Life Meter

aka: Health Meter

A meter, usually a colored bar, that displays the Hit Points of a character. If this shrinks to nothing, Critical Existence Failure is the result.

In single-character games, this is found on the HUD. In strategy games, this appears next to selected units, often over their heads, and by their portraits in the HUD. Sometimes, they are invisible most of the time, only appearing for a moment whenever your character loses or gains health.

The color of the life meter is often determined as a major stylistic point for the game. Red is a very common color, being strongly associated with blood and flesh, as well as the ubiquitous red-crossed health packs.^note Though the latter has declined in recent games due to the Red Cross asserting that it undermines their symbol's internationally protected status. Sci-Fi life meters often change color as health declines, from green, to yellow, and down to red. Other colors usually indicate something unique about the character or game. The life meter may also change color to reflect status ailments, such as poisoning. An alternate menu may note how many Hit Points that meter reflects. Fantasy games tend not to have the meter change color, and will instead have it remain a blue or green color. It may flash red when the PC reaches a critical threshold.

A Life Meter may also be made of a line of symbols rather than a bar. Frequently, hearts are used for this purpose. Some games may even use a "life counter" with numbers instead.

Bosses, especially a Damage-Sponge Boss, will usually have a layered meter that has to be depleted several times, often changing color as each one goes down.

If your life meter also comes with an alarm sound to indicate low health, that alarm will likely be annoying. The life meter may also have an animation instead of, or as well as, the alarm.

Gaining more hit points, such as through leveling up or a Heart Container, may show up on the meter. For example, if the meter is a bar, a Heart Container might make it longer, or if the meter is made of icons, increase the amount of said icons. Or it might add an icon that represents an extra life meter on top.

Running out can either lead to a Game Over, or simply losing one of the Video-Game Lives.

Hit Points are the supertrope of this trope, but will usually occur in tandem with this, so long as there's a numerical indicator as well. It only would not, if this trope were the only measure of Hit Points, and if so, that's Vague Hit Points, usually. Because Hit Points still exist. Unless they don't. This also has a sister trope in Mana Meter, which is the equivalent for Mana.

Sub-Trope of Status Line (a display element showing the current disposition of the player, e.g. score, health, ammo, etc).

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Video Game Examples:

