History Main / LifeMeter

* ''{{Rayman 2}}'' introduced the series to the life meter. Before this, Rayman used a HitPoint system.
** Something funny used in Rayman 2 is an image of Rayman's head in the upper left corner turning from happy to sad when low on life.

A LifeMeter may also be made of a line of symbols rather than a bar. Frequently, [[HeartsAreHealth hearts are used for this purpose]].

** And with ''Nitemare3D'', but rather than getting bloody, the skin wore away like in ''{{Knightmare}}''. You'd be down to a skull when you were on your last 10% health, and when you died, the skull went dark.

* The above was directly lifted for classic kid's TV show ''{{Knightmare}}'', except that it was a human face instead of a skeleton and the skeleton would eventually also disintegrate away into nothing. That one also used green to yellow to red backgrounds as a more general measure.

If your life meter also comes with an alarm sound to indicate low health, that alarm will likely be the MostAnnoyingSound.

* Parodied rather well at the climax of ''ProblemSleuth''. [[spoiler:The final boss, Demonhead Mobster Kingpin, has three forms, each with its own health bar. The first regenerates slowly. The second has two which regenerates two times faster than damage can be inflicted. The third, however, starts with three bars that literally must be broken themselves. Right before Problem Sleuth can activate his Bad-Ass FinishingMove, DMK literally GROWS an infinite number of life bars, which are physically real and break through the Earth's surface all the way down to {{Hell}}.]]
** An interesting variation from ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'': Health is represented by a colored bar suspended inside a clump of gel, called a "Health Vial". As you take damage, the bar is forced out of the gel, and falls to the ground and shatters when your health is depleted. When leveling up, instead of gaining a longer health bar, you get a more viscous gel.

* All of the ''PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'' games, save for the first one, use a life meter to determine the judge's patience with you. Screwing up costs you some life and an empty bar results in a guilty verdict/Game Over. Some screw ups can cost you your entire life bar and sometimes a character in the courtroom wants to up the ante by '''increasing''' your possible penalty (life bar loss). They are also used in the Magatama segments, where it's implied that they show Phoenix's soul state. (If you empty it Pearls says you should stop before your soul shatters, and if you finish the sequence you regain energy).

** The "one health bar" was actually a mistake in ''Justice for All.'' It was fixed in ''Trials and Tribulations'', where the magatama meter is totally separate from the court meter (though the graphics do not reflect this). Meaning, in JFA, if you had 80% life at the end of an investigation, you'd start off the court session with 80%. In T&T, if you ended day 1 investigation with 80%, you will not start Day 2 Trial with 80%, but with a full health bar. Only mistakes and health on its own section carries over to the next respective session. Taking the T&T example, if you ended Day 1 Investigation with 80% HP, you will start off the magatama session in Day 2 Investigation with 80% health. Same goes for trial sessions.

* ''{{Pokemon}}'' with it changing colors from green to yellow to red.

* ''NoMoreHeroes'' has Travis' health represented by an 8-bit heart, with each "pixel" being a unit of health (though if his health is upgraded, some of the pixels change color to represent more than one health unit.) Enemy life meters are a ring of "pixels" around the enemy, with each pixel getting smaller in a clockwise pattern as the enemy takes damage.

* Much like ''Franchise/CrashBandicoot'' above, the first ''SlyCooper'' game had horseshoes Sly could pick up to get more than one hit. Get one, and a silver horseshoe would appear on his backpack. Get another, and the horseshoe turns gold. Dropped outright for a standard health meter in the sequels.

* ''MarvelVsCapcom3'' combines this with NinjaProp when one of Deadpool's Hyper Combos has him attack the player with both his health bar and hyper combo meter.

** The original ''WanganMidnight'' arcade game, being based on ''Shutokou Battle'', also has this system, but you can also win by [[HoldTheLine being ahead of your opponents when the time runs out]]...unless you are on the last stage's second phase, in which case the time limit is disabled.

** The original ''WanganMidnight'' arcade game, being based on ''Shutokou Battle'', also has this system, but you can also win by [[HoldTheLine being ahead of your opponents when the time runs out]].

** Averted outright in ''VideoGame/{{jubeat}}'' and ''VideoGame/ReflecBeat'', which simply require you to obtain at least 70% of the maximum score to clear the song.

** The newer Legend of Spyro games have actually stopped using Sparx as a health indicator and reverted to a conventional health meter, but for a good reason: The new combat system requires Spyro to have way more health than in previous games, which would have been difficult to show with Sparx.
* In ''{{Trespasser}}'', there is no HUD; your health is instead displayed by glancing down at a heart-shaped tattoo on your left breast (a rare example of a [[ThirdPersonSeductress First Person Seductress]]).

