History Main / OneBulletAtATime

* One of the many annoying gameplay mechanics in ''DeadlyTowers'' was having to attack with slow-moving throwing swords, of which only one could normally be on screen at a time. The Double Shot allowed you to have two swords on screen, and so did the Parallel Shot except they had to be fired at the same time.

* This becomes a serious problem in Starcraft when too many units are fighting at the same time. projectile weapons will end up failing and the battle comes to a grinding halt, because noone is hitting noone.

** ''Game/MegaMan'' can only have up to 3 bullets on screen at a time. Some special weapons in the sequels only allow one of its projectiles on the screen (e.g. Ice Wall). In the later games, you can even buy an upgrade to increase it to five shots on screen at a time.

** ''MegaManLegends'' has this as a stat for guns called Energy which is the number of bullets on screen, while Rapid is how fast it can shoot said bullets.

* In ''DissidiaFinalFantasy'', [[FinalFantasyII The Emperor's]] primary means of HP-destroying offense[[hottip:+: There are two stats in the game, Bravery and HP. Bravery offense drains the opponent's Bravery and adds it to yours, HP offense deals damage to HP equivalent to the character's Bravery stat and is the only way of actually killing an opponent.]] is Flare, an extremely large PainfullySlowProjectile that makes up for it by strong homing and staying on the screen a very long time. There can only ever be two on the screen at once, presumably for reasons of game balance rather than technical limitations; if The Emperor could spam Flare, given its homing and duration, he could completely shut down the opponent with zero effort on the player's part.

* ''[[TeamFortressClassic Team Fortress]]'' only allows eight pipebombs active at once. This limitation was added because some players tried filling the entire level with them to kill all hostiles at once; that and you'd probably hit the upper limit of ~600/768 entities in the original ''VideoGame/{{Quake}}'' engine. As such, this limit prevents spamming meant to kill off a full team in one swoop.
** Also true for [[TeamFortress2 the sequel]]. The Sticky Launcher can still only place 8 bombs. If you shoot any more, first ones start detonating in sequence. The second launcher available, The Scottish Resistance, can have 14 bombs out at once, but will only detonate the ones you are actually aiming at when pulling the trigger. Other projectiles in the game (such as rockets, arrows, flares and ''syringes'') are only limited by their reload rate.

** Also true for [[TeamFortress2 the sequel]]. The Sticky Launcher can still only place 8 bombs. If you shoot any more, first ones start detonating in sequence. The second launcher available, The Scottish Resistance, can have 12 bombs out at once, but will only detonate the ones you are actually aiming at when pulling the trigger. Other projectiles in the game (such as rockets, arrows, flares and ''syringes'') are only limited by their reload rate.

* The shareware platform game ''SecretAgent'' also uses this. In fact, one of the power-ups is an upgrade which allows you to have ''two'' bullets at the screen at once.

* ''TeamFortress'' only allows eight pipebombs active at once. This limitation was added because some players tried filling the entire level with them to kill all hostiles at once; that and you'd probably hit the upper limit of ~600/768 entities in the original ''VideoGame/{{Quake}}'' engine. As such, this limit prevents spamming meant to kill off a full team in one swoop.

* In ''CaveStory'' the number depends on the weapon. This also meant the Blade at level 2, which there can only be one on the screen at a time, deals insane amounts of damage in ''very'' close range (moreso than its level 3 version, whose projectiles don't disappear on contact) but there isn't anything outstanding otherwise.

* One of the many annoying gameplay mechanics in ''DeadlyTowers'' was having to attack with slow-moving throwing swords, of which only one could be on screen at a time.

* Alive and well in all it's FakeDifficulty in the FunOrb game ''StarCannon''; in the second level, your bullets are the last priority for the game, after floating space debris and (sometimes undodgeable) enemy swarms. Your firepower is reduced to about 1/3 of normal...if you're lucky.

* ''TeamFortress'' only allows eight pipebombs active at once. This limitation was added because some players tried filling the entire level with them to kill all hostiles at once; that and you'd probably hit the upper limit of ~600/768 entities in the original ''Game/{{Quake}}'' engine. As such, this limit prevents spamming meant to kill off a full team in one swoop.

* This happens to banana peels and the like in ''MarioKart''; the old ones disappear as new ones are placed.

