Phalanx (SNES) text review

Oh hell yeah

Phalanx is a surprisingly quality shoot em up, brought to us lovingly by ZOOM Inc and Kemco. Released early in the SNES’s lifespan, Phalanx seems to have been overshadowed by shmup heavyweights like Super R-Type, Gradius III, and Axelay. To be honest, I was a bit underwhelmed by Phalanx when I first played it not long after it’s initial release. I realized it was a nice shmup, but it did not seem to have the pizazz of a something like Super R-Type. So here we are, over 20 years later and I decide to go back and give Phalanx another shot(since I had been on a shmup binge).

The story is pretty typical of most shmups: bad guys have showed up, go out and shoot them until they explode. Fair enough. The controls are spot on and very responsive, which is always important with precision games like shmups. Also important to shmups is the hitbox of your ship, which I am happy to say, makes sense and doesn’t require you to adjust how you perceive the mass of your ship. In other words, if an enemy or shot looks like it hit your ship, it did. If it looks like it missed your ship, it did. Phalanx nails this. How do some games totally screw this up?

I was particularly impressed with the weapons and power-ups at your disposal in Phalanx. For your secondary powerups, there are 3 different missiles you can obtain. Of the 3 missile power-ups, one is a homing missile, another shoots directly across the screen and explodes on impact, the other also shoots across the screen, but flies through any enemies damaging all that it passes through. You also have access to 5 or so main weapon power-ups that you run across throughout the adventure. You will have the usual assortment of shmup weapon upgrades, such as laser, homing, and ricochet among others. What’s really neat is that you can store 3 of the power-ups at once and swap between them on the fly. Also, when you die you only lose the weapon power-up that you currently have equipped and get to keep the other two. To further the variety and strategy allowed to the player, you can sacrifice a power-up in order to unleash a screen-clearing bomb. Topping it all off, the button layout is completely customizable!

The graphics are pretty subdued, with a lot of earthy tones and enemies that are mixtures of bio/geo/mechanical sorts of things. Each mission starts out with a simple shot of your pilot(a very cool anime-looking fella) and the name of the level. My two favorites are level 1 which starts out above the clouds/smog, then descends to above a very dreary, industrial, Coruscant-looking city; the other favorite is level 6, named Advertise, which surely enough is set in an outer-space asteroid field with neon signs all over the place. The music is a nice touch as well. It has that sort of generic, late 80s/early 90s game music that really takes me back.

Phalanx is a fairly stiff challenge. It felt a bit overwhelming initially. It’s very manageable on the easiest difficulty level, which familiarizes you well with the levels in preparation for the higher difficulty settings. That being said, Phalanx is not overly difficult and doesn’t really step into any sort of absurd difficulty. The bosses in the game are suitable and the final boss is fairly interesting and engages you in a different manner than previous bosses in the game. Be warned, you do have a limited amount of continues. Don’t let the challenge or limited continues dissuade you; Phalanx is a very beatable game if you give it a little time and are of at least average skill.

I really cannot recommend Phalanx enough. It’s not that it’s spectacular by any means, but it’s a really solid shmup. It’s fairly common, very affordable, and is also available for legal download at this time. If you’ve never played Phalanx, but are aware of the game, it’s probably because of the infamous cover art: the banjo-strumming hillbilly in outer-space with the Phalanx fighter flying through the background. Don’t let the ridiculous(and totally radical) cover art fool you into thinking Phalanx is some third-rate game. Give Phalanx a try if you’re into shmups, just don’t go in expecting a masterpiece. With your expectations properly adjusted, Phalanx will deliver a smooth(and nearly slow-down free) challenge that is a joy after all these years.