Video Games

• 625 Sandwich Stacker inverts this with the "ick-meter", which players need to avoid filling up. Players get one bar (out of three) filled in the ick-meter every time they catch an inedible item; if it's fully filled up, it's game over.
• Ace Attorney:
  • All of the games, save for the first and sixth ones, 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 Pearl says you should stop before your soul shatters, and if you finish the sequence you regain energy.)
  • The first game has five "Exclamation Marks" with 1 being removed when Penalized, and 2 when Double Penalized. Later entries have a Green Bar with a very dark red background, likely to allow penalties to have varying strength. Spirit of Justice brings back this system, with the exclamation marks replaced with attorney's badges (in America/Japan) or magatamas (in Khura'in). The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles also has this system in the form of white star logos from Ace Attorney titles.
  • Oddly, in Justice For All, how well you did in court affects how much health you have in your Magatama investigations, and every time you start the trial the next day, your health is full again. However, during the last case, your Magatama health is restored in the middle of your investigation... but doesn't recover when you go to court the next day. Considering how troubling the last investigation segment is, you're likely only going to have a smidge-higher than half health, making almost all mistakes fatal.
  • In Trials and Tribulations, 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 the first-day 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 the first-day Investigation with 80% HP, you will start off the Magatama session in Day 2 Investigation with 80% health. Same goes for trial sessions.
• In Aladdin (Virgin Games), depending on the platform, Aladdin's health is measured by a trail of smoke coming out of the lamp in the top left corner of the screen—or by a hourglass with sand being drained, accompanied by an increasingly nervous face of the Genie.
• The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures and its sequel measure the Nerd's health in beer bottles.
• ANNO: Mutationem: The Life Meter is displayed on the top-left showing the health total in a red bar.
• In Astal, Astal's Hit Points are represented by fruit.
• Older Than the NES: Ultimate's Atic Atac featured a graphic of a chicken, which decreased down to bare bones as you lost energy. (Eating food replenished it.)
• Away: Journey to the Unexpected:
  • The Player Character's life meter is located in the top left corner of the screen, and represented by three hearts.
  • Enemies have their life meters located above them.
• Ayo the Clown: In the top left corner of the screen is a line of hearts that serves as Ayo's health.
• In the old Batman: The Movie, the Life Meter is Batman's face, gradually replaced by the Joker's face as the hero receives damage.
• Billy Blade and the Temple of Time: Located in the top-left corner of the screen, the life bar is the square with the red colour to the right of Billy's mugshot.
• All the BioShock games have them, with the symbol varying - in the first two, it's a cross; in BioShock Infinite, a heart.
• Black Closet has two different "life" meters, one representing the student body's trust in the student council, and one representing the school's reputation. If either meter reaches zero, you will be expelled.
• The first Blake Stone game (Aliens of Gold) has a percentage meter and an EKG graph which changes faster if the player character has less health. This is accompanied by a heartbeat sound effect (which can be toggled on/off) which also is played the more frequently the less health the hero has. The second game (Planet Strike) only has a percentage meter.
• Born Under the Rain: As shown in this official screenshot of a battle, Hit Points are represented numerically where the current number of them is at the right of a green bar.
• Bot Gaiden: Botyu and Bytron have their health bars on the top-left corner of the screen, the the boss' is on the top-right side.
• Bug has a can of "Bug Juice". Taking damage greys out a fraction of it, and when it becomes depleted, Bug dies and the can "melts". The sequel Bug Too! had a glass bottle of Bug Juice instead, the amount inside depended on your character's current health.
• Unusually for a Fighting Game, Bushido Blade and its sequel Bushido Blade 2, have no life gauges whatsoever. You can be killed with a single blow.
• The Callisto Protocol has one in the form of a blinking implant on the back of Jacob's neck, which drains and changes color as he loses health.
• Most Castlevania games have one for the player character, either as hearts or as a bar. Older games had one for bosses too.
• Catacomb 3-D has a human face which is slowly replaced, from the bottom up, by an image of a skull.
• Clunky Hero: Located in the top-left corner of the screen, it's the red bar.
• In Colobot, all units have a yellow life meter, including the human character, the robots and the buildings. The human is able to regenerate on his own, but robots need to use a special building to be repaired, and buildings cannot be repaired at all.
• In The Conduit, not only does the life meter change from green to flashing red when the player's life meter is low, but the game also desaturates the colors and turns down ambient sounds when the player is low on life. This is needed because it is possible to play the game without a HUD (thus hiding the regular life meter all together).
• Conjoined: In the bottom-left corner of the screen are four hearts that represent Stanley's health.
• The early Crash Bandicoot games, and some of the new ones, feature a hovering mask pickup instead of the dragonfly. Pick up a mask, and you can take an extra hit. Pick up two, and your mask turns golden, meaning you can take two hits. Pick up a third one, and you're invincible for a short while.
• Crossbow Crusade: The Player Character's health bar is in the top-left corner of the screen, with various displays for weapons, money, and ticket.
• Dead Space: It's In-Universe and Justified. Every adult has a device called a RIG attached to them. One of a RIG's main features is a spine-mounted bar that scans the user's body and gauges their overall health.
• Danganronpa utilizes a life bar indicating how much chances each protagonists get to present the correct information otherwise depleting the bar will result in them being dismissed.
• In Dex, all enemies have a red bar below their sprite displaying their health, and there's also a percentage just to the right of it doing the same.
• Destiny and Destiny 2 inherit the regenerating health/shields system used in Bungie's Halo titles (see below), though with the added spin of players' stats determining how quickly one refills back to full (Recovery) and how much damage one can take before dying (called Armor in D1 and Resilience in D2). Visually, both games keep things simple: the bar stays white until one's shields are drained, with the last health segment turning red until regen starts. (Overshielding is represented in blue.)
• In Diablo:
  • The first game has a globe filled with red liquid, the same color as the life potions. The color changes to green if the character is poisoned.
  • Also, in Diablo II, the globe is held up by a little demon statue, characters turn green when poisoned, and other things (gas, throwing potions, damage stats) are green when they relate to poison.
  • The same color convention — red changing to green when poisoned — was later used in Nox.
  • And a similar convention and life meter was used in the first Legacy of Kain although in this case, it's fairly clear what the liquid is supposed to be, since he's a vampire and all.
• The Legend of Tian-ding depicts your health as six white bars, and getting hit turns one red. When all goes red you lose a life.
• The Doom games combined a percentile health meter with a central character face portrait that got progressively more bloody as your health decreased.
  • Same deal with Wolfenstein 3-D, the Catacomb games (the sequels to the original Catacomb 3D), and Ion Fury (the latter puts Bombshell’s face in the lower left corner).
  • And with Nitemare 3D, 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 NES port of Dragon's Lair infamously gives you a life bar but almost everything is instant death.
• Dragon Quest VIII: Party members have a health bar and an HP counter (e.g. 200/350). Their character models will also change if their health is very low. However, none of this applies to enemies — there is no way of telling if they have 1 HP or 1000.
• Dungeons Of Daggorath for the Color Computer had no visual indicator of the player's health, just a heartbeat sound that would quicken as the player got closer to death.
