History Main / ScrappyWeapon

* The ''RatchetAndClank'' series was the main inspiration for this trope. The first game had a handful of weapons that were quite useful (e.g., the [[ArrowCam Visibomb Gun]], [[BoringButPractical Devastator]]) and some that were almost useless ([[VideoGameFlamethrowersSuck Pyrocitor]], [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim Taunter]]). The second game and onwards introduced leveling up weapons, further polarizing their effectiveness. It was quite easy to level up weapons that were easy to use and fairly powerful (the Negotiator and Constructo Shotgun from ''A Crack in Time'', for instance), and weapons that barely got any use (such as the wimpy Buzz Blades) would never be able to level up except on the weakest ankle-biter enemies.
** The Taunter is more of a situational weapon. It's not going to get used in every level, but in some levels, where the enemies are dumb enough to walk off cliffs, or walk into laser fences, you can use it to save some ammo. A true scrappy weapon is the Gold Morph-O-Ray. It takes away one of the original Morph-O-Ray's uses, creating ammo for the Suck Cannon. But no weapon is truly useless in the first game at least, it's just that some see a lot more use in a lot more levels than others. Same can't be said for the sequals mind. In particular, the formerly useful Visibomb gun becomes so [[Nerf nerfed]] that it goes from a most used weapon, to near useless, and the rest suffer an even worse fate.
** The Meteor Gun, the Lava Gun's upgraded form in ''Going Commando'' is another instance. The basic weapon fired a steady stream of molten rock, was one of the best guns to use when you were surrounded (hold down button, spin, watch things burn) and was generally very powerful overall. The upgrade turned it into a burning rock machine gun, which basically did the same thing as another one of your weapons (the Lancer), except it fired more slowly, had less range and shot in a low parabolic arc. Fortunately Insomniac realized what they did and changed the final upgrade to the Liquid Nitrogen Gun in Up Your Arsenal, having it keep its pretty, pretty stream of destruction all the way through the game.
* {{Pokemon}} both subverts this and plays this straight. On the one hand, there are no truly ''useless'' Pokemon. On the other hand, in terms of competitive play, there is a tier known as "Never Used (NU)". This is because they often have ''horrible'' stats and are not very good in battle. [[FanNickname HM Slaves (Such as Bibarel)]], for example, are very useful when getting around from "Point A" to "Point B" but are terrible in battle.
* There are so many cards in the ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}!'' metagame that it's hard to name examples, but half the time when you open up a booster pack you're going to come across some spell/trap cards and a few monsters that'll make you go "why did they make this?" when you look at it. Granted, some of the "weaker" cards can stand up in competitive play, but almost all of the time, "junk" cards like that are just that -- junk.
** Most of the earlier booster packs have been rendered completely this, with one or two gamebreaker cards made without line after line of limitations.
** Most of the cards in the gx era, such as the 3 or 4 weaker verisons of Wakabou (an unrestricted starter deck common) and decks liek Eheros, which seem all cool and flashy, but can be defeated by a bunch of 18k monsters and some basic removal, never mind a deck NOT from the anime.

* Meanwhile, ''Perfect Dark's'' spiritual predecessor ''{{GoldenEye}}'' had the Klobb, a weak, slow-firing, inaccurate SMG that was outclassed by literally every other automatic weapon in the game.

** In ''{{Thief}}'' enemies patrol their territory, so those mines are very useful against "metal beasts", and ones that didn't activate can be collected later. Of course, it's really useful only in few missions when those [[MechaMooks trashcan mooks]] walk around, but cannot be easily avoided or disabled by a single TrickArrow in the burner.
** Proximity Mines in [[ResidentEvil RE5]] might be considered this. Though they have some use in Story mode (usually by leading bosses and strong enemies on them), in Mercenaries they are next to useless, since you need to do melee anyway and you can't even use them to clear the mob in a pinch. No reason to bother with bosses. And in Versus, if you happen to be seen placing them, the enemy player can detonate them by shooting while you are still close. This added to the fact that good players won't be caught stepping on them anyway, since it's easy to tell the set mines from the dropped ones.

