Magic satchel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Magic Satchel is a term often used in reference to computer role-playing games. It refers to the characters' ability to collect more items than a human could normally carry and store them all, seemingly within thin air. It was jokingly suggested that these characters were carrying around some kind of invisible mystical bag where they could keep everything without fear of encumbrance and could pull out any item at will.
It is suggested that while only certain people (usually female animé characters) can reach into Hammerspace itself, and can only pull out a limited selection of items, a Magic Satchel provides access to Hammerspace for anybody and can hold any item. See Bag of holding.
Typically, a magic satchel can carry any number of different items (even vehicles in some extreme cases), but only up to 99 of a single kind of item. For example, a satchel may have 99 Healing Potions and 99 Antidotes, but may not carry 198 Potions, or even 100 Potions(a number of games have a limit of 255, as this equals FF in hexadecimal). The general exception to this rule is money. A magic satchel can carry nearly any amount of money. In addition, the objects in the satchel have no weight. One can carry swords, old suits of armor, scores of healing items, a small fortune in gold (or any other currency), and a tank or two, without any strain whatsoever.
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[edit] Examples
[edit] In print media
- Doraemon, a robot cat from the eponymous manga, has a marsupium from where he extracts every kind of marvellous artifact.
- In the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing game, a magic satchel actually exists as a physical object, and is called a bag of holding. The bag's weight is fixed regardless of the amount of matter it contains. Also, the objects in the bag seem never to touch one another, even if the bag is filled to capacity. If the rules for encumbrance are used, such objects are actually necessary to get around the restrictions about what one can and can't carry. The Luggage in the Discworld series is a sentient chest, which can be used for infinite storage, and parodies the D&D convention.
- In Ranma ½, the character Mousse can hide a great deal of weapons mostly in the sleeves of his robes, but also in his feathers when in the shape of a duck. This includes knives, bombs, swords, training potties, blades, and several yards of rope and chain, all of which could not possibly fit within the confines of his clothes/feathers.
[edit] In films
- In the 1992 film Brain Donors, the character Jaques wears a magic-satchel like raincoat that seems to contain anything and everything, from a fire extinguisher to a folding office desk complete with typewriter and inflatable secretary. A messy situation occurs when Jaques is arrested and ordered to empty his pockets.
- In the film Mary Poppins, Mary has a magic bag that can store any number of items regardless of shape. The children even look under the table the bag is sitting on to see if it is a trick.
- In the live action Jim Carry film The Mask, the main character uses cartoon like applications of hammer space. One particularly memorable occasion was when he got arrested in the park and forced to empty his pockets. Among the items found were a bazooka and a sexy photo of the wife of the officer arresting him. Another scene had him pulling a large number of impressive looking guns (which turned out to be fake)out of his pockets in order to scare off an enemy.
[edit] On television
- In 24, Jack Bauer is often seen carrying a knapsack which will invariably contain whatever device he requires for the task at hand, including firearms, a spyglass, electronic listening devices, glass cutters, a ski mask, and other such devices. This bag has been referred to by fans as the "Jack Sack". In earlier seasons of the show, the trunk of Bauer's SUV performed a similar function.
- The storage compartment of the robot Bender from the Futurama animated cartoon television series acts as a magic satchel, allowing him to store his electronics, loot, alcohol, cigars and pretty much anything else he needs.
- In the popular, long-running ITV children's game show Knightmare, the role player wore an iconic satchel (or 'knapsack') in the computer-style dungeon. However, in this case the bag could only accept food to increase the player's Life Force, though this procedure changed in the programme's final series.
- Wakko Warner from Animaniacs carries a literal "gag bag", a seemingly ordinary canvas sack from which he can produce all manner of items--from the standard cartoon mallet to a fully-functioning toilet.
- Bill Smith from The Red Green Show can produce anything he needs for a given adventure from his pants, in much the same manner as Guybrush Threepwood.
- The character of Jerry on the 1990's sitcom Parker Lewis Can't Lose wears a trenchcoat from which he can instantly extract any needed item, always with the accompanying sound of a velcro attachment ripping free.
[edit] In computer and video games
- In the Infocom text adventure The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the object "that thing your aunt gave you which you don't know what it is" exhibits magic-satchel qualities; Ford Prefect's non-magic satchel also appears as an item in the game.
- Guybrush Threepwood, the main character of the Monkey Island series, stores items he picks up in his pants. The items he carries are never visible on the outside, even though they are often large.
- The character "Link" from the Legend of Zelda series also displays use of a magic satchel. In the game series he uses Hammerspace, but in the animated Legend of Zelda series Link possesses a small pouch that stores many large items otherwise impossible to carry in a bag of that size.
- Doom features a backpack item that is most certainly a magic satchel, as it enables the player to carry twice as much ammunition as before - 100 shotgun shells, 400 machinegun/pistol bullets, 100 rockets, and 600 plasma cells - as if the original limits weren't high enough already. The ability of the player to carry all of his weapons (including a chainsaw with unlimited fuel, a portable rocket launcher, and the BFG 9000) and ammunition prior to obtaining a backpack can be attributed to Hammerspace. However, the ingame representation of the backpack looks about large enough to hold two rockets.
- The vast majority of First-Person Shooter games have followed suit with Doom, allowing the player character to carry an unrealistic arsenal. A notable exception Halo: Combat Evolved only permits the player character (The Master Chief) to carry two weapons, although in a contradiction to this relatively realistic game mechanic the second weapon will disappear when not being used. The secondary weapon could conceivably be latched magnetically onto his back, however. Counter-Strike exhibits the same behavior. The introductory sequence for Serious Sam shows a total disregard for such realism, by having the player character (Sam "Serious" Stone) not only carry his complete arsenal of one knife, two pistols, and eight larger guns into battle, but also draw and fire all of them at the same time. This is not possible during the course of the game. In addition, the announcer of the arena mode in Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal will occasionally shout "Where is he keeping all these guns? I mean, come on!" during a certain mode (though his weapons appear to expand and collapse, with nantechnology cited).
- The titular characters of Super Mario Bros. 3 have the magic satchel-like ability to carry many power-up items (Stars, flowers, etc.) with them, to be triggered at will, despite the fact that most of these items activate on contact. Further, it cannot be overfilled. If it is carrying the maximum number of items, the next item stored will destroy and replace the most recently stored item ("Last in, First Out")
- In The Sims 2: Nightlife, each Sim’s “inventory” (represented in the interface as a backpack) can carry all household objects, including sofas, double beds, 42-inch TV sets, and other things much larger and heavier than the Sim him/herself. Even then, it is invisible and does not encumber the Sim in any way.
[edit] Origin
The concept of a magic satchel was early alluded to (although perhaps not conforming to this exact context) many years before its use in computer and video games, for instance as Felix the Cat's desired bag of tricks and in the Disney film Mary Poppins, where the title character has a bag from which she can seemingly produce a large number of objects, or indeed ones that significantly outsize its dimensions: for example, in one scene, Mary Poppins can be seen pulling a large lamp, complete with a shoulder-length stand, from inside her bag. Even earlier, the bag in Samuel Beckett's play Happy Days (1960) is strongly implied (though not shown) to have magic satchel-like qualities.
Even further back, in the medieval Welsh epic Y Mabinogi, Pwyll is given a magic satchel by the goddess Rhiannon; this satchel can never be filled except by a man putting his body into it. This trick is used to save Rhiannon from an unwanted Otherworld suitor.
