We all know the cover is dumb but how is the game?

Is the cover dumb? So dumb that people still talk about it today instead of it being another drop in the bucket of shmups?

It's actually pretty good and apart from it's ridiculous cover it also features a "funny" difficulty level that is the hardest one.

>>4187351
funny enough, the game is actually pretty good

>>4187370
This box art is like the Comic Sans of covers. People *know* there's something in there to criticize, but never quite understand exactly why and just rely on everybody else agreeing to pretend they do

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>>4187351

its a decent shmup, nothing original but solid.

The cover actually does have a ship and a planet in space. It just also has a banjo playing hillbilly on there to distract you.

>>4187389
not to distract, they said they wanted to catch people's attention

dont know how much it helped, but they did

File: Phalanx.webm (3MB, 472x424px) Image search: [Google]

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Generic. Better than Zero Wing, not as good as Gradius or R-type.

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>>4187396
Did anybody ever look at a regular shmup cover and go "Wow I'm totes buying this"? This probably was a more efficient attention-catcher than any conventional cover.

"Dumb" would imply the people behind it did not now EXACTLY what they were doing, but it is legitimate to criticize the decision of using a generic advertising tactic outside ancillary advertisement materials, as you could argue it cheapens the public perception of the product in its idle, post-promotional phase. But back then the industry just couldn't give less of a fuck about legacy anyway

>>4187351

So is the old banjo playing bumpkin telling us the story of Phalanx?

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This is literally one of the best game box covers in history, fuck off.

Also the game is fun. ALSO there's a sort-of sequel hidden in Zero Divide.

>>4187370
It's unique and eye catching, but at the end of the day useless because it does not make me want to play the game. It actually makes me dislike the idea of playing it.

There should be an inverse. A hunting game called "Backwoods Bill's Duck Shootin'". and the cover art is an anime drawing of a robot launching off of a space battleship.

File: biohazard battle.jpg (160KB, 1280x720px) Image search: [Google]

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>>4187414
It did make me rent Bio-Hazard battle. Was a pretty rad cover that I had to try it. Sometimes a good cover is all you need.

>>4187351
I try not to judge a game by it's cover.

one of the better shmups

>>4187487
Yea, I've only payed the Zero Divide version which was pretty fun.

>>4187840
It made me actually want to buy the game CIB, which I never do for games that came in cardboard boxes.

>>4187351
I always imagined the banjo guy being someone from Earth looking up at the sky and seeing the ship, wishing them luck.