* Wanna ruin your day in a ''{{Castlevania}}'' game? Grab a Dagger. Particularly sucks in the original NES games, especially if you had the Holy Water or Boomerang.
** The Dagger's low damage is usually offset in the later games by making it the cheapest subweapon to use and sometimes giving it semiautomatic rate of fire.
*** However, they will quickly become your weapon of choice in Circle of the Moon when you are in archer mode (but ONLY in archer mode). That is because all of your subweapons get a damage boost, making it a strong weapon. The second is that the upgrade at no cost, is the homing dagger. And it is VERY useful. (ties with the cross as the cross doess more damage and hits more targets, but the dagger homes). Played straight with every other mode though where they are virtually useless. (outside of item crashes)
** A similar offender in the main weapon category is Portrait of Ruin's Blank Book. It has worse stats than Charlotte's starter weapon, even lowering some stats from unarmed. However, [[spoiler:it must be used in a quest.]]
* In ''{{Evolva}}'', the only reason for the Flame's existence was to light flammable plants, and even then, there are other weapons (like the grenade) that can light them on fire.
** Potentially even more useless is the Claw, which despite being the only unlimited ammo weapon, never really gets used except for breaking rocks once you get better weapons. It too suffers in that its purpose gets taken by future weapons (again, the grenade.)
** YourMileageMayVary. The Flame weapon seems to me the best choice for a short-range combat during the first half of the game, and it's still quite useful during the second one. All other weapons either are designed to a better use in long-range combat (such as the Spike or the Spore AKA grenade, you REALLY don't want to throw a grenade to an enemy in front of you), or run out of ammo very fast (such as Necrocyte or Electricity), what means you'll have to switch to another weapon after a short time if the fight is too long.

* Even platformers are not immune. ''Game/MegaMan'' gives us plenty of these, as noted under PowerupLetdown. The most infamous is the Top Spin from ''3,'' which only notable use is [[spoiler:destroying the final boss in one hit]], but several more have accumulated over the course of the long-running franchise...
** Interestingly, Top Spin is actually one of the better weapons in Mega Man 3... [[DifficultButAwesome if you know how to use it]] (like in a Boss Weapons Only run). You can actually one-shot a large number of enemies with it, and it's got a large amount of ammo. It's primarily considered a scrappy weapon because you need to use it at close range, because it's a horrible weapon against enemies it can't one-hit kill (thus requiring memorization to use properly) and because of an uncommon bug that can cause it to use up the entire ammo bar in a single use.
** ''10'' gives us Thunder Wool, which is nigh impossible to aim, and blows through all its ammo in 6 shots. To quote one Gamefaqs poster "Anything the Thunder Wool does, another weapon does better and for less ammo cost."
* Practice Bows in ''MountAndBlade'' if the player character is not built as an archer. You are pretty much doomed in any arena/tournament fight if you spawn with one and you aren't lucky enough to get a new weapon really quick as you can't fight at all in melee with one.
** Fixed in Warband, you will also start with a practice knife if you spawn if a bow. While it can't block, it can at least fight back and if you are strong enough disrupt attacks.
* The {{Halo}} series of games have several:
** Halo has two: the Assault Rifle and the Needler. The needler is a devastating weapon against one type of enemy, and one type of enemy only: Sentinels. Against pretty much any other target, it's useless. And Sentinels are very rare, appearing as opponents only a handful of times -- not nearly often enough to justify keeping the weapon on hand, given that you can only carry two weapons at any given time. And, pretty much any alien weapon (plasma pistol or rifle) works about as well. And the Assault Rifle just does very low damage in general, low damage against shields in particular, and has an accurate range of about a foot, if that.

** In Halo 2, the Assault Rifle was replaced by the SMG. It's an improvement, but not a huge one. And the Needler became more usable, at least when dual-wielded (a new feature in Halo 2), but they're still not exactly top-tier go-to weapons. The Brute Shot bounces its ammo, making it difficult to use outside of melee. Oh, and the Sentinel Beam's not exactly a power-house, easily the single weakest weapon in the series.

** In Halo 3, the Sentinel Beam is still fairly terrible, and the SMG's power is downgraded as part of a general nerfing of dual-wielding. The flamethrower is very difficult to use effectively, although it's hellaceous when used properly. Perhaps the scrappiest Halo 3 weapon is the Mauler, a single-handed dual-wieldable shotgun that, when dual-wielded, has less power and ammo than the shotgun at the expense of disabling use of grenades and melee. ...yeah. Its sole saving grace is a GameBreakingBug that allows you to shoot at melee at the same time, generally considered cheating and annoying as hell.
** Halo: ODST's scoped and silenced SMG was still not as powerful as the assault rifle. Its main purpose was to deplete enemy shields before switching to the scoped pistol for a fatal headshot--and for swatting [[GoddamnedBats drones]] out of the air.

