 has the Mann Vs Machine mode that pits six players against waves of robotic versions of the nine playable characters (some of which are giant), which inexplicably are fueled by money that players can pick up to buy upgrades with.
• The "Arena" level in the F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate expansion pack features a prolonged firefight against several enemy waves inside a closed arena; the waves include nearly every major enemy type from the original game, including the various mini-boss-like enemies.
• A Horde-style game mode is available as a free DLC for the Steam version of Afterfall: Insanity.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising has quite a few, including one that takes up the whole ground game for one of the chapters.

Gacha Games

• In AFK Arena, a recurring boss in the "Twisted Realm" mode is Demonic Entity, an Enemy Without that came from Nemora. Unlike most bosses, she can't be attacked directly, and damage scored against her is instead calculated by damage dealt to the endless waves of Dreafs she summons.

MMORPGs

• Aion: the Tower Of Eternity. Also, the Tower Of Evermore.
• The "Friends?" battle quest in Vindictus has as the main boss fight a pitched battle against 100 Veteran Gnolls, the toughest mobs on the first boat, in addition to a good number of Gnoll Archers, in roughly six or so waves. If you should survive the whole thing, you then have to fight the actual boss, the Veteran Centurial Captain of the gnolls.

Platform Games

• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: Combat seems entirely based on the "kill one mook, another takes its place" variant. Technically enemies come in waves, but you only notice this on the rare occasions when the game gives you a few seconds to rest between waves.
• Shantae: Risky's Revenge: The second dungeon, Battle Tower, consists of a multi-floored gauntlet against numerous enemies, both native from the desert and hailing from the preceding forest area, as well as platforming challenges and recovery items inbetween each floor. Shantae signs up to get locked into and only being able to leave once she gets through the 11 floors of the tower. For extra difficulty, there's an ongoing time limit (starting at 3 minutes) that is very strict even with the collectable clocks that add extra seconds to it.
• Sly Cooper:
  • Sly 2: Band of Thieves: In Episode 4, Murray solely battles against fifty enemies to gain access to the prison's solitary confinement.
  • Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves: In the penultimate mission, Murray takes on an onslaught of Dr. M's goons coming in from the vault entrance.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic Heroes has Robot Carnival and Robot Storm, where the melee is the boss. Robot Carnival (the first one) takes place on one platform, but in Robot Storm, you have to go between platforms after defeating certain numbers of waves. Also, in Robot Storm, the enemies are tougher.
  • Sonic Rush has a few rooms that need to be cleared of enemies to advance.
• The Kirby series has a few.
  • Most of the Meta Knight encounters in Kirby's Adventure have him send waves of his Elite Mooks after Kirby. Only in the very last one does he fight Kirby personally.
  • Kirby Super Star has a few miniboss fights consisting of waves of Meta Knight's Elite Mooks, in the same vein as Kirby's Adventure.
  • The third level of Ripple Star in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, where Kirby goes to several rooms facing a variety of enemies until the pathway opens up.
  • Kirby's Dream Collection has the Combat Chamber challenge stages. While most of the New Challenge Stages test Kirby's platforming and problem solving using his Copy Abilities, these stages are focused almost exclusively on fighting waves of enemies in enclosed rooms, with mini-bosses thrown in as well.
• Bionic Commando had this during many of the Reactor Boss fights.
• Mega Man: A Day in the Limelight 2 has a room where you fight loads of Crash Man-themed enemies with Proto Man to back you up.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario Galaxy 2: Battle Belt Galaxy, which is located in World 6. Each enemy on each planet must be defeated in order to advance, ranging from one Goomba on the first planet to four Chomps on the last one.
  • Super Mario 3D World: Two of the Mystery House levels (Mystery House Melee and Mystery House Brawl) consist of defeating groups of enemies in 10 seconds or less each.
  • Super Mario Bros. Wonder: There are special levels where Mario and his friends have to defeat all enemies present in each room as quickly as possible. At the start, the characters can respectively choose which power-ups suits them best. Defeating all enemies will reward them with a Wonder Seed, while breaking the time records will reward them with 10-Flower Coins (each one tied to a record, from slowest to fastest).
• Donkey Kong 64 has the Battle Arena gauntlets, in which the Kongs have to survive against a never-depleting reserve of enemies during a limited time, ranging from 30 seconds in the Jungle Japes challenge to 90 in the one from Hideout Helm. The reward in each case is a Crown, and four of them are required to finish the game.
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps has two types: mandatory Inescapable Ambushes within dungeons, and Spirit Shrines, where the player fights between three and five waves of mooks for the reward of increased Status Buff capacity.
• In Mega Man X8, the intro stage as well as Burn Rooster, Bamboo Pandamonium, and Dark Mantis' levels each have two rooms where you have to fight off several waves of Mooks (while Dark Mantis' stage has an extended section where if you get spotted by a searchlight, the exits will seal themselves off and you will get Zerg rushed by a buttload of enemies, and this doesn't stop until you waste the leader droid), and each one rewards you with Metals and health pickups depending on how much damage you took and how high your combo was. Each of these rooms also have a chance of instead making the player fight Vile, though he can appear in levels besides the ones listed as well.