• The EarthBound Series shows HP as numbers on tumblers, like they were on a mechanical counter. Taking damage or being healed doesn't take full effect immediately, it sends the tumblers rolling towards their new values. Characters who take mortal damage don't die until their HP rolls down to 0, and they can be kept standing by healing them before it does. The characters' stats even affect how fast their tumblers roll, and using the Guard command slows down the drop.
• Echo Night: Beyond uses an EKG monitor; Richard's heartrate jumps whenever he encounters ghosts, but will even out if the ghost is friendly. Hostile ghosts, on the other hand, along with other disturbing phenomena, can push his heartrate up much higher... Reaching 300+ immediately kills him.
• Ecco the Dolphin has a life meter and a breath meter. Eating fish restores the life meter. Surfacing instantly fills the breath meter but pushing Ecco’s head into an underwater air bubble takes a few seconds to fill the meter and leaves Ecco more vulnerable. There are also certain clams that will heal Ecco but some will hurt him instead.
• The Elder Scrolls Online has three bars for stamina, health and magicka. The health bar in particular is one of your visual cues for understanding your current buffs and debuffs. For example, it will crack when your resistances are lowered, it will glow white when your damage is buffed or its borders will thicken if your resistances get buffed. The bar also shows shields applied on you by dyeing a part of your bar in pink.
• Eldervale: The health meter is in the top left corner of the screen whenever you bring the inventory up. It takes the form of an IV Unit line a la Resident Evil, with a number next to it indicating how much health remains.
• The second Elvira game has a unique take on health meters in the form of an indicator representing the "health" of your head, torso, and each arm and leg. Losing all HP for a leg will hamper your mobility, while losing all HP for an arm reduces your carrying capacity. Losing all HP for your head and/or torso results in your grisly demise, as does losing all HP for both arms and both legs.
• Epic Battle Fantasy series:
  • The mainline games place player healthbars in the bottom-left of the screen, with enemy healthbars at the bottom-right. With the exception of the first game, enemy health is displayed at all times during battle.
  • The spinoffs universally make use of Hearts Are Health:
    • Adventure Story uses a single heart to represent Matt's health, and a bar across the top of the screen to represent a boss's health.
    • Bullet Heaven also uses a single heart, whilst Bullet Heaven 2 uses a row of them.
• Eternal Darkness features a Sanity Meter, an affectation borrowed from Lovecraft-inspired role playing games. It effectively acts as a second Life Meter (shocking but not physically harmful experiences deplete it, and physical damage occurs when it is fully depleted), but is also tied to the game's "insanity effects", where unexpected visuals, such as insects crawling across the screen, would simulate the player's decline into insanity. Of course, after finishing such mentally stressing levels, a Heroic BSoD (as opposed to an actual BSOD, which is one of the insanity effects) is expected from most characters.
• Eternal Senia: Multiple games, for the protagonist, Senia:
  • The first game, Eternal Senia, has it as a red bar at the top left of the screen, with the precise number of Hit Points being above that bar.
  • Eternal Senia: Hydrangea After The Rain: Multiple, for both enemies and the Senia.
    • Senia's is displayed at the bottom left.
    • The current enemy's is displayed at the top of the screen.
• In Evolve, the hunter's health is show as a bar to the left of their screen. Portions of it will be greyed out as you take strikes, reducing your maximum health. Other hunters' health can be seen above their heads and the monster's health is a bar at the top of the screen, regardless of side.
• The Fairy Bloom series: Due to Protection Missions, mainly:
  • Fairy Bloom: At the bottom of the screen, measuring the health of the plant being protected.
  • Fairy Bloom Freesia: Multiple, measuring the health of different things:
    • At the bottom of the screen when a Vortex needs to be protected.
    • At the top left at all times, measuring Freesia's health.
• Fighting Force Has not only the life meter of the player in the HUD but also that of the most immediate enemy the player is facing.
• In Flink, Flink's life meter is the big red bottle in the corner of the screen, labeled "MAGIC" since it doubles as his Magic Meter.
• flOw: Attacking enemies is by eating round chunks of their body, and once they're all eaten, the enemy dies, so the game basically involves attacking the Hit Points-representation directly, a.k.a attacking this meter.
• Flynn: Son of Crimson: In the top left corner of the screen is a picture of Flynn. Next to it is a line of light cyan jewels that serve this purpose.
• All of FromSoftware’s Souls/Soulslike games have life meters denoting the main character’s health, including Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Elden Ring. Though regular enemies also have health bars, more notable are the large, prominent ones given to its bosses.
• Flippin Kaktus: The health bar is located in the top left corner of the screen, and is represented by a line of squares.
• Furwind: The Player Character's health bar, located in the top left corner of the screen, is represented by a row of red bars next to a heart.
• In Garfield and his Nine Lives, Garfield's health is represented by lasagna.
• Germination: Shaped like a flower.
• Genpei Tōma Den has a row of burning candles to represent Kagekiyo's life meter. When his health gets low, a voice sample in Japanese can be heard that says "Like a candle, your life flickers in the wind!".
• Ginger Beyond The Crystal: Located in the top left corner of the screen, the health meter is represented by a branch with blue leaves on it. Each leaf represents two hit points.
• In the Brazilian game Guimo, the life meter is a pair of eyes, that get bloodshot with every hit (when they're completely red, the player dies).
• Guitar Hero and Rock Band 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.
  • Rock Band's crowd meter isn't a straight life meter in multiplayer, either — if the meter itself hits bottom, the entire band fails out automatically. However, each member has a slider on the meter, and if a member's slider hits bottom, they fail out, and the meter starts being drained until all failed members are recovered. The amount of the meter that is filled is around the average of the band member's positions on the meter.
• 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.
• HAAK: Located in the top-left corner of the screen, it looks like a bunch of orange circles connected by orange lines.
• Halo:
  • Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 4 have no Life Meter 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 word of Bungie here, under the OMG Fix Mayleeey, Bungle! section, sub-section The Nitty Gritty).
  • The original Halo: Combat Evolved 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 medkits scattered around. Halo: Reach also reverts to this setup, being a Prequel to the other FPS 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.
  • In Halo 3: ODST, your non-recharging heath has a meter, but this game's version of energy shields (referred to as "Stamina") has no meter; your screen just starts turning red when it starts to deplete.
  • In Halo 5: Guardians, your shields and health go back to having separate meters, but both of them still recharge. This system comes back effectively unchanged for Infinite.
• Helen's Mysterious Castle: Enemies have them, that decrease when damage is taken, but it's ungradated, but they also Shows Damage numbers, so an estimate of their actual number of Hit Points can be made.
• In Hellsinker, enemies that don't die in one hit and bosses have percentages displayed over them when their health falls below 70%. Certain bosses feature a health bar alongside their percentage.
  • The pre-Final Boss, Unnamed 290, inverts this: it has a "Satisfaction Gauge" that starts empty and needs to be filled to at least Level 1 before time runs out by shooting it.
  • Inverted again with the Level 3 Final Boss, Garland. It starts with an empty boss meter that is filled up by shooting Garland. If the meter is filled and the "Did you forget something?" dialogue triggers before the time limit runs out, the game moves on to the True Final Boss; otherwise the game just ends there.