* The knife from most of the ''ResidentEvil'' series was absurdly weak (usually taking several dozen stabs just to knock over the most basic of enemies), had zero range, and took up valuable inventory space, so was typically dumped in the first item box, unless you were just ''that'' good and wanted to give yourself a SelfImposedChallenge. ''[[ResidentEvilCodeVeronica Code Veronica]]'' was the first game to give it even limited usefulness, as one swipe counted as several hits, but it wasn't until ''ResidentEvil4'' made it as powerful as the handgun, just trading range for unlimited use, that it stopped being a ScrappyWeapon. A skilled player could save a lot of ammo using it. And some bosses were actually easier with the knife. The fact it no longer counted against your inventory space helped as well.
* The "Kozlice" shotgun from ''OperationFlashpoint''. It's more accurate than the average game shotgun, but that's where the good bits end. It's weak, only holds two shots (and you can only carry 10 rounds ''total'', as opposed to ''300'' for an assault rifle), and takes twice as long to reload as any of the other weapons. It'd almost be more effective if you could use it as a club.
* ''TheSaboteur'''s Terror Flamethrower. "[[VideogameFlamethrowersSuck Typical video game flamethrower]]" sums it up fairly well, with its short range and flames that cover up your field of view. It would be good for close-quarters combat in theory, except that at around the same time you gain access to an automatic shotgun with a ridiculous ammo capacity (150 rounds with a dirt-cheap upgrade) that's surprisingly effective at stopping targets well out of the flamethrower's range.

----

* ''[=~Pokémon~=]'s'' a good example as well; there are a slew of Mons that are simply unsuitable for competitive play, and some of them are too weak to even be effective against the story mode battles. Pikachu, despite being the mascot of the Pokemon world, fits in the latter category because of its frail defenses and being outclassed by other Pokemon such as Jolteon. The only way one would make a Pikachu a viable threat (at least in competitive battling) would be to give it a Light Ball, which doubles its attack stats. However, the Light Ball is a painfully rare drop (only from other Pikachu), and even then Pikachu's hardly a top-tier battler since so many more Pokemon can outspeed/damage it.
** It is very important to note, however, that Pokemon has a highly unpredictable MetaGame. Seeming [[JokeCharacter Joke Mons]] and ComMons can be important foundations to a team based on pure gimmick value. To say that any Pokemon is truly useless requires it to have absolutely no possible function at any tier of the metagame. In other words, virtually no Pokemon are useless in any way. Light Ball Pikachu is a particularly bad example, as its maximum attack is ''458'' unboosted with a Light Ball while not being pitifully slow.
*** Pikachu isn't. But Unown surely is. There is literally no combat use of Unowns simply because their statistics are ungodly poor, they have no evolution form, ridiculous to find in order to complete the dex and worst of all, they have only a single attack (they can't learn TM or HM and because they are genderless, they can't even breed for egg moves). While that one attack is still reliable (on other pokemon with need for move coverage), it still is only a single attack and it probably won't even gain STAB value for it.
*** Several Nevr Used pokemon really are useless. Pokemon in the NU tier got there from either being absoulute garbage, or having an obviously superiour alterntive (i.e, don't use Pigoet over Fearow). Then you get really fail NU pokemon that even the other NU pokemon laugh at. Beedrill, which has extremly awful stats, a horrible type, a useless trait and is out classed in everyway by Vememoth, itself a pretty lame Pokemon. Buttrefree is nearly the same, but its accuracy boasting trait makes it vaugely usable with sleep powder. Beedrill's only merit is that its a GIANT BEE and comcially pathetic.
*** A bit of an aversion there. They are only useless from a COMPETITIVE standpoint. In the main game, their benefit is that they are early game crutches that have the benefit of giving you some early options. You obviously will not have a charizard at the first gym nor will you be able to catch that [[GameBreaker Gible]] but you most certainly will have a Butterfree with confusion to kill that Onix by the time you get to it. They don't STAY useful, but they are by no means useless.