Real-Time Strategy

• Dawn of War II: Retribution: The end of the Typhon level involves staying alive in an arena increasingly full of Tyranids, native orks, and Chaos forces, all of which fight you and each other, while the planet is undergoing Exterminatus.

Role Playing Games

• Kingdom Hearts: The first and second games have this in the Olympus Coliseum, while the latter also has additional multi-mook fights in the Hades Colosseum. Another example can be found in the End of the World right before the final save-point in the game you have to defeat enemies that steadily increase in danger climaxing in the horrible situation of 8 Angel Stars and 8 Invisibles.
• In New Horizons, raiding towns and boarding ships with crewmen and officers, will lead to fight entire groups of enemies, through different parts of the aimed towns and ships. The number of fights and "rooms" depends on the target's size.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario RPG: At Bowser's Castle, two gauntlets involve facing a whole hallway of all the enemies that were faced up to this point. Completing the gauntlets earn new weapons for party members.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has the Pit of 100 Trials. Super Paper Mario has two of them, as well as the Sammer Guys, 100 characters that need to be defeated one after another. During the game, the world they inhabit is destroyed after reaching the 30th Sammer's gate (the Sammers themselves stop fighting you after the 20th guy is defeated due to plot reasons). If you go back after you beat the game, you can actually fight all 100.
• Several of the Missions in Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core and the unwinnable and inevitable Bolivian Army Ending.
• The bonus dungeons of the the Final Fantasy Advance series seem fond of this trope. Yang's Trial in Final Fantasy IV Advance is based on this trope, as is the entire Soul Shrine in Final Fantasy VI Advance.
• In Baldur's Gate, the Watcher's Keep dungeon has a room like this. However, what it spawns are orcs, so you can just set everyone to auto-attack and relax. There's also the first challenge in the Pocket Plane, which has you fighting enemies one after the other, starting with goblins and gradually working your way up to Drow, or their good-aligned counterparts for an evil party.
• Tales Series:
  • Tales of Vesperia has the 10-man Melee, the 30-man melee, the 50-man melee, the 80-man melee, the 100-Man Melee, and if you defeat the Cameo Superboss at the end of the Bonus Dungeon, you can face the 200-man Melee, which starts with the 100-Man Melee, but you keep going and begin facing various Cameo Bosses, first is Dhaos then it eventually ends with a rematch 1v1 with the Superboss Kratos.
  • The first chapter of Gaius's sidestory in Tales of Xillia 2 ends with a battle against a mob of Rieze Maxia-hating Elympions. Being perfectly ordinary humans, they're all pathetically weak, but they just keep coming.
  • When first using the elevator on Rena in Tales of Arise, you fight a continuous stream of zeugles. Your characters even complain about the fact that more and more just seem to keep showing up.
• If you don't want to fight human opponents, Golden Sun's Battle Arena multiplayer mode has a Boss Rush-esque Multi-Mook Melee, which features everything from weak opponents to much-hated Superboss Dullahan.
• There is a battle in The Bards Tale Tales Of The Unknown where you can fight four groups of 99 berserkers each. If you've leveled your characters enough, they can't hit your front-line characters and your sorcerer characters will have a spell that hits all enemies in the battle. Start the battle and go off to get a drink.
• Shadow Hearts: Covenant brings us The Man Festival, a tower composed of 100 wrestling rings which the party has to climb, defeating multiple enemies on each level, to unlock Joachim's final power and final form. However, the party leaps from level 26 to 87 unexpectedly, amusingly enough, even to them.
• Shin Megami Tensei IV has Horde enemies, which consist of a large group of demons. While functionally a single foe, they get multiple actions per turn, and take damage multiple times when hit with multi-target attacks. The horde visibly thins out as you wear down their health.
• The Arena battles in The Last Story are based on this trope: In each of the three season matches, Zael and the party members accompanying him have to venture into 3-4 encased battle zones, one after another, and in each of them there are large groups of enemies wanting to defeat them. The third and final match includes one of the game's post-ending Superbosses, and it's very difficult to beat without a good strategy.
• In Star Ocean: The Last Hope, the fight against the Phantom Soldiers on Aeos consists of one normal battle followed by seven ambushes. This is also the case for the "Defeat the assassins" trials in the Wandering Dungeon. That said, these are generally considered the easiest trials compared with those that require you to "clear abhorrent crystals" or find numerous Geostones.
• Fallout 4:
  • Near the end of the Institute storyline, you defend the Synths who are hacking Liberty Prime from hordes of Brotherhood of Steel Elite Mooks being flown in by Vertibird, including Elder Maxson and his highest ranking commanders.
  • In the final battle of the Automatron DLC, the Mechanist summons waves of increasingly stronger Mecha-Mooks, with a few King Mook enemies thrown in.
• Etrian Odyssey has a skill called Challenger, which allows its user to lure a series of enemies into battle so the party can defeat them and increase experience. Depending on how upgraded this skill is, the number of consecutive battles can range from two to eight, and each upgrade also increases the chance to summon a shining enemy (whose defeat adds extra experience points, though they're prone to flee so it's important to kill them quickly). This skill can be accessed by the Masurao in Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth, and by the Hero in Etrian Odyssey Nexus.

