Einhänder is a horizontal scrolling shooter game released by Square Enix (then Squaresoft) in 1997, and is the company's first product in this genre. The name Einhänder is German for "one-hander", and refers to the single manipulator arm slung beneath the bellies of Einhänder fighters.

The in-game music is its own style of techno (not fitting into any particular category), composed by Kenichiro Fukui.

Storyline

The game takes place in the year 2245, a chaotic era when the Earth and the Moon are at war with each other.

The lunar city of Selene's advanced technology gave them an advantage early in the war, but Earth's greater population and resource base turned the conflict into a stalemate. In response, Selene began sending advanced one-man tactical fighters on suicide missions against Earth. These Einhänder fighters repeatedly broke Earth's defenses, and in time their name became a synonym for the god of death.

The player takes on the role of an anonymous Einhänder pilot during his first, and most likely last, mission.

Basic gameplay

The player chooses from five different fighters (three are standard, two are secret), each requiring a different fighting style.

Each of the standard ships is equipped with a default machine gun and a manipulator arm. Unlike other scrolling shooters, Einhänder does not feature power ups that improve the player's default weapon. Instead, the player can use the manipulator arm to steal detachable enemy weapons, called gunpods, once the enemies carrying them have been destroyed. Gunpods have a limited amount of ammo, and are discarded once the supply is used up. Luckily, they are very common, so the player can pick and choose the gunpods best suited to his or her current situation.

Gunpods can be switched between an overhead and below-the-belly position, causing them to fire at different angles (the Vulcan gunpod, for example, fires straight ahead while in the overhead position but at a 30 degree angle in the bottom position), or in certain cases, backwards. Together with the variety of gunpods available, this allows for a large number of creative strategies.

The fighter can also maneuver at five different speeds, adjustable by the player.

The game offers three difficulty settings: Easy, Normal and Hard.

For its age, Einhänder is graphically very impressive, making full use of Square Enix's 3-d rendering capabilities. Fighters and enemies are represented with polygonal models instead of 2-d sprites. While much of the fighting takes place in two dimensions, the camera often dramatically pans to the side during a boss fight or while entering a new area, and enemies maneuver out of the player's line of fire and into the foreground and background. Pre-rendered full motion videos are sometimes used to illustrate pivotal points in the plot.

The different ships

Standard ships

• Astraea FGA Mk. I - This fighter is capable of holding two gunpods at a time and firing them simultaneously. When two gunpods are equipped, the second one replaces the default machine gun. Gunpods on the top position of the Astraea always fire horizontally (or vertically for the Hedgehog), unlike on the Endymion ships.

• Endymion FRS Mk. II - This fighter can store up to three gunpods, but only one can be equipped at a time. The machine gun and gunpod fire independently.

• Endymion FRS Mk. III - This fighter has two default machine guns instead of one, but it can only carry one gunpod at any time. To compensate, it receives more ammo from gunpods than the other ships, and gunpod attacks do more damage. Firing the gunpod simultaneously fires the machine gun.

Secret ships

• Unknown Fighter Type I - Also known as "Die Schabe", German for cockroach, this ship is not from the same line of fighters as the standard issue ships. Rather, it is one of the tiny police cars used by Earth forces in the early levels. It does not have an manipulator arm like the other fighters, but picking up gunpods powers up its machine gun, and can alter the firing pattern. The more gunpods the ship collects, the faster and more powerful the gun becomes. This ship is unlocked by collecting fifteen or more special bonuses in one session of the game.

• Unknown Fighter Type II - Codenamed Selene, this is the ultimate fighter. It is similar to the Astraea, but all gunpods collected by this fighter start with 9999 ammo. This incredibly powerful ship can only be obtained by completing the game on the hard difficulty without using any continues or the Unknown Fighter Type I.

Gunpods

NOTE: After picking up a gunpod and running out of continues or quitting the game, the player may begin a new game pre-equipped with that gunpod.

Standard gunpods

• Vulcan - The most common gunpod, the Vulcan is an auxiliary machine gun with a high rate of fire but low damage.