* There are so many cards in the ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}!'' metagame that it's hard to name examples, but half the time when you open up a booster pack you're going to come across some spell/trap cards and a few monsters that'll make you go "why did they make this?" when you look at it. Granted, some of the "weaker" cards can stand up in competitive play, but half the time, "junk" cards like that are just that -- junk.

* Arguably, most shooters (especially older ones) where their StandardFPSGuns ruthlessly fell prey to the SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness. In ''{{Wolfenstein 3D}}'' for example, there was no reason to ever touch the pistol or rifle once you had the chain gun.

* The Prankster Bit from ''[[{{TRON}} TRON 2.0]]'' is the game's {{BFG}} and looks pretty cool, but the energy usage is obscene, the damage is overkill against everything you fight, and you get it so late in the game that you're literally unable to fully upgrade it. It's not even worth using against the final boss due to how the game handles damage dealt to it.

** Lightball Pikachus is still awful. With the lightball his special attack doubles! Making him on par with Ampharos, except his other stats are lower, he can't take a hit and has a much smaller move pool... err yay? The only draw is that he can use Surf, but Lanturn STABS surf, and can take an actual hit

** The Taunter is more of a situational weapon. It's not going to get used in every level, but in some levels, where the enemies are dumb enough to walk off cliffs, or walk into laser fences, you can use it to save some ammo. A true scrappy weapon is the Gold Morph-O-Ray. It takes away one of the original Morph-O-Ray's uses, creating ammo for the Suck Cannon. But no weapon is truly useless in the first game at least, it's just that some see a lot more use in a lot more levels than others. Same can't be said for the sequals mind. In particular, the formerly useful Visibomb gun becomes so {{Nerfed}} that it goes from a most used weapon, to near useless, and the rest suffer an even worse fate.

** Every weapon in the game. A pistol would serve you better. The Klobb takes '''two shots''' for a HeadShot kill! In fact, there was a Max Stats (007 Mode, all enemy stats cranked up to full) run for GoldenEye's Archive level where any shot was instant death. ''Except the Klobb.'' On that note, the Klobb was pretty cool in OneHitKill mode, whatever that was called.
*** It was called {{License to Kill}}.

** Proximity Mines in RE5 might be considered this. Though they have some use in Story mode (usually by leading bosses and strong enemies on them), in Mercenaries they are next to useless, since you need to do melee anyway and you can't even use them to clear the mob in a pinch. No reason to bother with bosses. And in Versus, if you happen to be seen placing them, the enemy player can detonate them by shooting while you are still close. This added to the fact that good players won't be caught stepping on them anyway, since it's easy to tell the set mines from the dropped ones.

** Interestingly, Top Spin is actually one of the better weapons in Mega Man 3... if you know how to use it (like in a Boss Weapons Only run). You can actually one-shot a large number of enemies with it, and it's got a large amount of ammo. It's primarily considered a scrappy weapon because you need to use it at close range, because it's a horrible weapon against enemies it can't one-hit kill (thus requiring memorization to use properly) and because of an uncommon bug that can cause it to use up the entire ammo bar in a single use.

* HalfLife has a couple of scrappies.
** In Half-Life 2, the Combine pulse rifle is a souped-up SMG with a more dangerous but more fickle alt-fire and a shallow ammo pool. Given a pulse rifle magazine seems to be the size of a pog slammer, why can you only carry three of them when you can carry ten sticks of rebar, three rockets, 6 SMG magazines...?

* Even platformers are not immune. ''MegaMan'' gives us plenty of these, as noted under PowerupLetdown. The most infamous is the Top Spin from ''Mega Man 3,'' which only notable use is [[spoiler:destroying the final boss in one hit]], but several more have accumulated over the course of the long-running franchise...

** ''Megaman 10'' gives us Thunder Wool, which is nigh impossible to aim, and blows through all its ammo in 6 shots. To quote one Gamefaqs poster "Anything the Thunder Wool does, another weapon does better and for less ammo cost."

** In Halo 2, the Assault Rifle was replaced by the SMG. It's an improvement, but not a huge one. And the Needler became more usable, at least when dual-wielded (a new feature in Halo 2), but they're still not exactly top-tier go-to weapons. Oh, and the Sentinel Beam's not exactly a power-house.
*** The SMG itself became something of a scrappy weapon itself, due to its very high kickback, and relatively low maximum range. Although [[AwesomeButImpractical it was cool]] to [[GunsAkimbo dual wield]] submachine guns
*** Again, YMMV, dual wielded it could strip shields in close combat incredibly quick.
*** The Needler has since been RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap while it lost it's duel wield-ably, it's power got boosted and is far better balanced in Halo 3.