Shoot 'Em Up

• The indie game Meritous has these in the form of Treasure Rooms. When you enter one, the doors close and the monochrome graphics turn red, as droves of enemies warp into the room in short bursts. After you've killed them all, you get a metric ton of PSI crystals, as well as some treasure chests which may have either a bonus of crystals, a free upgrade to one of your abilities, or one of the upgrade items (which, while not necessary to complete the game, make things much easier).
• Planetary defense fleets in Escape Velocity. If you've got a good ship, this is primarily a test of patience, since it means fighting 50-1000 enemies 1-5 at a time.
• In the freeware game Hurrican, the first boss of the penultimate level is a massive onslaught of enemies, unlike with the other bosses (where hitting a certain point causes damage), destroying individual enemies causes the boss life meter to go down.
• Rush'n Attack has said melee at the end of the stage; quite dangerous for the One Hitpoint Wonder equipped with a knife.
• Bio-Hazard Battle has the boss of stage 7, which is nothing but a TON of deceptively weak, floating mechanical-looking objects that tend to crash into the player's ship as well as firing a lot of shots.
• Alien Shooter and its cousin Zombie Shooter. Late-game levels have hundreds upon hundreds of enemies in every room, and no, it's not an exaggeration for emphasis.
• Heavy Barrel usually had this during elevator sequences.
• Commando (Capcom) ended every level with this.
• Radiant Silvergun has 17VA-50 boss fight that consists of five increasingly difficult waves of multiple enemies. The closest this has to a boss is a cannon at the end but even that is accompanied by numerous smaller enemies.

Simulation Games

• Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike features a walkabout level where you have to survive multiple waves of mooks.

Sports Games

• The Showdown swordplay event in Wii Sports Resort. The event has the player take down dozens of sword wielding miis. Most of them are KO'd in one hit but some take two and the final enemy (a boss if you will) has to be hit 3 times.
• The Fielders' Challenge in Backyard Baseball 2005 has elements of this; you have to win against an unlimited number of robots.

Stealth Based Games

• Metal Gear:
  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty has the circular chamber in which Raiden and Snake face off against about 70 Mooks. It's also home to the infamous Fission Mailed screen.
  • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots features a Multi-Mook Melee while defending an unconscious Meryl from a group of Elite Mooks before fighting Screaming Mantis.

