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It’s Space-Shooting Madness, I Tell You!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 15
Date: January 23, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Saluting Kemco’s published Mech Platoon as praiseworthy treasure, I’ve been alert for any movement on games behind the Kemco name. Stalking Phalanx for relatively some time, I eyeballed the dupe on its game shelf and then asked myself “can anything go wrong with this one?” I took the gamble, bought it, and settled down with the new cart injected into my GBA. My inference? Within hours I found that there’s nothing seemingly off key with it. Phalanx fixes up a salver of classical side-scrolling shoot-em-up principles. Set in the year 2279, the player is given the part as a genetically enhanced soldier. Fulfilling the crusade as humanity’s last hope, players must put an end to the dreadful Delia invaders. Piloting either three starships, Phalanx throws players into the cosmos where endless masses of unfriendly starfighters aim to gun your ship into rubble. An outline of the gameplay is as follows: turn pesky, packs of fighters into debris, escape plentiful obstacles, and send tremendous motherships on a collision course to flaming Hell. In all the replete, nine stages, there is no shortage of operational firepower or power-ups (ten in all). Finished in a few sittings, I define Phalanx’s nonstop action as a deployment of space-shooting madness. Nearly a flawless port over the SNES, it clings on tight to games like Gradius and others who charted the fundamentals to the genre.

Marvelously represented, the graphics on this shooter are slick, smooth, and sweet. Regular aircraft and bullets are in the form of brightly detailed sprites. Oversized motherships are animated suitably with the multi-layered backgrounds. Stages are well themed like the entire planetary scenery along with the caverns. There‘s a number of oddities like oh say, giant eyeballs and blood vessels! From time to time though, the graphics tend to enter the discolored and shadowy zone. One problem with the darker atmosphere is that objects soaring on the screen become tough to tell apart from. With some sight deprived, impatient gamers may feel the pang of frustration come up and about. Forgiving the quibble, Phalanx is a graphically stunning invention. Although the audio territory is a bit flawed with its trivial beeps that have no similitude of weapons discharging in space, the explosions in the rest of the game are notable. A variety of fast-paced techno lingers in the air as players turn enemies into cannon fodder. If you played previous games like these, expect the futuristic soupçon.

Even without a deep or distinguished narrative or characters, Phalanx does what it’s supposed to: provide a juggernaut of space-shooting chaos. Frenetic bundles of enemies have diminutive intelligence, but their moving missiles should occupy players to keep a close eye on their shield level and tightly steer the intensity of their thrusters. Boosting its statistics is the amount of sheer joy the levels cram in unyielding quarters. With a decent presentation, secret missions, and solid 2D play, this one’s the best 2D shooter out on the GBA, and is a must for any shooter fan.

Been there, done that.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: February 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is your typical average 2-D side scrolling shooter. Nothing new to this one. The graphics are good and the music is OK, in my opinion. The ship has 3 different speeds (slow, mid, fast), but the fastest speed is nothing you couldn't handle, so you'll always want your ship on fast, making the other 2 settings pretty much useless. Game control is really good, no complaints there. One of the most dissapointing features is that the game only has 4 different weapons, and you can easily get all of them by the second stage. This makes playing the later stages of the game rather monotonous. In general, this is a really difficult game to beat, but then again that's not a new feature either. If you are a fan of shooters, I'd recommend you to borrow it from a friend, or maybe rent it without expecting much.

Good Shooting Action

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is a good side scrolling shoot'em up, difficulty is good calibrated, and you'll make progress at each game. Graphics is good but nothing very amazing, the color palette is quide dark, and sometimes enemies blend a bit too much with the background (this is a problem that GBA SP owners will not encounter).
Anyway if you like sidescrolling shooters, and if you already own Gradius for GBA, this game could be a worthy purcase.

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