A video game trope: an item which, if attacked with a weapon before being picked up, changes in some way, often (though not always) becoming more useful. Sometimes successfully pulling it off requires dexterity, lest the item be destroyed instead; thus it offers the player a greater reward in exchange for risk. In other cases, the pick-up rotates between a selection of effects each time the pickup is attacked.
May count as Permanently Missable Content, if grabbing the item without shooting it first (something easy to do in the kind of game where you pick up things by touch alone) means what the item becomes can no longer be collected for the rest of the game.
A variant is when you can pick up a powerup, or instantly activate its function, by shooting it from a distance without the need to touch it.
Essentially the benign brother of Destroyable Items.
For pickups that attack you, see Chest Monster. See also Pickup Hierarchy.
Examples:
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Beat Em Up
- Large food and bonus items in Knights of the Round can be struck to turn them into smaller ones for easier division among multiple players. Though this may occasionally yield much better items as well, such as extra lives.
First Person Shooter
- Rise of the Triad: A Priest Porridge is a minor health pickup. If a missile explodes near the porridge, it turns into a "Priest Porridge Hot" which restores more health.
- In Redneck Rampage shooting TNT sticks and crates (which are normally pickups you can carry around and use as weapons) causes them to explode.
Hack And Slash
Platform Game
- Duke Nukem II
- When blasting open an item crate, you can occasionally come upon a live turkey, which restores a pip of health when picked up. When shot, it turns into roast turkey, which restores two pips. The turkey moves very quickly, though, so the player has to be quick on the trigger to roast it. Duke Nukem has the same mechanic, except the "live turkeys" are just turkey drumsticks.
- Shooting a can of soda (a minor health pickup) causes it to rocket upwards. If you manage to grab it before it smashes into the ceiling, you get a decent score bonus, but no health. The six pack can be shot as well, and will just explode for a modicum of points, so it's best saved for an emergency. Either way, be careful of bombs if you're low on health: the fire waves will have the same effects as shooting the cans.
- Some levels in Crystal Caves have five eggs scattered throughout. Shooting an egg instead of picking it up turns it into a letter. If all five letters are collected, the player receives a large score bonus. (The uncracked eggs are worth 1000 points each, while the individual letters are just 100 points each without the bonus for all five.)
- In Mega Man ZX any large powerup can be carved into several smaller powerups of different types using a bladed weapon. So if you didn't need all that health or weapon energy, or you just don't care about 64 more E-Crystals at the moment, get out a saber.
- Shantae: In Shantae: Half-Genie Hero and Shantae and the Seven Sirens, abilities can be found which let Shantae's hair whip turn red gems into life-restoring Hearts and green gems into mana-restoring magic pickups.
- In most Super Mario Bros. platformers, shooting an enemy with a fireball turns it into a coin.
- In The Simpsons: Bart Simpson's Escape from Camp Deadly, there's a skull in a cave that turns into a Krusty head 1-up if you shoot it. If you touch it while it's still a skull, you die.
- In Mitsume ga Tooru, shooting coins will eventually turn them into larger coins that are worth more.
- Hitting life-restoring fruit in Plok enlarges them, which causes them to restore more health when picked up. For specific fruits, hitting them after they reach their maximum size causes them to warp Plok to a bonus level, but for others, it just destroys the fruit.
- In the punching-focused Shatterhand, striking an Alpha chip will switch it to Beta and vice versa. Useful if you have a specific combination you want to try. Attacking money bags will release money and is the only way to get cash from them.
Real-Time Strategy
- Warcraft III: Items can be attacked to destroy them, if there's no other option to prevent an item from falling into enemy hands.
Roguelike
- In Downwell, the Reverse Engineering item allows you to change a gun mod into a different one once by shooting it.
Shoot Em Up
- A frequent Shoot 'Em Up trope is having item powerups cycle through various items as they are shot.
- The bells in TwinBee do different things based on color. Shooting them changes their color.
- Such bells also appear in Parodius.
- In the scrolling Shoot 'Em Up Flying Tigers II, shooting the weapon pickups causes them to cycle through the various weapons.
- In Capcom's 1942 game series, shooting Power-Up weapons causes them to cycle through various weapon types (and an energy boost).
- In Atomic Robo-Kid, shooting the power-up crystals makes them bounce while cycling through the various types.
- The bells in TwinBee do different things based on color. Shooting them changes their color.
- In the Retro Game Challenge shooter game "Star Prince" you can activate a Smart Bomb by shooting powerups rather than collecting them.
Other
- In the Worms series, weapons and health occasionally drop from the sky in crates. If the crates are shot, they explode, showering the surrounding area and worms with napalm.