Survival Horror

• In Karim's chapter of Eternal Darkness, upon finding the Ancient's essence, he is subjected to a large gauntlet of zombies and Bonethieevs, and even a couple of Horrors, in order to earn the right to approach it. Earlier in the chapter, after acquiring a Ram Dao, a smaller-scale gauntlet must be fought through.
• The Persistence:
  • Zimri has to fight massive waves of enemy to progress past Decks 1, 2, and 4 in lieu of a boss fight. Decks 1 and 2 are merciful enough to give her weapons with infinite ammo, but deck 4, being the final deck, forces you to fight the biggest mass of monsters yet with only the finite equipment you've scavenged from the wreck of the ship.
  • Certain loot chests are surrounded by defective clone printers that continuously spawn mad engineers until they run out of power. You'll have to kill all the engineers and the occasional Berserker before you can open the chest and reap your rewards.
• Many Resident Evil games have Mercenaries mode as a bonus unlocked after completing the main game, a score-attack mode in which you are given a ton of ammo and must kill as many enemies as you can within the time limit (extendable by shooting hourglasses scattered across the map). It was eventually turned into its own separate spinoff game, Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D on the Nintendo 3DS.

Third Person Shooters

• The Lupino Showdown from the original Max Payne, which has Max fighting roughly thirteen mooks that swarm in one after another after him before Jack Lupino himself makes his entrance with two of his personal guard and a sawed-off shotgun. In the sequel, after you beat the game once you unlock the "Dead Man Walking" mode, where you can fight an endless stream of enemies spawning constantly in an enclosed area.
• WET's arena stages have Rubi blasting up mook after mook while trying to make it to the markers that allow her to disable the doors that they spawn from. Once all the doors are disabled, it's just a matter of mopping up anyone still standing before moving on to the next area.
• Certain areas of the free-roam section of Global Agenda are this, as are most of the Player Versus Environment missions.
• Some levels of P.N.03 end with this in place of a Boss Battle, such Mission 4, or accompanying a Reactor Boss, as in Mission 6.
• Splatoon 2 has Salmon Run, a game mode that uses the constant stream variety. In it, a team of four is deposited on an island where they have to survive three timed waves of Salmonids mobbing them, all while trying to collect the golden power eggs dropped by the Boss Salmonids. Players having to reach a collection quota before time runs out on each wave, and the difficulty (i.e., the amount of boss enemies and the egg quota) ranges from Intern, Apprentice, Part-Timer, Go-Getter, Profreshional, and Hazard Level Max depending on the collective ranking of the team members.

Turn Based Strategy

• Featured in Crush, Crumble, and Chomp!, where the combined forces of humanity are the "mooks" amassed against you.

Wide Open Sandbox

• The first Shenmue game has one of these, where you fight 97 Mooks with 3 Minibosses mixed in. It's in the main game, but after you complete it you're allowed to go through it again, at least on the Dreamcast version. This one is especially notable as it was 1.) the largest melee fight on a console at the time, and 2.) ALL of the combatants had a unique model and skin.
• A feature of the Big Bad's headquarters in Scarface: The World Is Yours. Fortunately enough mooks zapped and taunted allowed moments of invincibility. Space 'em out, you'll need 'em.
• The first hunter encounter inside the first military base you enter in [PROTOTYPE]. As you kill your first hunter, then the next two, more and more pour in at once. Subverted in that the number that enter the base each time caps out and they don't become tougher over time.
• Parodied by Saints Row: The Third, in which the intro mission climaxes with one, as do many, many others. They also appear as side missions, and the first DLC introduced Whored Mode to multiplayer.
• The Minecraft adventure map series Diversity has one in every map, in the form of the Arena Branch. Each one tasks you with killing a certain amount of a different mob in several different levels, and rewards you with the Yellow Wool after clearing all levels. The first two maps just have mooks to kill, while Diversity 3 spices things up with Mini-Boss encounters after each level.

Other

• The Battledome on Neopets has the recurring Obelisk Battleground event, in which users join one of six factions, and ones in the faction that defeats the most enemies wins a hidden avatar and a choice of buffs to certain site activities that lasts until the following round starts. Merely joining the winning faction isn't enough, however; an individual user needs to defeat a minimum of 10 opponents alone in order to be eligible for the rewards.

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