• Heretic had a numerical life meter, but also a red gem on a chain that moved from right to left as health decreased. This interface was carried over to the first Hexen game as well.
• In Ib, the characters carry around colored roses that are tied to their life force and appear in your inventory. A number in the corner of the screen indicates how many hit points they have left. The more damage they take, the more the rose wilts. If your rose becomes a bare stalk, it's Game Over.
  • As a twist, the connection also works in reverse - rejuvenating a rose in water will heal its owner, and directly damaging it (by plucking out petals, for instance) will harm them.
• Illbleed has three different life meters. In addition to your regular strength meter (you die when it runs out, natch), you also have a heart rate monitor and a bleeding gauge that appears when you take damage. If your bleeding gauge becomes full, you die by bleeding out. If your heart rate exceeds 250 as a result of Jump Scares, you die of a fear-induced heart attack. If your bleeding gauge fills past a certain point, your heart rate will begin to decline; if it reaches 0, you flatline.
• Incredible Crisis uses a Panic Meter shaped in the image of the game's head logo, which acts as various different things, including a Health Meter in the case of some of the minigames. It also serves as a Lives Counter, with the number in the Panic Meter showing how many lives you have remaining. Unlike other examples, the more red it is filled up as, the closer the player is to failing, along with the sound of steam when the bar is getting close to filled - and if the Panic Meter changes to the logo with a high pitche steam sound, that means that you are only one mistake (or moments) away from losing a life.
• Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures has a circle-shaped life meter, initially completely green. As you receive damage, the circle loses more and more "slices" (like a pie graph), gradually turning yellow. Once it's completely yellow, the yellow begins to peel away in the same way, revealing red. Then, once it's all red, it begins giving way to black. Once it's all black, guess what happens.
• Inexistence Rebirth: In the top left corner of the screen is a health bar, accompanied by the magic bar and experience bar.
• In Jazz Jackrabbit, the playable characters have a colourful bar which changes colour depending on how much health he has left (blue is full health, glowing red is when it's about to lose a life if takes one more damag) in the first game. In the second game, it's represented by hearts (5 hearts means full health and every damage he gets makes him lose one).
• The Jungle Book: Mowgli has one, and so do all the bosses. In most versions of the game, the bar is an image of the characters head, of which the color slowly drains every time they take a hit. In the NES version, it's a red heart that slowly drains of color whenever a character takes a hit.
• In Jurassic Park: 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 First Person Seductress).
• While Kingdom Hearts II and all following games use a green bar with green squares underneath representing the amount of health bars left for enemies, Kingdom Hearts and the GBA game Chain of Memories use colored, multi layered health bars. This is kind of a problem in KH1 with Sephiroth, as he has so much health the developers ran out of colors to use, so he has all the normal colors up to purple and an additional invisible bar.
  • While playing as the main protagonist, their face is shown in the middle of the HP Circle with a healthy expression. Whenever they take damage, the face temporarily changes to a flinch before reverting back again. However if the protagonist hits Low HP, the character's portrait will remain in a gloomy pained expression until their health is restored.
  • In the case of the player and their party, the health bar circles around and over their portrait, then straightens out once it passes below it (Games past the first simplify the party member HP into a half circle).
• The above was directly lifted for the 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.
• In Kolibri, the life meter takes the form of up to five miniature hummingbirds circling Kolibri. It only appears when he either heals or takes a hit.
• Last Ninja uses a bar, but twisted into a spiral.
• Legend of Success Joe gave the player a three-part life bar; half-empty bars would refill between stages but not fully empty ones.
• The Legend of Zelda games, with the notable exception of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link which uses a bar meter, use a heart system in place of a regular life meter. Link starts most games with three hearts. Unlike most games, he can acquire more by locating a Heart Container; the more of these he gets, the longer his string of hearts becomes and, therefore, allows him to take significantly greater damage before dying. Early versions of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time had the color of Link's tunic and shield change to indicate his health. Of course, the final version just used collections of hearts like previous titles.
• The Legends of Owlia: In the top left corner of the screen, represented by a line of hearts.
• Left 4 Dead uses a health meter like most other Valve games. What sets it apart from other games is that as your health decreases, your mobility because more compromised: you start off able to run at a brisk pace, but as you sustain damage, your movement speed decreases until your left with a limp barely faster than walking. Pain pills can grant a temporary boost in health, as can adrenaline shots (not as much health, but it increases your movement speed back to normal for a while), but the only way to actually recover health is by using medkits, which are far and few between.
• LiEat: The first game has these for the party in the party menu and in battle, along with Current / Max Hit Points, while enemies only get the latter.
• Lugaru: The Rabbit's Foot has no HUD, but Life Meters for two types of damage which affect the same pool of Hit Points: Temporary damage, caused by blunt impact, is indicated by the character limping and the camera's view becoming blurry and shaky, it fades with time. Permanent damage, caused by cuts and stabs, which is only healed between levels, has the additional indication of pain skins (visible wound texturemaps).
• Luxaren Allure: HP is depicted with a green bar that depletes from right to left.
• The Madou Monogatari RPGs for the MSX2, Game Gear and PC-98 did the furthest to avert conventional analog or digital representations of the player character's health, which is represented instead by changing facial expressions.
• Madman (2022): Located in the bottom-left corner of the item menu screen is the health meter, which is a picture of a heart with a percentage number next to it. 100% is full health.
• Mad Professor Mariarti, in his namesake game, has a bubbling flask in the status display which drains as the professor's health is damaged.
• Mad Stalker: Full Metal Force has its life meters represented by energy bars that changes from green to red to empty as the player(s) take damage.
• Marvel vs. Capcom 3 combines this with Ninja Prop when one of Deadpool's Hyper Combos has him attack his opponent with both his health bar and hyper combo meter.
  Deadpool: HEALTH BAR IN YOUR FACE!
• The Matrix: Path of Neo just like in Enter the Matrix the lifebar is represented in a darker shade of the Matrix's code.
• Many Mega Man games feature bosses that strike a cool pose whilst their life meter fills up before they fight.
• Mega Man Legends features a yellow health bar, as well as a "life shield". When the shield is active (the health bar's background is black), taking a hit will disrupt it, causing the health bar to glow red. Any attacks received before the shield can repair itself will hurt more than usual. If the shield is disrupted too many times (or if Mega Man takes a really heavy blow), it will "break" and won't regenerate until you use a shield repair item. The sequel just deals damage normally.
• Metal Gear has a standard life bar that extends as the player progress (for the first few games in the series). Starting with Metal Gear Solid, boss characters would also a life bar displayed. Played with by The Sorrow in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater whose life bar is completely empty since he's a ghost, thus has no life left anyway.
• Metallic Child: Rona's health bar is a red one located in the top left corner of the screen.
• In Metroid, Samus Aran always begins with 99 points of energy, usually displayed as a simple white meter on the HUD, and adds 100 more points with each Energy Tank she finds, displayed as boxes above the meter.
