That reminds me of Legend of the Mystical Ninja, where yo-yos were the most upgraded awesome final-secret weapons in the game.
Two games right off the top of my head, both for NES.
Metal Gear
Mines, grenades, remote-control rockets, plastic explosives, and a myraid of other tools…and EVERY ONE OF THEM served a purpose. Every one, even those that looked useless at first glance. Wait, you’re telling me I have to get those feeble mines or that clumsy grenade launcher? Yep. Every weapon, every item, absolutely required and used at some point.
Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest
An incredible variety of weapons, the widest I’ve seen in any console game, and all of them at least fairly useful. The weapons are so integral to the game, in fact, you actually measure your progress by them. And the later ones pack a punch: The Flame Whip is the most powerful (and coolest) whip I’ve ever seen in a Castlevania game, and nothing, nothing can withstand the overwhelming killing ability of the Gold Knife. The only (possibly) bad thing about this is that by the time you face Dracula, you’re so powerful that beating him is a complete cake walk.
You never needed the machine gun to finish the original Metal Gear. Infact, I NEVER even use it.
I’ve always been a fan of the rocket launcher from Bionic Commando, which I refer to as “the gun that you point at whatever you want to die”…it even kills BOSSES in one shot! Also, who doesn’t love the Contra Spread Gun, which fills the whole screen with bullets. Even better was the Flame Thrower from Contra 3, which would destroy anything within its stream.
The weirdest weapon (aside from everything in Zombies Ate My Neighbors) was probably the vacuum cleaner that Marge hits enemies in the Simpsons arcade game.
“You want to wash wang? Or you want to watch Wang wash wang?”
“Oh, you half the man you used to be!”
“Oh, sprit personality!”
Holy crap, how can anyone have a thread about Rise of the Triad and not mention Drunk Missiles! Easily the best weapon in the game.
After that, I’d argue for UT2003 as well.
Half-Life is also good. Bioshock is good.
Duke Nukem had all around good weapons.
I’m also partial to the weapons in Halo 3, there is a pretty fun mix there, particularly if you include vehicles.
The War Bow in Mount & Blade is a potent mix of violent and mastery-based gratification. No other weapon in any game comes close to bringing me the satisfaction found in walking accross a finished battlefield and counting the corpses of knights with my red-fletched arrows stuck in their backs.
(Or throats, necks, armpits, knee-joints, eyes, mouths, nostrils or shoulder joints. And in some cases, all of them)
No love for the Spoon dagger from Final Fantasy 2?
All things considered, I think I have to go with Postal 2.
A very generous flame-simulation system allowed you to use molotov cocktails, and even cans of gasoline, to light things up. With the latter, in fact, you could pour the gasoline on the ground (or a person), then toss a match in it to light it. With a little work, you could pretend you were “The Crow” and leave a pictographic calling card at your scenes of bloody vengeance.
Add to that, it’s one (possibly the only) FPS I know of that allows chemical or biological weapons. Toss said weapon (a diseased cow head, by default. Some mods are more versitile), and the “grenade” will leave a lingering trail of miasma in the air. Anyone caught in it will run off, screaming…then, within a minute or so, collapse, start vomiting blood, and die. “Look at me, I’m Fritz Haber!” 
Melee weapons are sweet, too…forget kicking, butt-stroking, or punching someone in close quarters…when you can use a baton, or a shovel. Or a machete (with the chance of taking someone’s arm off), scythe, baseball bat, or a sledge hammer.
And that’s not even counting the add-on weapons in the first expansion pack, and one of the more famed mod/total conversions. The latter added double-barreled sawed-offs, Colt revolvers, bug-spray flamethrowers, and a chainsaw. (It also added a sniper rifle that, pretty uniquely, fired projectiles that were affected by gravity, and didn’t reach the target instantly. You actually had to adjust for bullet drop, and lead moving targets. For an unofficial mod to an ultraviolent, low-brow humor shooter, I thought that was pretty damn impressive. Classy, even.)
“I live again?”
“I live again!”, straight out of Army of Darkness (just like half the other quotes in that game).
