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Everyone who's ever entered an arcade and plunked in a quarter or token (or if you're just new to this era...slid a rechargable game card.) has played a shooter of some type at some point in their life. In the 80s it looked as if they were never going to go away. Classics like Gradius, 1942, Zaxxon, and Time Pilot all broke through in this time period, and the public couldn't get enough of them.
Shooters were great for arcades because a novice player would die repeatedly, but an experienced player would be able to stay alive much longer, and rope newbies into trying to emulate the other player. Plus you had great movie inspiration like "The Last Starfighter" and "Tron" to further glamorize the games.
As the 90s approached, a different kind of token eater emerged. Double Dragon and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles began to crowd out the shooter's living space, and beat 'em ups like Street Fighter, Samurai Showdown, and Mortal Kombat all but finished shooters as far as arcades were concerned.
Shooters tried to migrate over to the consoles, but found that most gamers didn't enjoy playing games they could finish pretty easily when presented with inifinite continues. Despite the general indifference and apathy presented in the face of shooters, some classics still emerged on the consoles, and my favorite of all time is one of those that didn't emerge in the Golden Age, but rather arrived late to show people what this newfangled hardware was capable of.
In April 1997, I fulfilled one of my dreams, and started work as a QA Technician at Squaresoft. While we were plowing through FF7 and waiting in between builds, one of the games they showed us was an early alpha of a game called Einhander. Although the game in the form they game us was extremely buggy, I was immediately hooked. I would eventually go on to become Lead QA Technician on the US release of the game, and that, in some small way colors my vision of this game.
Not because I'm exceptionally proud of my work, just because I don't think I'd play any shooter quite as MUCH as I played this one, so it'd take me a long time to figure out if any shooter could hold up to the same obscene amount of replay. I mean, I beat this thing nearly every way possible, and found new and exciting ways to kill everything in the game.
Einhander's Plot
"Einhander" means something like "one-handed" in German. This is reflected in your ship's design. It's got one arm-like device that catches and mounts weapon pods onto your fighter's body. Your pilot, and other pilots from the moon have started an attack on the Earth as part of an ongoing conflict that has been going on. Each pilot has a specific mission, and yours will end up consisting of 6 missions on Earth, and one on the moon...should you survive the 6 before it.
Graphics
The graphics in Einhander are stunning. Before this I'd never seen 3D move so swiftly. The are some minor slowdown problems in the game once you got around the area of 20 enemies, bullets included. The backrounds are very detailed, from military installations, to bustling cities, to underground junkyards, to a mountainside alongside a speeding train, to the cold reaaches of space.
The camera is very precise and won't leave your stomach churning, unlike Omega Boost.
The enemies are nicely designed, too. On different stages, they are unique, and not just palette swapped. For instance, you won't see the little police cars, or the hover craft with guns strapped to the top any more after Level 1. The bosses also have their own unique mannerisms, and not just in their weaponry. Some of them clamber on walls, others are huge rocketships. Someone spent a lot of time designing these things, and it really shows.
Gameplay
Gameplay is phenomenal. You've got 5 different speeds. You've got your default craft speed, and from there you can boost two levels faster, or drop two levels lower. Adding to the mystique of Einhander is the fact that you can literally kill with every part of your ship. Out of guns? Use your arm to hit things. Or position yourself so that your thrusters can hit an enemy, and flash the enemy ship with them. Mmm...Toasty.
As the game starts, you begin with your default weaponry. You can either have a single or double machine gun. Once you run out of continues, the gun pods that you have taken off of enemy ships throughout the course of the game will be available for you to use at the start of the game.
There are 12 distinct weapon pods:
Vulcan: A light machine gun with a pretty good clip of ammo. Not really a preferred weapon, but when you need to spray a lot of bullets, it's there.
Cannon: Packs a wallop, but only carries 25-30 shots. Can go through multiple enemies, and is good if you're trying to build up your score multiplier.
Wasp: Mount it on top of your ship, and you fire homing missiles, mount it on the lower half, and you fire dumb fire missiles that have a long fire delay, but pack more of a punch.
