Einhänder is a 1997 scrolling shooter video game developed and published by Square for the PlayStation. The name Einhänder is German and denotes a type of sword that is wielded with one hand, here used to refer to the single manipulator arm possessed by the player's spacecraft.

The Story Behind Einhaender

The player takes on the role of one of these pilots attacking the Earth capital city. In a similar vein as with Final Fantasy and The World Ends with You in previous Kingdom Hearts games, Einhänder is represented in Kingdom Hearts III in the form of the Endymion being a Gummi Ship and Schwarzgeist being a secret boss in the Gummi Ship portions of the game along with a remix of the latter's theme. An epilogue shows the actions of the lone Einhänder pilot ended the war by destroying the armies of both sides — leading to an eventual peace.

The music of the game, mainly in a techno/trance style, was composed by Kenichiro Fukui and was published in Japan as a soundtrack album. Upon the player's death they will advance two classes and be awarded the Sirius decoration. Hyperion communicates that the player is committing an act of treason and must remove their armament and surrender.

How Einhaender Plays

The game's graphics are in 2.5D, that is, in 3D with occasional shifting of camera angles, but with the player's movement restricted to a two-dimensional plane. Gunpods have varying amounts of power, ammunition and range, and include cannons, guided missile launchers, aircraft-sized lightsabers and other types of weapons. The counter decreases when the player stops destroying cores.

Einhänder is a shoot 'em up game of the scrolling shooter subgenre in the tradition of games like Gradius, in which the player controls a fighter spacecraft that must destroy enemy craft in side-scrolling levels. The player's fighter can move at different speeds and is equipped with a default machine gun as well as a manipulator arm, which is used to collect gunpods left by destroyed enemies. They can be switched between an overhead and below-the-belly position, causing them to fire at different angles or directions.

Why Players Still Load It Up

The website AllGame referred to the game as the best side scrolling shooter "to come out in the post 16-bit era of video gaming", while Eurogamer called it "the most successful of Square's expeditions into non-RPG territory". They called diversity "one of the game's biggest assets". Concerning the graphics, GameSpot, AllGame and Official U.S.

It's a welcome challenge for those gamers dying to play a good shooter; and hopefully, Einhander can inject some life into a moribund genre." All four members of the review team for Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) regarded Einhänder as far superior to any recent shoot 'em up, and Kraig Kujawa went so far as to call it "the best shooter ever". The soundtrack was praised by reviewers such as EGM, Eurogamer, IGN, Soundtrack Central and Official U.S. GameSpot further called the gameplay mechanics "finely tuned" and the plot "fascinating", while IGN felt the tilting camera angles were one of the features that make the game "so exciting".

Einhaender — Frequently Asked Questions