In the first game you have a gun that can turn enemies into chickens. Once I got that it was so fun I basically used only that. In the second you can turn them into sheep. The third lets you duckify enemies. Size Matters lets to turn enemies into cows. If I recall the latest one has a cow bomb.
You also have a Groovatron, a device that makes all your enemies dance. In some you can throw bee hives at enemies and they get stunk to death. In the first one you can toss little balls which spew forth 4 little robots with maniacal laughs who track down enemies and then blow themselves up. Tons of fun weapons throughout the series.
I loved the RYNO II though. It’s a kill everyone missile launcher. You can just mow enemies down. It makes it too easy but it’s so much fun when you first get it.
The online game at Adult Swim Viva Caligula allows you to use your own penis to stun people.
I’m going to call upon the old-school games here: Dig-Dug with its air pump. Yes, seriously: You killed bad guys by overinflating them (when you weren’t dropping rocks on them).
I never seem to peer into this forum, but I did today.
When I read this thread title, the first thought that went through my head was “those launchers from ROTT - those were the days…”
Of course, that’s what the OP was about - let me tack on an additonal vote for those guns. There was one missle launcher that shot like 5 or 6 small heat seeking missles at once - I don’t remember what it was called. By far my favorite gun.
Fond memories of playing ROTT over the LAN in college oh those many years ago are now quite bright in my mind - thank’s for bringing that up!
I did have the complete version of ROTT, took me a good month to beat the whole game. In the final level, the boss got stronger when you shot at him. Just had to run around in circles for an hour until he died of exhaustion. Took me a while to figure that out. I’ve got ROTT installed on my XP desktop (it still runs under XP), but it didn’t work on the brandy-new laptop with Vista. So much for backward compatibility.
Erm… My gut reaction on reading the title was “best how?”
Assuming the OP mostly meant FPS games, I’d say Perfect Dark. It had a very large number of weapons, many of which shared basic roles (multiple pistols, multiple smg’s, multiple assault rifles, etc), but had meaningful differences in basic performance, not to mention the secondary functions. Every weapon in the game had a function besides simply shooting it, some of which where practical (pistol whipping with the revolver, grenade launcher for one of the assault rifles), and others where crazy sci-fi things (the rifle that could be turned into a sentry turret and thrown onto a wall). Aside from a few obvious things needing to be ruled out of multiplayer (the x-ray sniper rifle, the mind control gun), this wide array of weaponry made for really fun and varied matches.
I’ve always been a fan of ToeJam and Earl for Sega. I mean, the only real weapons in the game were Tomatoes and slingshots really. But all the other items you could use to help get past the baddies were GREAT! (Icarus wings, Boom boxes, Inner Tubes, Hi-Top Sneakers, and of course the Total Bummer!)
That game was just sheer brilliancy.
Enjoy,
Steven
No love fore LOUNE?
:: points BFG ::
That’s just a windows version. You have to have the original to use it. You need to copy some files from the original. ROTT is for sale at the 3DRealms site though. $15.00 and you can download it.
I was always a big fan of the Chaos mod for Quake II:
Arrows - Regular, Poison, Explosive
Buzzsaw - These suckers bounced off the walls, ceilings and floors.
Turrets - Gun and Missile
Airgun - Use that with the tech power-up, and blow a hole into someone (or, better yet, take advantage of a bug and knock 'em out of the map)
Vortex - Mass destruction. Only way to survive, even for the person using it, was to get away as quickly as possible and move out of its range, or grapple on to a wall and hope you still didn’t get sucked in.
Grenades - Flash, Poison
Happy Balls - They were a special type of grenade, really, but they bounced and followed you around, laughing as they tried to explode and kill you.
Laser Mines - It was cheating to use them at spawn points, but who cares about a little cheating when you’re playing against your officemates?
Rocket launcher - Regular, Homing (why take aim if you don’t have to?)
Kamikaze - Kill yourself, but take others out with you.
Along with the anti-gravity belt, grappling hook and tech power-ups (one each for speed, health, doubling your power, attack resistance), Chaos DM was a great mod.
The video of the pistol (forgot the name) that shoots bouncing plasma balls is what got me into the game.