• Mighty Aphid: The life bar is located in the top left corner of the screen. It also comes with a gem counter.
• In Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (SNES), the lifebar seems to max out when it's green and full, but if you collect more health refills at that point it will change to blue and eventually purple to indicate additional health.
• Minecraft Dungeons: The heart-shaped one in the center of your HUD.
• Minty Fresh Adventure! and Fresh Minty Adventure: Using Heart Symbol-type Hearts Are Health, at the bottom of the screen.
• Moon Raider: Ava's health meter is located in the top left corner of the screen.
• Muri: Hit Points are called Energy, and displayed in green on the right side of the screen.
• 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.
  • If only in the PC version, armor is used in the place of healthkits, with simple armor plates restoring two or three wedges and a bulletproof vest restoring the entire meter. So perhaps the wedges signify undamaged armor plates, and Bond uses Body Armor as Hit Points?
• The Ninja Gaiden franchise represents Ryu Hayabusa's health with a life bar. In the NES games, the life bar is presented Castlevania-style, showing sixteen hit points for Ryu as well as each level boss throughout the game.
• Ninja Outbreak: Your health bar has four green points. You lose one for each hit you take.
• Ninjish Guy In Low Res World: At the bottom of the screen is a line of hearts that make up the Player Character's health. For each heart you lose, you have to start over at the beginning of the level.
• No More Heroes 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.
• Nomolos: Storming the Catsle: In the top left corner of the screen is a line of hearts that act as Nomolos' health.
• Observo: Located in the pause menu is an EKG meter like in the Resident Evil games before the fourth. Appropo, the game being a love letter to early 2000s-era Survival Horror video games.
• Okiku, Star Apprentice: Shown in the battle screens and menus, depicted by an orange/yellow bar. Shows Hit Points as Current / Max.
• Operation Flashpoint has no life meter; to determine the extent of your injuries, you simply check your body for wounds. Any wound to a vital area has a good chance of killing you outright, and wounds to the limbs affect your movement and accuracy. Though there aren't any health packs as such, you can get the wound treated by a medic if you can find one.
• Oracle of Askigaga: In the main menu, party members' Hit Points and Stamina a.k.a Mana Points, are shown as both numbers, and orange and blue bars, respectively.
• Pandemonium! (1996) uses the classic Heart Container life meter. The sequel uses 4-segment discs, that can be layered by health expansions. However, during Hate Tank level the Tank has its own HP that is not shown, and for the battle with Mr. Schneobelen the health is displayed by the number of support columns left that hold the turret you deflect the attacks with (though his morning star attack can still hurt you directly).
• Parameters: For both the player and the enemies, are yellow bars that decrease from right to left, with fraction Hit Points representation on them, in "Current / Max"-style.
• Pepsiman has a three-hit life meter displayed by the spinning Pepsi logo at the top of the screen. It gets smaller as he takes damage and grows back over time.
• The Persistence: The second white bar in the left-hand corner of the screen measures Zimri's hit points. If you get hit, it goes down and if it fully depletes, you die. You can raise the health bar by grabbing med-kits.
• Pitfall The Mayan Adventure had an alligator creeping up on a picture of Harry, getting closer as he took damage. You lose a life if the alligator chomps him.
• Pokémon with it changing colors from green to yellow to red.
  • And a very annoying looped beeping noise when it's in the red.
    • In Pokémon Black and White, this is replaced with the looped beeping noise remixed into awesome music.
  • It also has numerical values with HP being a stat that can be increased, but you can only see the exact value for your own Pokemon.
• Primal Light: Located in the top-left corner of the screen is Krog's health bar. Wearing the Emblem of Ur lets Krog see his enemies' health bars.
• In Primal Rage, the energy bars are veins connected to a heart at the end, and the special bar below is a nerve linked to a brain. Winning a match causes the loser's heart to explode and the brain to melt into ashes. It gets better in the subsequent rounds.
• The life meter in Prince of Persia's "Sands Trilogy" is aqua blue, indicative of the use of water as life replenishment.
  • In the original game, it was a set of triangles, like in Jordan Mechner's previous game Karateka. Later ports (for Japanese home computers, the Apple Macintosh, SNES, TurboGrafx-16 and Sega CD) changed this to a set of potions, identical in appearance to the games' healing potions.
• The original MSX2 version of Psychic World, titled Psycho World, had the red H.P. bar intertwining with the green ESP bar to form a double helix. The Sega Master System and Game Gear ports used normal-shaped bars instead.
• Quantum Replica: Alpha's health bar is located in the top left corner of the screen.
• Raid 2020: Shadow has a lifebar made up of hearts shown on the right side of the screen, each heart being 2 HP. He starts with 20 HP and can have up to 255 HP, but only 10 hearts can be displayed at once.
• The platform games Rare developed for the Nintendo 64 has an idiosyncratic, unique life meter each:
  • Honeycombs in Banjo-Kazooie and its sequel.
  • Watermelons in Donkey Kong 64.
  • Chocolate units in Conker's Bad Fur Day.
• Raw Footage: Located in the bottom left corner of the screen is a red line with a red plus next to it.
• Rayman 2: The Great Escape introduced the series to the life meter. Before this, Rayman used a Hit Point 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.
• RC Helicopter has a numerical indicator in the top right of the screen that shows many hits a helicopter can take before it breaks down. Each copter starts with 5 hit points, and the player can buy body upgrades to increase their HP to 11.
• Red Goddess: Inner World: Located in the top-left corner of the screen is Divine's health bar.
• RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore: Remi has a red health bar in the top left corner of the screen. It rests above Lore's MP bar.
• The older Resident Evil games had an EKG set as the player's health bar (only visible if the player pauses the game), and it would both change color (green-yellow-orange-red, or purple if poisoned) and decrease in heart rate as the player gets hurt; playing up the realism more is if the character was poisoned, his or her heartbeat would become irregular. Generally, though, the player could die in five hits or less (and Mooks, namely zombies, could instantly kill you without some serious button-mashing). Starting with Resident Evil 4, a more traditional health bar took place of the EKG.
• Skinwalker Hunt: The game has a simple white line with a white plus sign next to it as the Life Meter, located in the bottom left corner of the screen.
• Some Rhythm Games' life meters are different.
  • beatmania, Beatmania IIDX, and pop'n music: 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.
    • More recent versions of IIDX have the Easy, Assisted Easy, and EX Hard modifiers. Easy is the regular life gauge, but it doesn't drain as much on a missed note; Assisted Easy does this and also lowers the passing life requirement to 70%. EX Hard is denoted by a yellow life gauge (as opposed to the regular blue or Hard red) and functions the same as Hard, but with a much harsher penalty for missing notes; it takes just 6 misses to drain it completely.
  • DanceDanceRevolution traditionally uses a life meter called "Dance Gauge", in which you have to keep it filled for the duration of a song or else the stage is failed. Later games and course modes use a battery gauge, which gives a player at least 4 lives. Lose all 4 lives with a couple of Misses and it's Game Over.
  • DJMAX Technika: In Technical mode, you must finish with at least 75% life on stage 1, 50% life on stage 2, 25% on stage 3, and simply live to see the end of stage 4. It's harder than it sounds because on each successive stage, it takes more notes to recover your life.
  • Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents: 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.
  • REFLEC BEAT simply require you to obtain at least 70% of the maximum score to clear the song.