** Also applies to ''SuperMarioWorld''.

* ''TeamFortress'' only allows eight pipebombs active at once. This limitation was added because some players tried filling the entire level with them to kill all hostiles at once; that and you'd probably hit the upper limit of ~600/768 entities in the original {{Quake}} engine. As such, this limit prevents spamming meant to kill off a full team in one swoop.

Guns in some games (space shooters especially) have a wildly fluctuating reload rate that suspiciously appears to be tied to the number of its bullets that are still on the screen. As soon as the bullet hits a wall or enemy, or [[BehindTheBlack leaves the screen]], another one is free to shoot.

* Most FightingGames, more often than not, allow a character only one projectile on the screen at once. There are exceptions aplenty, but for the most part, it's limited to one for the sake of game balance (to allow the other player ample opportunity to defend or counter).

* In ''{{Metroid}} Fusion'', you can only have three beam attacks, two missiles, and three bombs active on screen at once. The beam limit usually can't be noticed unless you are falling and firing down, so it rarely interferes with gameplay. The missile limit is also hardly noticeable in that, early on, you won't have many missiles, so you'll be firing each one carefully, rather than firing them rapidly and potentially wasting them. By the time you have more missiles to work with, your upgrades will have reduced the rate of fire of your missiles, making the limit much less noticable.

** ''MegaMan'' can only have up to 3 bullets on screen at a time. Some special weapons in the sequels only allow one of its projectiles on the screen (e.g. Ice Wall). In the later games, you can even buy an upgrade to increase it to five shots on screen at a time.

*** MegaMan Legends has this as a stat for guns called Energy which is the number of bullets on screen, while Rapid is how fast it can shoot said bullets.

* ''CaveStory'', the number depends on the weapon. This also meant the Blade at level 2, which there can only be one on the screen at a time, deals insane amounts of damage in ''very'' close range (moreso than its level 3 version, whose projectiles don't disappear on contact) but there isn't anything outstanding otherwise.

* ''{{Centipede}}''.

* A sprite-limit example: Milon's Secret Castle has keys which appear as sprites. If too many sprites (such as enemies) as already on the screen, the key won't be drawn; you have to clear out some of the enemies, leave the screen, and come back for the key to appear.
* Almost any FPS game out there. Besides old bullet holes vanishing to make room for new ones, blood splatters are also affected when old blood is erased for new blood and dead bodies vanish when more and more new ones keep piling up.
** Since the polygonial era, sure. Back when corpses were sprites they were a lot cheaper, and so corpses in 2.5D era shooters are likely to linger. (By the point you're texture mapping, lighting, and raycasting, a single point co-ordinate and some straightforward scaled blitting is pretty marginal.)
** For a more realistic example, TeamFortress only allows eight pipebombs active at once. This limitation was added because some players tried filling the entire level with them to kill all hostiles at once; that and you'd probably hit the upper limit of ~600/768 entities in the original {{Quake}} engine. As such, this limit prevents spamming meant to kill off a full team in one swoop.
** CaptainObvious also mentions that {{Descent 2}} only allows you to control one guided missile at a time. You might be able to release control (having it home in to a visible target automatically) and fire another one while it is in flight, but you might as well use Homing Missiles instead. This is echoed in HalfLife and its sequel, where you can't reload your RocketLauncher if you are guiding the projectile.
*** In HalfLife it's a pretty valid reason as the laser that the rocket hones in on is pointing where the launcher is, and reloading requires you to essentially point the launcher elsewhere.
*** More to the point, the series has a limit to the amount of mobile objects allowed in its level. You can find this out in Descent 2 by dropping (not firing!) all of your missiles one by one, which will eventually make the game unable to create more moving things. That ''includes'' laser fire. ''This'', incidentally, is why certain powerups in the game disappear after time.
** ''{{Left 4 Dead}}'' has a rare enemy version of this trope. The game can only have about 40 common infected in the game at any given time, so once they are far enough away from the survivors, they are taken out of the game so new zombies can be put in. Unfortunately, this leads to the most effective way to play the game being to run straight through, so that all the zombies are behind you and not in front of you.
* Ditto for skid marks in racing games.