* ''{{Halo 2}}'' and ''3'' have no LifeMeter per se. Instead, there's a meter for your energy shield. When it reaches zero, your now-unseen health bar can be diminished, obviously enough hits on you after the shield bar is depleted will result in your death. However, if not hit in a set amount of time, your health and shields will regenerate, the shield bar filling up again (Interestingly enough, Master Chief's health regenerates slower than his shields in Halo 3, meaning that if his health is low enough, but his shields have fully regenerated and were promptly depleted, he'd still have very low health. See the [[WordOfGod word of Bungie]] [[http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=13233 here]], under the OMG Fix Mayleeey, Bungle! section, sub-section The Nitty Gritty).
** The original ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' has the energy shield in addition to a traditional Life Meter. Master Chief's health only drops once his shield runs out, and health can only be restored by [[HealThyself medkits]] scattered around. ''HaloReach'' also reverts to this setup, being a {{Prequel}} to the existing games, and only differs in that the medkits tend to be mounted on walls rather than lying on the floor, as well as the Life Meter having very minor regeneration at certain levels of injury.
* ''ViewtifulJoe'' had bosses with multi layered life meters, deplete the top most layer and you start working on the next one. They where color coded to show roughly how many hp were left, as an absolute unit, not percent.

* The arcade game ''RollingThunder'' has a segmented life bar, though this feature is hardly necessary: colliding with or getting punched by {{Mooks}} takes out half of the bar, and getting hit by any projectile kills the player outright!

* ''SuperStarWars'' has it as a lightsaber on the upper left corner of the screen.
* In ''RogueSquadron'' there is a small icon of the current starship on screen. Damage taken changes the icon's color. It's blue (After obtaining a powerup to increase them) and goes through green to yellow as your shields take damage, then orange to red if you continue to get shot up before your shields recharge.

* In ''{{Gungrave}}'', your character has two meters--a red bar for his vitality and a blue bar for his regenerating shield. The shield will recover if Grave takes no hits for a few moments, however, explosions and some boss attacks will break the shield completely. Once his shield is gone he will lose his health rapidly, and will fall if the red bar reaches zero.
* ''GuitarHero'' and ''RockBand'' play with this by having a "Rock Meter" (Guitar Hero) or "Crowd Meter" (Rock Band) that tells you how much the crowd is liking your performance; it increases with notes hit and decreases with notes missed. While not technically a "life meter" per se, it serves the same purpose; if the meter hits bottom, you fail out of the song and either must restart it or must be saved by a bandmate, depending on the situation.

** ''{{Beatmania}}'', ''Beatmania IIDX'', and ''PopNMusic'': Your life meter starts at 22%, and you must build your life up to (by hitting notes) and finish the song with at least 80% of your life intact to clear it. On the plus side, a drop to 0% life (or 2% on ''IIDX'') won't result in a fail. There's also the gauges for Expert mode, ''Pop'n'''s Extra Stage, and ''IIDX'''s Hard modifier, in which you start full and any amount of life left results in a clear, but running out of life will kill you.

** ''OsuTatakaeOuendan'' and ''EliteBeatAgents'': Your life meter (called the "Elite-O-Meter" in ''EBA'') continously drains, even if there aren't any notes to hit. This can lead to some cases where you fail the song ''in mid-combo''.

* The ''Shutokou Battle'' and ''Kaido Battle'' racing game series (known outside of Japan as ''Tokyo Xtreme Racer'' / ''Import Tuner Challenge'' and ''Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift'', respectively), have life meters, but not for how much more your car can take; rather, during races, you lose life when you are trailing behind your opponent or run into something. Whoever runs out of life first loses the race, as opposed to whoever reaches a goal first like in most other racing games (although this is an alternate way to win in ''Kaido Battle''). The original ''WanganMidnight'' arcade game, being based on ''Shutokou Battle'', also has this system, but you can also win by [[HoldTheLine being ahead of your opponents when the time runs out]].
** The Kaido Battle series also featured a twist in this system. Running out of life does not equal an instant loss if you're either ahead of your opponent, or are following close enough so the meter won't start draining.

* ''[[JamesBond 007]]: Nightfire'' features an interesting design for the life meter: it's based on the James Bond Gunbarrel. As you start to lose life points, the damage eats away at the barrel, wedge by wedge, as the remaining wedges change from green to yellow to red. After the last sliver falls, the "game over" screen is represented by blood pouring down from the top of the screen.

* In the old ''Batman: The Movie'', the Life Meter is Franchise/{{Batman}}'s face, gradually replaced by SelfDemonstrating/TheJoker's face as the hero receives damage.

* The ''VideoGame/StarFox'' games have a life bar for your character and most of the bosses (the general exceptions are some of the Final Bosses, such as Andross [[spoiler: except in ''Adventures'']] and the Slot Machine in the first game's alternate ending).

* There's a very clever in-universe example in ''[[{{Franchise/DeadSpace}} Dead Space]]''. Every adult has a device called a RIG attatched to them. One of a RIG's main features is a spine-mounted bar that scans the users body and gauges their overall health.

* In the old ''Batman: The Movie'', the LifeMeter is {{Batman}}'s face, gradually replaced by SelfDemonstrating/TheJoker's face as the hero receives damage.

!!Examples:

* The above was directly lifted for classic kid's TV show ''{{Knightmare}}'', except that it was a human face instead of a skeleton and the skeleton would eventually also [[NightmareFuel disintegrate away into nothing]]. That one also used green to yellow to red backgrounds as a more general measure.

* In the early TombRaider games, it's only visible, if you get hurt or heal yourself.