Einhänder

When a studio famous for its role-playing games suddenly releases a shooter, it pays to take notice, and Einhänder from Squaresoft is exactly the kind of case where the experiment turned out better than anyone expected. This rare 1998 action title proved that the makers of Final Fantasy could also craft a devilishly stylish and technically polished shoot 'em up.

Einhänder is a horizontally scrolling 2.5D shmup in which your ship fights its way through layers of enemies in a darkly industrial, mildly dystopian world. Its core mechanic is brilliantly clever: your fighter is equipped with a movable manipulator arm that lets you collect weapons from defeated enemies and attach them to your hull. Each weapon has limited ammunition and different properties, so you are constantly weighing when to deploy a weapon, when to conserve it, and how best to angle it against incoming threats. This dynamic gives the game a tactical depth that most shooters lack.

Technically and visually, Einhänder was a feast for the eyes in its day. Square drew on its experience with pre-rendered and polygonal graphics to create backgrounds and enemies with a remarkable level of detail, smooth animation, and striking effects. The whole thing is rounded out by an atmospheric, electronically tinged soundtrack that underlines the game's cold industrial mood.

The reason it remains a cult title rather than a broad hit is simple: the shmup genre was already niche by the late nineties, and on top of that Einhänder was released only for the Japanese and North American markets, so it reached many European players only by roundabout routes. That makes it all the more prized today among connoisseurs and collectors, who see it as one of the peaks of the genre on the PlayStation.

Einhänder is a reminder of a time when even the biggest studios could afford smaller, ambitious projects outside their main genre, and when such a detour could produce a gem.

Why play it: A stylish and technically polished shmup from the masters of the RPG, with a clever weapon-stealing mechanic, a cult gem for fans of the genre.