Prerelease:Einhänder

This page details prerelease information and/or media for Einhänder.

To do: Find versions of the pre-release screenshots of Zauber without watermarks. Translation of the German military chatter.

Zauver/Zauber

A small insert about the game, spelled here as Zauber, in the April 1996 issue of Gamefan magazine.

During late 1995 and early 1996 Square hired up several former employees of Capcom and Konami who lived in the Kyoto area. These new hires were assigned to develop a 3D PlayStation shoot-'em-up, a new genre for Square, called "ザウバー" ("Zauber" or "Zauver"). It was announced in the Japanese press alongside a few other titles, as a follow-up to the Final Fantasy VII announcement. The theme of the game was supposed to be "Light Versus Darkness". By April 1996 a handful of screenshots had appeared in gaming magazines and websites, which are the only known elements to survive from this stage of development. The (heavily-watermarked) screenshots are visible in the sources linked below. These show a dramatically different visual style than Einhander, with battles taking place in open space, a more conventional fighter design, and a humanoid mecha. The game was quietly cancelled sometime before Einhander was officially announced in early 1997.

(Source: Archived version of the GameFan magazine website with screenshots, Traditional Chinese gaming blog with additional screenshots)

The game's writer Iwao Kenichi (formerly of Capcom), in an interview with Heidi Kemps, stated that the original development team and concepts were "reshuffled and reworked" into what would become Einhander. He also claimed that "if Einhander was a planet, [Zauber] was like a tiny moon orbiting it.", and was unaware of any significant officially-announced or released materials even in the Japanese press. It was his first project with Square, and he transferred directly to the Einhander team when it was cancelled.

(Source: Gamingmoe interview, January 2016, Einhander wikipedia article (Japanese))

Square's Preview 2

A preview trailer for Einhänder was included in Square's Preview 2. a demo disc that was included with Final Fantasy Tactics, which was released in June 1997 in Japan, around five months before Einhänder's release. Surprisingly, there are few changes from the final version, in order:

• A short portion of the opening movie is shown. There is no music in the background, but German military chatter can be heard faintly. Furthermore, the closing static effect has a sound which isn't in the final, oddly enough.
• Gameplay of the second part of the second level is immediately shown after, where the Fledermaus (large enemy with a yellow platform) has grey plating on its front, which was replaced by red in the final.
• The other parts of the first level appear to not be different, and the two bosses (Greif and Drache) are shown in order.
• A part of Level 2 is shown, where the Hornisse (large cannon) appears to have a different Sodom (Gesetz in the US version) symbol on its side.
• Level 3 gameplay is shown without noticeable differences to the final release.
• The Level 2 boss, Spinne, appears. Its quote is not present, and it has an additional orange stripe on its head.
• As the movie fades to black, the quote "This is a warning" can be heard in English. This is odd, considering the bosses have entirely German quotes, and this one in particular is part of Drache's German quote ("Dies ist eine Warnung! Entladen Sie alle Ihre Waffen!"). Maybe at this point of development the quotes weren't recorded yet?
• During the whole gameplay section, an unique mix of the music track "Street", used normally during Level 1's second part, can be heard. What makes it unique is that it borrows samples from other music tracks, such as "Capital", "Machine Beat", and "Badlands".