for some reason I wonder really hard what the first game was to have relative fixed-width lifebars

what i mean by that is

the bars can represent variable amounts of health

but the bar does not change in length

the oldest game I'm sure I've seen them in is 7th Saga

they aren't really practical on older systems because the NES does not like dealing in unusual fractions

I want to say I recall some Commodore 64 games doing it?

beats 7th saga if we can find an example

But I'd have to look into that more closely, yeah

I'm unsure if the bars in the mega man series actually represent different amounts of hp, or if bosses just take variable amounts of damage from all sources, including the buster

it's the latter, the bars have discrete pips per point of HP

nothing will ever do a fractional amount of pips of damage

as someone who has played a lot of megaman yeah

all bosses have the same amount of health, they just take different amounts of damage from everything

I assume the weapon gauges must be the same

yep

I swear metal blade uses less than a pip per shot, but i'm sure that could be accomplished by doing something like "subtract 1 every other shot"

I am admittedly not an expert