Grenade: Very limited in ammo, very powerful in terms of damage. On top it fires forward, on bottom, fires backwards.
Spreader: The shotgun. Fires 5 projectiles that spread. Slow rate of fire. Set up is similar to the grenade.
Riot: Fires a long electric charge. Hold it down to fire a larger burst, also pretty cool for combos if you work it right.
Blade: A lightsaber that protrudes from your ship. Looks cool, does almost nothing. As you kill more enemies, the blade lengthens.
Hedgehog: Another pretty useless weapon. Drops or propels a weapon upwards or downwards a very short range. Can fire multiples very quickly, but doesn't do enough damage to justify the range.
The other pods are secrets, and will be discussed in the secrets area, of this review/FAQ.
One of the other things Einhander helped bring back in the shooter world was the day of the huge high score/multiplier. If you shoot an enemy, there's a bar at the bottom of the screen that will fill. You've got a certain amount of time left to kill another enemy, or your counter will drop. Once you hit 16, it will give you a huge 16x point multiplier for about 10 seconds, and then reset back to 1.
Mastering the multiplier is key to getting the best score.
Sound
Einhander is one of two games that has a soundtrack that I will actually listen to. I've brought this in to a couple of my workplaces, and while not being video game fans, they enjoy the techno so much, they've asked for copies of the soundtrack for their personal listening.
The music from Level 2 with the Dutch man rapping in the background, (The only reason I know he's Dutch is he says it in the rap.) and the steadily climbing music from the rocket chase on Level 6 are absolutely incredible. The rest of the music doesn't stand out as much as these two tracks, but as a whole body, they are as close to audio perfection as I've heard in a video game so far. I don't dig all the orchestral stuff, and I've never been much for the chanting in the background.
I'm into good pulse pounding music, and this soundtrack perfectly nails it. All the songs fit with the game, I can tell you exactly where each track is from, and they all will quicken your pace. Great driving music.
Secrets
This game has got more secrets than most shooters out there. Achieve certain goals, and you'll unlock pictures of them in the Gallery mode. There are 99 total, and they range from "What the heck?!" to breathtaking.
If you go to level 6, you'll meet up with a launching shuttle. If you do not defeat it in time, the game will have a bad ending even if you don't die. If you do defeat it, you'll fight the Orbital Platform that was on its way to the moon, and finally make your way to the moon, where you will find yourself branded an outlaw, and engage in the final showdown. Each boss and miniboss have a secret way of defeating them. If you execute the secret way of killing the miniboss, you'll get a little Secret Bonus. There are 3 on each stage. If you get 15 of them, you'll unlock the little Police Car from Stage 1, complete with siren.
The Police Car picks up the weapon pods, it just uses them differently, and it's smaller target profile makes it pretty easy to beat stages of the game with it. Bosses are another story, as the little car doesn't do enough damage.
The second secret ship is the EOS UFG Mk.IX, "Selene", a red fighter that will extract 9999 ammo from every pod it picks up. If you've managed to beat the game on Hard without continuing, this is your reward, and they figure you deserve all the ammo you want, the game's easy enough to you anyway.
The final 4 gunpods, that you obtain in secret areas are:
Juno: The Juno is the Vulcan's beefier bigger brother. A little less ammo but does about 2 to 3 times the damage. Well worth finding, especially since you can get it on Level 1. The Vulcan will seem so useless once you pick this up.
Mosquito: Like dumb firing the Wasp, except you control the missile with your fighter. Since I'm dodging all the time, I found this to be useless.
Python: Fires a string of 5 mines that you can guide by moving your ship as they are released. Also a weapon I didn't like.
And finally the best gun of them all:
Flash: The Flash cannon fires a vicious purple beam that does more damage than the Cannon, but fires a lot quicker. Utterly devastating, but has little ammo.
Great graphics, high difficulty, lots of secrets, breathtaking CG, variety, and a killer soundtrack. There is honestly nothing more than I want out of a shooter than Einhander gives. My only disappointment is that there is no sequel and that it is unlikely that there will be one. However, with Ikaruga, DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Joh, and other shooters working their way out of the woodwork...who knows? I mean, we've seen stranger things get redone...recently.
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