  • jubeat also has the "70% of maximum score" (or in this case, 700,000 out of 1 million) passing condition in place of a life meter, but there is also a bonus that increases as you hit notes accurately, up to 100,000 points even if hitting notes would otherwise cause the bonus to continue increasing. Missing causes the bonus to decrease, to a minimum of 0 points. In a sense, there is still a Life Meter of sorts, but it's used for score bonuses.
  • Cytus also requires a score of 700,000 out of 1 million.
  • SOUND VOLTEX, much like beatmania, has a meter called the Effective Rate that starts off low (in this case, 0%) and must be filled to a specific quota (in this case, 70%) before the song ends. However, it also plays this trope straight with the Permissive Rate and Excessive Rate meters; the former is used for Skill Analyzer courses and the latter is an optional challenge. There's also the Alternative Rate meter, which begins as an Excessive Rate meter, but rather than fail the player at 0% left, it instead turns into an empty Effective Rate meter at that point; however, Alternative Rate is only available if you choose the most expensive Online mode option.
  • CROSS×BEATS's and crossbeats REV.'s standard lifebar not only don't fail you instantly if your life hits 0%, but you clear the song as long as you have even a sliver of life at all when it ends; do note, however, that it takes a sufficient combo to raise your life by a signle tick. There's also the Survival lifebar, which starts at 100% and gives you an immediate stage failure if you ever hit 0%, and the Ultimate lifebar, which depletes on anything below a Flawless, not just combo-breaking judgements, meaning that it's entirely possible to fail a song without a combo break.
  • Groove Coaster uses a Groove Gauge similar to beatmania's, but it's not used to determine whether you get your next stage or not. Instead, it's used only for a 50,000-point bonus in arcade charts.
  • maimai normally doesn't have a life meter — you only need to earn an Achievement rating of 80% or higher to clear the song — but when you're playing a Challenge Track, you're given a "LIFE" indicator at the center of the screen showing you how many more non-Perfect judgements until the game throws a Game Over at you. If you attempt a Challenge Track as soon as its out, you will only have one life, i.e. you must get an All Perfect or it's shutters for you.
• The Road Rash series has a durability meter for your bike. If it becomes empty following a collision, it will explode the moment you try to mount it again, ending the race and forcing you to pay a repair bill. In theory, it's possible to still complete a race by just running across the finish line: as long as you don't touch your bike when its durability is exhausted, it won't count as wrecked (although you will likely end up dead last if you're far from the finish line, and you can still get busted by the police).
• In Rogue Squadron 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 the following sequels, the icon was converted into a small, fully 3D wireframe of the ships (humans for on foot missions) surrounded by a thinning circle which would swerve as you moved around, but would spin if you took any damage, the speed and intensity which increased depending on how strong. This would result in incredibly erratic spinning if you were continuously taking fire, though it gets kinda funny when it happens to the human wireframe. Both games feature an instant shield recharge option if you were low while using a ship that had a R2 unit. Though if you get hit again, you'll lose it before you can press it.
• The arcade game Rolling Thunder has an eight-unit 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! The NES port makes things a little bit more honest by having the life bar be only two units. The second game brought in the concept of hidden items that can extend your max life to up to five units, allowing the player to potentially withstand two bullets.
• Sapiens uses a single symbol as a Life Meter. When you're in perfect health, the meter depicts a large heart. As you receive damage, the heart decreases gradually, then disappears, then is replaced with progressively larger skulls.
• Save Room: Located in the top-left corner of the screen. As a means of getting rid of Poison Mushrooms and healing items, you can use them to lower and raise your health.
• SCP: Secret Laboratory uses a basic bar in the bottom-left of the screen, colour-coded based on what class you are: yellow for Scientists, grey for Facility Guards, orange for D-Class, light blue for MTF units, dark green for Chaos Insurgency, and red for SC Ps.
• Scrabdackle: Blue’s life meter is denoted by several pink vials of Healing Potion, which drain one by one as they’re hit by enemy attacks.
• Shadow Warrior (1997) has a percentage meter for the player and bars for the bosses.
• The Shantae series uses Hearts Are Health for its life restoring, the life meter, and its Heart Containers, where 1 Hit Point is a quarter-heart:
  • Shantae (2002)
  • Shantae: Risky's Revenge: The quartering is done by unfilling from top to bottom of each Heart Symbol, instead of cutting it in half length and width-wise.
  • Shantae and the Pirate's Curse and Shantae and the Seven Sirens.
  • The sole exception is in Shantae: Half-Genie Hero when playing as Risky Boots in Pirate Queen's Quest, where which the player's health is represented by purple skulls instead of hearts.
• "Shounen Kininden Tsumuji" starts with Tsumuji having 3 flames which can go up to 12 flames after collecting enough Life Candles to increase his health.
• All Silent Hill games except 4 and Homecoming avert the onscreen lifebar tactic, instead letting you gauge how much you had left by a colored screen in the pause menu, or a percentage in Downpour.
• Skeletal Avenger: The health meter is a big round gold jar containing red fluid in the bottom left corner of the screen.
• Skeleton Boomerang: Hunter's health bar is located in the top-left corner of the screen, and is represented by bones.
• Sleep Tight (2021): At the foot of the bed is a line of hearts that act as your health. When you're attacked by a creature, one of them loses its colour.
• Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus 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.
• Smashroom: The health meter is located in the top right corner of the screen. It'r represented by a line of hearts. It can be refilled by collected big red mushrooms.
• The Smurfs (1994): The player can take up to four hits (displayed as hearts) before he loses a life. But watch out for the Bzz Fly or the Black Smurf in the Super NES and Mega Drive versions, for running into them is a One-Hit Kill.
• So uh, a spaceship crashed in my yard.: All characters in the party section of the menu have a red meter of HP.
• The 1990 The Amazing Spider-Man game for the various home computers at the time has Spider-Man's health represented by a screen-tall picture of him on the right that gradually turns into a skeleton(!) as he loses health.
• Spyro the Dragon: The dragonfly Sparx literally serves as a health meter, changing colors from gold at full health down to blue and then green, and then disappearing entirely. After that, a single hit will kill you. The game explains this by way of some vague protective magic Sparx generates. The later games stop using Sparx as a health indicator and revert to a conventional health meter, since the new combat system requires Spyro to have way more health than in previous games, which would have been difficult to show with Sparx.
• The Star Fox 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 except in Star Fox Adventures and the Slot Machine in the first game's alternate ending). In Star Fox 64, Slippy provides the boss life meters and if he isn't around, either due to him being down or Fox being alone to fight Andross, the life meter will not show up.
• Stick Fight's stick figure combatants have no life meter and simply take hits until they die or suffer a One-Hit Kill. However, in the boss stages that occasionally show up, the player that becomes the flying boss does get a life meter that stretches across the top of the screen.
• Super Dungeon Bros: Each knight gets a life bar at the top of the screen. Boss life bars are on the bottom of the screen.
• Shows up in some Super Mario Bros. games, namely in Super Mario Bros. 2 as red hexagons (hearts in the remakes, and upgradable from two to four), and in Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Super Mario Odyssey as a colored ball divided into three to eight wedges, depending on the game. The one in 64 doubles as Mario's health meter and Oxygen Meter, leading to a glitch where you can completely refill Mario's health by dunking in some water and coming up for air.
• Your life meter in the Super Star Wars series is displayed as a lightsaber.
