Phalanx (video game)
| Phalanx | |
|---|---|
North American Super NES cover art
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| Developer(s) | ZOOM Inc., Kemco |
| Publisher(s) | Kemco |
| Platform(s) | Sharp X68000, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy Advance |
| Release |
X68000
GBA |
| Genre(s) | Shoot 'em up |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Phalanx is a 1991 space shooter video game developed by ZOOM Inc. and Kemco for the Sharp X68000, Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy Advance. The game was released for the X68000 in Japan in 1991, for the SNES in Japan on August 7, 1992 and in North America in October 1992, and for the GBA in Japan on October 26, 2001, in Europe on November 23, 2001 and in North America on December 27, 2001.
Phalanx is infamous for the incongruous box art in its American release: it displays a bearded, elderly man dressed in overalls, wearing a fedora and playing a banjo while a futuristic spaceship flies in the background. The popular media site IGN named it their fifth "Most Awesome Cover" in a top 25 countdown on their website. The box art designers later admitted that they had deliberately chosen this theme in order to attract the customer with something original, considering there were many space shooters in the market that looked alike. The Game Boy Advance release redesigned the cover in favor of a prominent spaceship image.
A mini version called Tiny Phalanx was featured in the ZOOM Inc. 1995 PlayStation fighting game Zero Divide.
The player's ship can switch to different three speed levels at any time, allowing the player to move fast to avoid enemies and obstacles entirely, or slow down to weave between enemy bullets. An unusual addition for a shooter at the time is the ability for the player's ship to take multiple hits before losing a life: the Phalanx had three hit points which could be restored by a certain power-up, which is important as health is persistent between levels. A variety of weapons can be picked up from items that certain enemies leave behind, and up to three can be stored at a time; further weapons replace the currently-equipped weapon when acquired. The player can switch between these weapons freely, and sacrifice a weapon to produce a "smart bomb" effect, freeing up the slot to grab another weapon without waste. The Extend was set at every 300,000 points. Difficulty can be adjusted between three levels in the options menu (unavailable during play), and primarily affects the number of bullets fired by enemies; a hidden "Funny" difficulty is available through the use of cheat codes, and escalates the game's difficulty dramatically.
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