* Some games subvert this trope by raising the bar with an in-game powerup:

** LaMulana has a ring that gives an additional projectile on the screen.

* StarFleetBattles, a board game, has an upper limit on the number of drones a vessel may fire. Vessels equipped with drones can have up to 6 in use, while vessels designed to use drones may fire 12. Vessels that cannot fire drones can control up to 3. Damage to sensors of a craft can also reduce the number of available drones.
** StarTrek: Starfleet Command, based on the aforementioned board game, doesn't allow transferring control of drones to other vessels, and doesn't reduce the maximum number of drones as sensors get damaged. This causes a fixed, per-vessel limit.
* The {{Lemmings}} clone ''{{Creepers}}'' allowed a limited number of deployed items per level; this varies based on the mission, and you need to remove old items before using them again.

* Alive and well in all it's FakeDifficulty in the FunOrb game StarCannon; in the second level, your bullets are the last priority for the game, after floating space debris and (sometimes undodgeable) enemy swarms. Your firepower is reduced to about 1/3 of normal...if you're lucky.

* ''{{Genetos}}'' gives you two bullets at a time with the first ship (taken almost directly from ''SpaceInvaders''), and five with the second (modeled after ships in late-eighties games), then abandons the trope as you move closer to the modern day.

Most examples are OlderThanTheNES, and outside of {{retraux}} games, it's subjectively [[DiscreditedTrope discredited]] at this point; the replacement is a firing rate, which prevents this from becoming an issue beyond a limited scope. The [[TropesAreNotBad upside]] to this trope is that it can encourage players to get closer to enemies to do more damage, creating a risk\reward balance, or to prevent a certain tactic from being used exclusively.

Most examples are OlderThanTheNES, and it's subjectively [[DiscreditedTrope discredited]] at this point; the replacement is a firing rate, which prevents this from becoming an issue beyond a limited scope. The [[TropesAreNotBad upside]] to this trope is that it can encourage players to get closer to enemies to do more damage, creating a risk\reward balance, or to prevent a certain tactic from being used exclusively.

->-- instruction sheet for ''Apeiron'' (a shareware ''{{Centipede}}'' clone by Ambrosia Software)

* Berserk for the Atari 2600 does this too. You can fire rapidly as long as it's point blank (do it against a wall up close for THE single most irritating sound you will ever hear in life.) Granted, it WAS the Atari 2600.
* Space Invaders, also for the Atari 2600, had a one-shot limit. There was a trick to get two: Hold the RESET switch and turn on the game, then let it go. Double shots. Cheat or [[GoodBadBugs glitch]]? Nobody may ever know.
* Several cases of this appear in the ''TotalWar'' series. Most importantly, you can only control up to 20 units in a battle, with any extra units (reinforcements) waiting just outside the battlefield and will enter if one of your units is destroyed or flees the combat zone. The limit can be "broken" by allowing a [[ArtificialStupidity friendly-AI]] to control the extra troops, in which case you can have more than 20 on your side but can't control them all. In addition, corpses and projectiles adhere to some limits, although there appears to be some dynamic process involved: using the "huge" unit scale, most modern computers can draw thousands of dead bodies on the battlefield at the same time (leading to scenes of massive death), and also calculate the flightpath of hundreds of arrows simultaneously. This can lead to beautiful scenes at nighttime with thousands of archers unleashing volleys of fire arrows on the enemy lines. However, on a weaker computer, some of the arrows may not be created at all. ThisTroper isn't sure whether the game compensates for this (maybe by making the arrows that DO get shot a damage bonus).

* The original {{X-Wing}} could only manage a handful of ships at a time, hence having arbitrary limits on the number of [=TIEs=] one could expect to face, allowing the tactic of only ''damaging'' opposing fighters, which would then return to their mother ship before a new squadron was launched, leaving you time to complete the mission in leisure. It's sequels, TIEFighter and [[{{X-WingVsTIEFighter}} X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter]] provided for increasingly larger fighter squadrons until [[{{X-WingAlliance}} X-Wing Alliance]] which allowed for thirty-two fighters on a side in a single furball.
* The ''KarateKid'' game for the NES had this with the regular enemies; They would keep coming until two of them were on the screen. As the enemies are usually slower than you, you could wait until two are on screen, get hit once, move past them and then simply keep going as long as you didn't let them fall back enough to leave the screen.

* ''TheLegendOfZelda'' had an upper limit to the amount of SwordBeam[==]s and arrows the player could unleash at a time.

* The first ''DukeNukem'' game (the 2D one) limited you to only one energy bolt onscreen at a time, upgradeable to four by way of powerups.