• The second and third Streets of Rage have a standard health bar for players and Mooks, but a boss' health bar is slightly different from the player's. In game 2, the boss' health bar was shown in blue and the number of stars under their name showed how many health bars they had. By the 3rd game, they changed the stars to a number next to the health bar, which makes it look like the amount of "lives" the boss had. Once all the extra bars of health were gone, the boss' life bar would be shown in yellow/red like any other enemy. On higher difficulty levels, even some Mooks can have multiple bars of health like a boss.
• The swordsmanship Mini-Game in Sword of the Samurai has an interesting spin on it, in keeping with the game's feel, which is to contain absolutely no anachronisms. Each time a combatant takes a hit, a brush draws the strokes in the kanji for 'life'; when it is complete, they die.
• Sydney Hunter and the Curse of the Mayan: Located in the bottom-left corner of the screen, it resembles a line of hearts.
• Tales of Symphonia: Seen in the party menu, and the battle menu. Decreases from right to left, showing black, with a gradient going from red to yellow, with yellow being wherever the current measurement is.
• Target Acquired (2016): The red bar on the bottom left side of the screen shows Yura's health.
• Timothy vs. the Aliens: In the top left corner of the screen, it shows Timothy's health and ammo.
• Tokyo Xtreme Racer:
  • The series has 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 Wangan Midnight arcade game, being based on Shutokou Battle, also has this system, but you can also win by 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, so the only way to win is to run down the bosses' meters.
  • The Kaido Battle spin-off 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. Also, as there are both defined start and finish points, you could also win be crossing the finish line first.
• In the early Tomb Raider games, it's only visible, if you get hurt or heal yourself.
• Transistor: Red's meter of hit points is Vague Hit Points due to being ungradated and when she takes damage, it's not presented numerically.
• Trash Quest: In the top left corner of the screen. It's represented by a line of circles next to a heart.
• Treasure Hunter Man 1: Marvin's is in Hearts Are Health style at the top left of the screen.
• Triggore: On the right side of the HUD at the bottom of the screen is the health, which is represented by ten hearts.
• Trophy 2021: In the top left corner of the screen is a vertical blue line that represent's Trophy's health. It's likely meant to help emulate the game's inspiration.
• In The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang, Spike's hitpoints are represented by tomatoes, while enemies' hitpoints are represented by garlic cloves (whether or not they're made of garlic).
• During Argument minigames in Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane, Tyrion and his opponent get a health bar that is drained when the player picks answers or presents evidence. If you get it right, your opponent loses HP. If you get it wrong, you lose HP. Unlike Ace Attorney, no such health bar is present during cross-examinations, so the player isn't punished for presenting wrong evidence there.
• UNDEFEATED has a twist on the concept: Since your character is an invincible Superman expy, you have a "hero meter" that goes up everytime you complete one of your goals, but goes down every time buildings or citizens take collateral damage during a battle... If this meter gets too low you do fail the mission, so it's sort of a health meter for the setting.
• Urbanoids: You have a yellow energy bar which is depleted when you shoot or get hit. About ten shots or three hits is enough to fully deplete it.
• Valkie 64: Located in the top-left corner of the screen is the health meter, which is represented by a line of hearts. It can be extended by collecting heart pieces.
• Venture Kid: Located in the top-middle of the screen is Andy's health meter, which is represented by a line of hearts. The health bar of the bosses is located in the top-right corner of the screen when they appear.
• Viewtiful Joe had bosses with multi-layered life meters; deplete the topmost layer, and you start working on the next one of a different color. Stronger bosses had more and more meters to whittle down.
• The Warriors uses a standard life meter designed as a circle around your character. It starts out at green and changes colors from yellow to orange to red as you get injured, and the characters themselves also suffer bruises and cuts and grow in number and intensity when their health grows lower. Strangely enough, all those visible injuries magically vanish once you use some Flash.
• Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening: Both player characters and enemies have them:
  • The player characters' can be seen in battle, with current Hit Points enumerated at the right edge of the bar, and also outside battle, in the status menu.
  • The enemies' are seen when they take damage, and when being selected as the target of skills.
• Whizz has the Energy Mushroom, which loses color from the top down.
• In Wick (2020), the player character Jean Wick is an anthropomorphic candle whose health is represented by how tall he is, as he continuously loses wax from melting. Standing in puddles of wax will make him regrow and if he gets too short he will burn out.
• Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus? uses this to track the declining health of the poisoned Uncle Marcus. It even increases when you correctly give him the proper antidote and it starts working.
• The World Ends with You:
  • The life meters are vertically-oriented bars, and extend into both screens along the right side. Either half of the meter could be gone, gone, gone, but you're both still fighting until the whole thing is empty. It refills after every battle (counting a chain reduction battle as a single one). The bar itself is green, with empty sections of bar as gray. Bosses also have a life meter that depletes from each side of the screen and has a second, yellow bar over the green one. The colors for bosses go farther, too.
  • Players can easily be confused by the life bar. It's shared by both Neku and his partner... but the gap between the two screens is not counted in the bar. If you do poorly with the top-screen character, the life bar will fall into the bottom screen, and if you do poorly with Neku, it will rise into the top screen. So, you can't ignore one of the screens because it will still kill you. The characters do make specific comments when their portion of the life meter is exhausted.
• World of Horror has Stamina, a measure of the protagonists physical health, alongside Reason, a measure of the protagonists mental health. If it reaches zero, then the protagonist dies, or goes insane, while reality crumble as an Old God awakens.
• Wulverblade: The Player Character's life bar(s) appear(s) in the top-left corner of the screen, enemy soldiers' life bars appear in the top-right corner of the screen, and the boss' life meter takes up the bottom of the screen.
• Ever since Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain and WWE Day of Reckoning (at least), the WWE-based Professional Wrestling games on consoles have had a variant on the health meter: it's represented by a humanoid figure with four sections (head, torso, both arms, both legs). As each region gets worked over, the meter goes from no damage to, normally, yellow-orange-red. Submission holds have better chances if you're working them on a red region, and if the head is red (on a male), certain headshots will cause bleeding.
• In the X-Wing series, your ship's status is indicated with a colored silhouette of your fighter, that changes from green, to yellow, to red as the hull takes damage. Additionally, in fighters with deflector shields (that is any of them but the standard TIE fighters, Interceptors, and bombers), each shield facing is represented by an arc that goes through the same color progression and dim as they're depleted. Once the shield arc is gone, that shield has collapsed and incoming fire will strike the main hull. Shields can also be doubled on one or both arcs if provided with enough power, further increasing the fighter's health. Only the shields can be recharged during a mission. Hull damage cannot be repaired.
• The Yakuza series uses a standard health meter, but Judgment places a slight twist on its function: taking damage from particularly powerful attacks will cause a portion of your health meter to break, reducing the amount of health you can recover from items until you see a doctor or use a medkit.
• Zombie Claus: The Player Character have a health bar, but it can only be viewed in the pause menu.

