A video game trope: an item which, if attacked with a weapon before being picked up, changes in some way, often (though not always) becoming more useful. Sometimes successfully pulling it off requires dexterity, lest the item be destroyed instead; thus it offers the player a greater reward in exchange for risk.

May count as a very minor Lost Forever, if grabbing the item without shooting it first (something easy to do in the kind of game where you pick up things by touch alone) would deprive you of something very valuable.

Essentially the benign brother of Destroyable Items.

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Examples:

• When blasting open the item crates in Duke Nukem II, you can occasionally come upon a live turkey, which restores health when picked up. When shot, it turns into roast turkey, which restores more health.
  • Shooting a can of cola (a minor health pickup) causes it to rocket upwards. If you manage to grab it before it smashes into the ceiling, you get a score bonus (but no health).
• In Rise Of The Triad, a Priest Porridge is a minor health pickup. If a missile explodes near the porridge, but not close enough to destroy it, it turns into a "Priest Porridge Hot" which restores more health.
• In the scrolling Shoot Em Up Flying Tigers II, shooting the weapon pickups causes them to cycle through the various weapons.
• Some levels in Crystal Caves have five eggs scattered throughout. Shooting an egg instead of picking it up turns it into a letter. If all five letters are collected, the player receives a large score bonus. (The uncracked eggs are worth 1000 points each, while the individual letters are just 100 points each without the bonus for all five.)
• [from the Destroyable Items page] In Mega Man ZX any large powerup can be carved into several smaller powerups of different types using a bladed weapon. So if you didn't need all that health or weapon energy, or you just don't care about 64 more E-Crystals at the moment, get out a saber.

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