• Cannon - The second most common gunpod, the cannon has a low rate of fire but massive firepower. Cannon shots will pierce through unarmored enemies to hit multiple targets, and can destroy the armored hulls of ships in a few shots.

• Spreader - This shotgun-like gunpod fires five high-speed projectiles that spread out in a fan-shaped formation. In the bottom position, the gunpod fires backwards.

• Grenade - Fires slow-moving, but highly damaging grenades in a ballistic trajectory. In the bottom position, the gunpod fires backwards.

• Wasp - When in the top position, this missile launcher fires moderately powerful homing missiles that can target and hit enemies in the foreground or background that cannot be reached with other weapons. When in the bottom position, it launches high-powered unguided rockets.

• Riot - A giant taser that fires at an angle and delivers an armor-piercing blast of electricity. It can charge up for several seconds to inflict greater damage at increased range.

• Hedgehog - This grenade launcher fires grenades vertically. After impact or time lapse, the grenades leave lasting explosions that continuously deal damage.

• Blade - An energy blade similar to a lightsaber. It uses ammo continually while it is activated. The Endymion fighters (but not the Astraea) can slash behind them by switching the weapon between the top and bottom positions. Performing a downward-right maneuver with your fighter extends the blade to nearly full-screen length for a moment, while consuming more ammo than normal.

Secret gunpods

• Python - Releases floating chain mines. Moving the fighter while firing a round alters the flight path of the bombs.

• Mosquito - Powerful guided missile launcher. The missile is manually controlled with the directional buttons (same as your fighter).

• Juno - Heavy machine gun with immense rate of fire and damage.

• Flash - A powerful rail cannon that fires extremely damaging, armor-piercing shots.

Special bonuses

There are three special bonuses in every level, which can usually be obtained by destroying special red-colored enemies. The main reason for collecting them is to gain points (and unlock the first secret fighter), but they often reward the player with rare weapons, such as the Flash gunpod. Obtaining a special bonus can sometimes lead the player to secret areas of a level that they would not have visited normally.

Boss fights

Einhänder provides many challenging bosses that attack in creative and often unexpected ways to keep players on their toes. The Garnelle (Shrimp), for example, is a hover-tank that jumps and leaps to try and crash itself into the player's ship. Other bosses dive beneath the water to evade attacks, protect themselves with mobile shield generators or bounce laser weapons off reflector devices at the player.

The appearance and movement of the bosses are also highly detailed. Robotic enemies flinch, stumble and crash as they take hits, taunt the player in German, or reel as body parts are destroyed.

There is a miniboss and boss for each of the seven levels except the last.

Symbolism

For a scrolling shooter game, Einhänder is rich with religious symbolism, using names from the Bible and Greek mythology.

Christianity

In the Japanese release of the game, the capital city of Earth is called Sodom. Sodom and Gomorrah, in the Bible, were two extremely sinful cities that God destroyed by sending fire and brimstone from heaven; similarly, the Selenian ships come from space to rain death and destruction on Earth. However, in the U.S. release, the capital's name was changed to Gesetz (German for "law").

Greek mythology

Selene is the Titan goddess of the moon who fell in love with Endymion, a handsome shephard, and begged Zeus to grant him eternal life. Ironically, in the game the player is sent on a suicide mission, as evidenced by the other pilots failing their missions, and the Selene government's response to the player's return.

Hyperion, the final boss in the game, is a Titan who is the son of Uranus (sky) and Gaia (earth). He is also the father of both Selene and Eos.

Eos (dawn) is the Titan goddess of the dawn. Near the end of the game, when the Einhänder pilot rebels against Selene, the player is swarmed by unmanned ships with the designation E.O.S.

Astraea (star-maiden) is the Greek personification for Justice.

References

• MMitchel's Einhänder Plot Analysis FAQ at [1]. (The host forbids direct linking to FAQs.)

External links

• Einhänder official site
• Square Evolution
  
• Netjak Review of Einhänder
  
• The Unofficial Einhander and ARC Page
  
• Blazing Lazers