Non-Video Game Examples:

Anime And Manga

• Fights taking place under the regulation of the DSAA in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid use the Crash Emulate system, which not only gives characters health bars, but simulates the pain that they would feel were they not under its protection (such as concussions or broken bones). For some reason, Spin-Off series ViVid Strike! does not use Crash Emulate despite all the fights being in DSAA regulated tournaments. This results in characters receiving actual injuries, like Mirua's ribs getting shattered.
• In Magical Girl Site, the girls' magical powers are Cast from Lifespan. They each have an emblem on their skin that fades further with each use. After it depletes completely, the magical girl will die.
• Contest Battles in Pokémon: The Series feature one, but it's not limited to the physical state of the trainer's Pokémon. Rather, it's their performance and style in battle. After a time limit, whoever has the most points advances to the next round/wins the contest.
• Sword Art Online, taking place in VRMMO games, naturally has these. In the Aincrad arc, the HP meter's presence is an ominous reminder of the player's potential mortality, as a game over in SAO means death in real life.
• Duelists in Yu-Gi-Oh! have meters to keep track of their life points.

Fan Works

• We Are All Pokémon Trainers,
  • Pallad the shiny Metagross is unique through having his health represent as an actual life bar, rather than in prose like most of the other Pokémon.
  • Zrone's Sectopod, a giant spider-like robot, uniquely also comes with a life bar.

Films - Animated

• In Happy Heroes 2: The Battle of Planet Qiyuan, the participants of the Supermen race are all given devices that show their own personal HP meter; if they deplete it completely, they're out of the race. Scriptwriter S. (actually series creator Huang Weiming in disguise) is unfortunate enough to have a bug drain his whole meter and knock him out of the competition before it even starts.
• Near the end of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The Tiger Prowess, the wolves and goats battle the Tigbot, a giant tiger mech serving as the power source for Lord Japper's amusement park. Throughout the entire sequence, every time the Tigbot is visible on-screen, it has a health bar which slowly depletes as the goats and wolves attack it.

Literature

• Dungeon Crawler Carl can see health bars for both allies and enemies, as long as he's in an area that gives him access to the dungeon interface (ie when he's not being pulled out of the dungeon for talk show broadcasts). They shift from green to yellow to red as more damage is inflicted.

Live-Action TV

• Inspector Koo: A gag. Koo Kyung-yi is both a Drunken Master and a video game fiend. After a nearly comatose Kyung-yi chugs a beer, a Life Energy graphic appears, and fills up to the top.
• In Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, all of the Riders have this. Known as the Rider Gauge, it is the energy bars that are located on the Rider's chests. The bar gets decreased in response to taking damage and increased after picking up a Recovery token. They also sound a Critical Annoyance warning when they get low. If the bar drops to zero, the Rider(s) will die, but there's an emergency function that will forcibly de-transform the Rider to prevent this from happening. Kuroto Dan/Kamen Rider Genm gets around this by using a Survival Horror game to give himself the power of undeath, allowing him to fight with an empty gauge. Said form also has a jammer that disables the emergency rescue function, which allowed him to murder Kiriya Kujo/Kamen Rider Lazer. Eventually, Ex-Aid uses his Mid-Season Upgrade to hack Kuroto's powers, restoring his lifebar and rendering him mortal again.
• The TV adventure game show Knightmare represents player health with an animated graphic of a helmeted head. As the player's health decreases (which happens continually, to keep the player from dawdling too long), pieces of the helmet fall away, then pieces of the skin revealing the skull underneath, and finally the skull itself breaks apart, leaving two floating eyeballs. For a kids' TV show, this was some pretty hefty Nightmare Fuel. See for yourself.

Magazines

• In Cracked #297, focusing on Street Fighter, M. Bison's Life Meter goes down easily when the handicap setting is set to handicapped. Not so funny considering the death of Raúl Juliá.

Pinball

• The saucers in Attack from Mars have life bars which once depleted, open up the hole to destroy the saucer. In the Video Mode, the mothership has a life counter.
• The Champion Pub has the player fighting various opponents, both of which have life bars. You start out with three points and have to get more by training; filling it up completely lets you start a fight.
• Several Digital Pinball Tables designed by Zen Studios feature life meters near the bottom of the table, typically for the main character of the table. All three tables based on Bethesda video games (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Fallout and DOOM) have one placed near the left flipper, as well as their Alien: Isolation adaptation and Zen's own original table Epic Quest, which conversely have the meter placed near the right flipper.
• In Foo Fighters (2023), the last two phases of "The Final Battle" are presented as actual fights, giving each combatant a life bar. The heroes' drains over time while the villain's drains when the player makes certain shots.
• Guns N' Roses (Jersey Jack): The mode "Thirst for Carnage" includes life meters as part of its emulation of a Fighting Game UI, with the goal being to deplete the Dirty Robot's health by making shots.
• Hyperball, a Shoot 'Em Up pinball game, requires the player to defend his base from attacking lightning bolts. The game ends when all of his "Energy Centers" are destroyed.
• Capcom's unreleased Kingpin has the Power Meter, which is built up during regular play by making Power-Up shots. At the end of the last ball, the game enters "Sudden Death", where play continues while it runs down, with the flippers becoming slower and weaker as it decreases. Making more Power-Up shots add more Power and playtime, but once it's depleted, the flippers die and the game ends.
• In Stern's Star Trek, the Vengeance is shown with a Life Meter during "Vengeance Multiball"; it takes damage based on how many points the player scores.

Web Comics

• Awful Hospital has the traditional hearts for Fern.
• An interesting variation from 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.
• Latchkey Kingdom has one appear for Willa on the wall of a Boss Room in the chapter "Jinx" (and never again).
• Parodied rather well at the climax of Problem Sleuth. 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 Finishing Move, 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.
• Twisted Tropes: Deadpool fights Mr Bison by literally cutting his health bar, to his annoyance.
• Yokoka's Quest: A Life Meter and Mana Meter are shown for each character in Yokoka's and Mao's parties on RPG-style status screens between chapters.

Web Original

• In the Original Character Tournament Sanctum OCT, every contestant has one above their heads, which is visible to other contestants. Justified because they're in a virtual reality tournament of sorts.

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