** Meanwhile, ''Perfect Dark's'' spiritual predecessor ''{{GoldenEye}}'' had the Klobb, a weak, slow-firing, inaccurate SMG that was outclassed by literally every other automatic weapon in the game.
*** And semi-automatic weapons. A pistol would serve you better. The Klobb takes '''two shots''' for a HeadShot kill! In fact, there was a Max Stats (007 Mode, all enemy stats cranked up to full) run for GoldenEye's Archive level where any shot was instant death. [[Except the Klobb.]] Though admitedly, Perfect Dark's K101313 was better than the Klobb, but only because any HeadShot is instantly fatal. On that note, the Klobb was pretty cool in OneHitKill mode, whatever that was called.

**** The Needler has since been RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap while it lost it's duel wield-ably, it's power got boosted and is far better balanced in Halo 3.

* [[HalfLife Half-Life]] 2's Overwatch Pulse Rifle. It's a powerful automatic weapon, but you can only carry three 30-round magazines of ammo for it at any one time, making it frustratingly easy to run out of ammo without constant resupply. It's also very inaccurate (even the 9mm pistol is more accurate), which further exacerbates the small ammo capacity.
** Also, the Gravity Gun, although a solid non-weapon mechanic, tended to be a frustrating weapon. Attempting to punt with it ran into three problems: a) the ammo tended to hang right in the center of your view, obscuring your target, b) flung objects traveled along ballistic arcs that could be tricky to estimate over any real range, and c) the projectile speed was so slow that nearly anything could dodge. Even [[spoiler: during the Citadel scenes, with the powered-up gravgun, it fires too slowly to effectively deal with Combine infantry, who travel in packs]].
*** Both pulse rifle and gravity gun are subversions under the right set of circumstances. When fighting Overwatch soldiers wielding pulse rifles themselves, ammo capacity isn't all that crippling--plus its still more accurate and more powerful then the SMG. The under slung grenade launcher that comes with the pulse rifle is also not without use, especially in episode 2 (its lack of sufficient ammo for it is the only thing that keeps hunters a challenge). As for the gravity gun, its difficult to use successfully as a weapon most of the time, but some areas of the game are so heavily littered with saw blades, bricks, radiators and explosive objects, that the gravity guns starts outperforming most firearms. Most of the more view blocking projectiles also serve as portable bullet cover (except the wooden and exploding ones--always make sure a barrel isn't red before picking it up under fire).

* Several weapons in your arsenal in ''{{Daikatana}}''. To sum it up: The ion blaster's shots bounced off walls and could hit you. The C4 vizatergo launched proximity mines with blast radii roughly equal to the range you'd be firing it at; if you didn't end up getting caught in the explosion, your AI "[[EscortMission helpers]]" probably would. The Shockwave launched an erratically bouncing ball that created shockwaves whenever it hit a surface... which could easily kill you. The Eye of Zeus hit every enemy in sight with lightning when the staff's eye opened, but if no enemies were on-screen, it would kill you. Nharre's Nightmare summoned a demon that, like the Eye of Zeus, would turn on you and kill you if there weren't any targets. Finally, the kineticore's shots rebound off walls and (all together, now) can hit you.

* Practice Bows in ''MountAndBlade''. You are pretty much doomed in any arena/tournament fight if you spawn with one and you aren't lucky enough to get a new weapon really quick as you can't fight at all in melee with one.

*** And semi-automatic weapons. A pistol would serve you better. The Klobb takes '''two shots''' for a HeadShot kill!

* The knife from ''ResidentEvil'' did squat unless you wanted to show off. Otherwise it was useless. That is until ''ResidentEvil4'' made it as powerful as the handgun, just trading range for unlimited use. A skilled player could save a lot of ammo using it. And some bosses were actually easier with the knife.

** This Troper begs to differ, the Pyrocitor was one of the best things to use while you were surrounded, and the Taunter was able to lure most enemies out of their hiding places, break nearby boxes a lot faster than you could with your wrench (good for exploiting a certain money making glitch), and it also increased the range of mines thrown with the Mine Glove, practically making them Glove of Doom material.