There are a lot of things from our childhoods that don’t hold up when revisted again as adults. Nostalgia can paint some things with a rose-tinted lens, but there are certainly plenty of things that hold up with the test of time, even when we’ve grown older and more discerning.
For me, one game from my childhood that absolutely holds up is the Squaresoft-developed shmup Einhander. Side-scrolling shooters were far from my usual fare of RPGs, but one day my mom gifted this funky little game with a ship on the cover that I’d never heard of before. Although the hand x-ray on the start menu creeped me out (what can I say, I was a sensitive kid), I was immediately drawn in by the extremely cool music and futuristic cityscape in the opening level.
Instead of playing Einhander by myself, like I did for most games, my mom and I played it together. Since it’s a single player game, we took turns, passing a controller back and forth whenever one of us was shot out of the sky. And let me tell you, we were shot down often. Even if it weren’t super catchy, I’d still have that opening level’s initial operatic-like vocalization in the soundtrack memorized due to the sheer number of times we repeated it.
I think the furthest we ever got was the boss of level 2, and even as an adult I haven’t been able to get much further than that playing on a standard console (save states would definitely come in handy, though!). I still have flashbacks to the mole-like level 2 midboss jumping into the air and knocking me out the sky…
Despite countless deaths and retries, playing Einhander with my mom remains my favorite memory of us gaming together. Apparently, she just saw Einhander at a game store and and thought it looked cool. Definitely a risky strategy, especially back in those days! But Squaresoft had a solid track record, and even their first foray into the shmup genre turned out to be a well-made, memorable title that certainly stands the test of time.
Oh, and I can’t say enough good things about the soundtrack! It’s absolutely worth a listen, even if you don’t play the game. But you definitely should, even if you need to share the controller with a shmup-playing friend.
