Emergency Energy Tank



In most action games, there are items that refill a little bit of your health and energy as soon as you touch them. Sometimes, there are special inventory items that completely refill your health or energy, or possibly both. In RPGs, it can even remove Standard Status Effects, up to and including death. But once you use it, it's gone, and you'll have to find another one - and there's often only a finite amount of them in the whole game.

This is the Emergency Energy Tank, which can be your greatest ally when locked in battle with That One Boss, or if you're just trying to stay alive period. A very specific Sub Trope of Too Awesome to Use.

Compare Auto Revive, Heart Container.

Non-Video Game Examples

 * The Dragonball Manga/Anime series provides a non video game example with senzu beans. When a character eats it, his or her energy is completely revitalized and all injuries are healed instantly. An amusing moment occurs when Big Eater Yajirobe eats a basket full of them and gains a seriously upset stomach, with senzu bean creator Korin telling him afterwards that you're only supposed to eat one when you're not at a 100% healthy condition, and only one (they have the secondary effect of "feeding a man for ten days").
 * They've also been incorporated into some of the video game adaptations. The Dragonball Z Budokai series, for instance, features senzu bean capsules which, when equipped, basically act as a final life for your character after he or she has been KO'd, with varying degrees of vitality recovery depending on the bean equipped. The strongest is the 100% senzu bean, which restores your vitality completely, but due to being the strongest of the beans, it takes up a lot of space in your character's custom capsule inventory.
 * In the series, the villainous Cell is fully aware of how awesome these are, and proceeds to use his superior speed to just swipe them from the support character who brought them for the team's big showdown against him.

Action Adventure

 * Fairies in the Zelda series, which (depending on the game) refill some or all of your life. These fairies can be used in two different ways if you catch one. You can assign her to a button during game play and press it, or she can automatically revive you if you die, saving you from certain Game Over. Various potions can also recharge your health or mana.
 * Since the two DS versions don't have empty bottles, the fairies are replaced by Purple Potions, which you can drink manually, or Link will drink it automatically when he dies.
 * Similarly in The Legend of Zelda Links Awakening and the The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games for Game Boy and Game Boy Color respectively, you have no bottles. All three games allow you to obtain a Magic Potion which will save you from death once before vanishing.

First Person Shooters

 * The Portable Medkits from Duke Nukem 3D.
 * The Mystic Urns of Heretic basically act as this.
 * The Bacta Tanks from the Jedi Knight series are a delayed healing alternative to regular instant-effect medpacks. They are very much sought after until you learn the Force Heal magic.
 * The Blood series has the Doctor's Bag, which had enough supplies to return 100 hit points until exhausted or another is picked up.

Hack and Slashers

 * Possibly an unintentional version in the Dantes Inferno game: By spending "soul" points (rather than collecting relics a la God of War), you can purchase health and mana upgrades. When you purchase them, it also gives you the bonus of refilling the gauge to maximum. Because these upgrades can be purchased pretty much whenever you're permitted to pause, you can refill your health and mana at will in the middle of a fight, which helps to balance out the slew of incredibly cheap bosses the game throws at you.

Metroidvania

 * Jenka in Cave Story will give you a life pot about 1/4 of the way through the game. You can use it at the inventory screen to heal all of your HP, but only once, and you can only carry one at a time, so you have to go back to Jenka to get another one. It's a bit annoying how you have to go through the entire labyrinth just to get another one if you happen to have used yours during the battle with Balrog.
 * Actually, there is one other way to get one and that is on your way out of the Plantation, one of the last areas. Which is handy since that way out is a Point of No Return. You still can't have more than one, though.
 * Super Metroid had these in addition to the standard energy tanks.
 * The Metroid Prime trilogy also has the same mechanic.
 * Metroid Other M features a variation: when Samus' HP are low, she can "Concentrate" to restore a small amount of HP (normally this only restores missiles). You can also collect E-Recovery Tanks which increase both the amount of HP restored and the threshold at which this option becomes available.
 * Super Metroid included a technique similar to the Concentration mechanic known as the Crystal Flash, the stricter requirements of which can be read here. It eats up a lot of your ammunition, but fully heals you, unlike Concentration, which can only replenish a number of your Energy Tanks based on how many E-Recovery Tanks you've collected (there are only three in the game). Also, unlike the Crystal Flash, which you're safe during and happens rather quickly, you can be hurt while concentrating and it'll take a while, but the rate at which you recover health and ammunition can be improved with Accel Charge powerups.

Platform Games

 * Named after the Energy Tank item from the Mega Man series. To use it, you go to the inventory screen and select it to refill your HP--or selected weapon ammo if it's the Weapon Tank variant--to 100%. Some of the games feature a special variant (Mystery Tank or Super Tank, depending on the game) which completely refills not just your HP, but every single item in your inventory that happens to have less-than-100% energy.
 * Debuted in Mega Man 2, and famously kept until the very end when fighting AirMan.
 * The Sequel Series Mega Man X however had the rarer (four in the early games (X1-X3), and later only two) but refillable Sub Tanks instead. These are carried over to the later Sequel Series in the timeline.
 * The Mega Man ZX series allows you to have both Sub Tanks and Energy Tanks. In story, Energy Tanks are referred to as ancient technology that people have suddenly started using again for some reason and are very expensive.
 * In the Mega Man Zero series, there are Cyber Elves. They vary in function, but some can heal you partially or completely or even become Sub Tanks. Using any of the Fusion Elves (all of the ones that heal you or become a Sub Tank are Fusion Elves) even once results in them dying permanently and you receive an end of the level score penalty, however. That is, unless you're in Zero 3's Cyberspace, in which case, certain Fusion Elves are automatically activated without dying (though, none of those are of the healing variety and you're automatically penalized every time you go in there, except for one instance).

MMORPGs

 * Potions in World of Warcraft work like this. They can be used in battle, but can't be spammed due to a long cool down that affects all potion usage and doesn't start until you leave combat. As such one must know when to use potions to avoid wasting it.

Role Playing Games

 * In most Final Fantasy games, Elixirs restore all of your HP and MP, but are either not buyable or cost something obscene like 100,000 gil.
 * Even better are the half a dozen or so Megalixirs and Megaphoenixes an average player is likely to find. These are held as sacred relics and only dug into when there's a boss you know you need the boost for.
 * The Mario and Luigi series features the Max Mushroom, which completely restores a selected brother's HP, the Max Syrup, which restores all Bros. Points, the 1-Up Super, which revives a KO'd brother with max HP, and the Golden Mushroom, which restores all HP and BP.
 * Dragon Quest games have most things with Yggdrasil (or just 'World Tree') in their name. The leaves tend to revive one ally, while dew heals the party. They can usually not be bought. NPCs that give either one, which appear in some games, will not give you one if you already have one in your inventory.
 * Potions in Pokémon work this way. They range from regular Potions, which restore 50HP, up to Max Potions, which restore all HP. PP Ups exist but they're more rare. Status healers abound as well: Awakening,Paralyz Heal,Ice Heal,Antidote and Burn Heal. But it's easier to just use a Full Heal, which cures all status conditions including confusion, or a Full Restore, whcih restores HP and cures status conditions. And then you have Carbos,Proteins,Fresh Waters,Rare Candies ect for restoring health in various ways.