Fallback weapon

Tools concept

Player has a basic weapon, attack, or other equivalent that goes largely unused except in emergencies when ammo for primary weapon(s) runs out. Commonly too weak to use as primary weapon though and equally commonly tends to have unlimited ammo if ranged.

246
games
32
platforms

Alternate names: Emergency weapon, Backup weapon

Related:
* Unlimited ammo - makes existence of emergency weapons pointless.
* Energy regeneration - may cause above.
Players commonly start with this but gain better weapons very soon (usually depending on the genre how fast).

Also cases of infinite supply of darts, throwing stars, arrows, bolts, or similar. Thrown weapons that return included, unless they can get stuck or otherwise fail to return (and not because of a bug).

If ammo count is shown somewhere, it usually holds the infinity symbol () instead of any real count.

Weapon with these properties gained late in the game does NOT count.

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Games by year

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The first Fallback weapon video game was released on November 16, 1986.

SNK, Sega and Eidos Interactive published most of these games.

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Platforms

Windows 93
Linux 41
Mac OS X 18
MS-DOS 14
X360 13
PS2 12
PS3 9
Xbox 6
Neo-Geo 5
C64 4
Wii 3
PS 3
BeOS 2
GameCube 2
NES 2
PSP 2
Mac OS Classic 2
Amiga 1
Internet Only 1
Android 1
Wii U 1
N64 1
32X 1
Jaguar 1
BSD 1
Pandora 1
PS4 1
Xbox One 1
SNES 1
Master System 1

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