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. scan of the Einhander cover, U.S. release original at http://www. ... A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual) that creates video or computer games. ... SQUARE ENIX (Japanese: スクウェア・エニックス) is a Japanese producer of popular video games and manga. ... Video game publishers are companies that publish video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer. ... SQUARE ENIX (Japanese: スクウェア・エニックス) is a Japanese producer of popular video games and manga. ... Sony Computer Entertainment America is the division of Sony that markets the PlayStation family of gaming consoles. ... A game designer is a person who designs games. ... 1997 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Reef. ... 1998 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... This is listing of computer and video game genres with a brief description and examples from each genre. ... Scrolling shooters, or scrolling shoot em ups, are a type of video game. ... Formally, a computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players may interact with in order to achieve a goal (or set of goals). ... Scrolling shooters, or scrolling shoot em ups, are a type of video game. ... SQUARE ENIX (Japanese: スクウェア・エニックス) is a Japanese producer of popular video games and manga. ... Square Co. ... 1997 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Reef. ... German (called Deutsch in German; in German the term germanisch is equivalent to English Germanic), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and is one of the worlds major languages. ...

The in-game music is its own style of techno (not fitting into any particular category), composed by Kenichiro Fukui. Outrun (1986) is an arcade game with a famous soundtrack Video game music is any of the musical pieces or soundtracks from computer and video games. ... Techno- is a prefix relating to technology. ...

Storyline

The game takes place in the year 2245, a chaotic era when the Earth and the Moon are at war with each other. Earth, also known as the Earth or Terra, is the third planet outward from the Sun. ... Crust composition Oxygen 43% Silicon 21% Aluminium 10% Calcium 9% Iron 9% Magnesium 5% Titanium 2% Nickel 0. ...

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 Einhänder, equipped with a Vulcan gunpod, fights its way through the enemy capital on a reconnaissance mission

The player chooses from five different fighters (three are standard, two are secret), each requiring a different fighting style. einhander screenshot, from www. ... A secret character (not to be confused with an unseen character) is a playable character in a video game that can only be played by completing some task in the game. ...

Each of the standard fighters 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. A machine gun is a fully-automatic firearm that is capable of firing bullets in rapid succession. ... Upon contact with this Super Mushroom, Mario earns 1000 points and doubles in size In video games, power-ups are objects which add extra abilities to the game character, and/or increase the players score upon being collected. ...

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. Columns, like other arcade-based puzzle games, allows players to start at more advanced levels that give extra points. ...

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 scenes in-between stages. This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. ... Full motion video, usually abbreviated as FMV, is a popular term for television-quality film or animation in a video game. ...

The different fighters

Standard fighters

• Astraea FGA Mk. I - This fighter is capable of equipping 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 fighters.

• 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 fighters, and gunpod attacks do more damage. Firing the gunpod simultaneously fires the machine gun.

Secret fighters

• Unknown Fighter Type I - Also known as "Die Schabe", German for cockroach, this fighter 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 fighter collects, the faster and more powerful the gun becomes. This fighter is unlocked by collecting fifteen or more special bonuses in one session of the game.

• Unknown Fighter Type II - Codenamed Selene, this fighter is the most powerful of the five. It is similar to the Astraea, but all gunpods collected by it start with 9999 ammmo. It can only be obtained by completing the game on the hard difficulty without using any more than two continues.

Families Blaberidae Blattellidae Blattidae Cryptocercidae Polyphagidae Ref: ITIS 102427 2002-12-11 A cockroach is an insect of the order Blattodea (or Blattaria). ... This page is on the Greek goddess. ...

Gunpods

Detachable weapon pods carried by common enemies. Apart from adding to the Einhänder's firepower, gunpods are well-armored enough to withstand several hits, and can be used as a shield. Enemies can and will use the gunpods they carry against the player, but the weapons are less powerful in this mode.

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

Spreader

• 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.

provided by http://www. ... provided by http://www. ... Mounted Vulcan The 20mm M61 Vulcan is a hydraulically driven, six-barreled, air-cooled, electrically fired gatling gun with an extremely high rate of fire. ... A rocket propelled grenade (RPG) is a man-portable, shoulder-launched weapon capable of firing an explosive device longer distances than an otherwise unassisted soldier could throw. ... Jedi activate their lightsabers in the Battle of Geonosis. ...

Secret gunpods

Juno

• 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.

provided by http://www. ... provided by http://www. ... This article or section should be merged with Missile guidance A guided missile is a military rocket that can be directed in flight to change its flight path. ... A prototype railgun This article is about an electromagnetic projectile launcher. ...

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

The boss Schwarzgeist (Black Ghost) unleashes a sweeping laser attack

Gecko, a miniboss, confronts the Einhänder

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. I made it myself! File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... I made it myself! File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... The Schwarzgeist is the most lethal boss in the video game Einhander and one of the most formidable opponents in the scrolling shooter genre. ... Einhander screenshot from http://www. ... Einhander screenshot from http://www. ... Flag Ship from the video game Gorf In video games, a boss (sometimes called a guardian) is a particularly large or difficult computer-controlled character that must be defeated at the end of a segment of a game, whether it be for a level, an episode, or the very end...

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. German (called Deutsch in German; in German the term germanisch is equivalent to English Germanic), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and is one of the worlds major languages. ...

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. The Bible (From Greek βιβλιος biblios, meaning book, which in turn is derived from βυβλος—byblos meaning papyrus, from the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos which exported papyrus) is a word applied to sacred scriptures. ... Greek mythology comprises the collected legends of Greek gods and goddesses and ancient heroes and heroines, originally created and spread within an oral-poetic tradition. ...

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. This page is on the Greek goddess. ... In Greek mythology, Endymion was a handsome shepherd (or, more rarely, a king or a hunter) from Asia Minor. ...

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. Hyperion is a Titan from Greek mythology. ...

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. EOS was an operating system developed by ETA Systems for use in their ETA-10 line of supercomputers in the 1980s. ...

Astraea (star-maiden) is the Greek personification for Justice. In Greek mythology, Astraea (star-maiden) was a daughter of Zeus and Themis. ...

References

• MMitchel's Einhänder Plot Analysis FAQ at [1]  (http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/psx/game/197217.html). (The host forbids direct linking to FAQs.)

External links

• Einhänder official site (http://www.us.playstation.com/Content/OGS/SCUS-94243/Site)
• Square Evolution (http://www.square-evolution.com/games/einhander/wars.php)
  
• Netjak Review of Einhänder (http://www.netjak.com/review.php/344)
  
• The Unofficial Einhander and ARC Page (http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Corridor/9444/)
  
• Blazing Lazers (http://blazinglazers.gamersgraveyard.com/einhander/index.htm)