Oh and Sonic too...

Now that I sit down to consider it, Sonic the Hedgehog had a pretty neat take on the whole health system too. Not only did rings represent your health, at least to the extent that to have rings was to stay alive. But rings were also the monetary system for the game, though in this sense by "monetary system" I mean the way in which the player can accrue extra live. In retrospect it was a super forgiving life system, as you only needed one ring to continue to survive (considering the breakneck speeds one can attain in sonic, having a health system where it is easy to get back on ones feet quickly was very important), but at the same time to flourish (especially back on the Sega Genesis, where your lives were very limited) one needed to become a friggin savant at collecting the things without losing them. Thus newer players are given a good chance at not dying repeatedly, and experienced players are rewarded by having a nice buffer of extra lives once they reached the later, less forgiving levels. This my friends, is a good way to go about designing a video game (or at least one aspect of one). Anyway, blah blah rant rant. Feel free to comment if you can think of any other games that use a unique health system!