AVGN: Bad Game Cover Art #6 - Phalanx (SNES)

AVGN has an Advent Calendar of Ass! Step into the art gallery as we examine some of the worst video game cover artwork, each day until Christmas! Today's bad game cover critique - Phalanx (SNES)

[JamesNintendoNerd]

Is it just me or does the ship at 0:22 look exactly like an X-Wing from Star Wars? I think you can even see R2-D2 inside! - Mike

[SweetTaLe]

"Super Nintendo.. The fuck is that?" Holy shit I'm in tears, I don't know why.

[Chud_Bud_Supreme]

I think maybe the guy playing the banjo is the one piloting the ship. He got sick of all the alien invaders abducting his kin to probe them, so he's taken to space to wipe them all out so he can finally get back to playing his banjo in peace.

[pepijn]

The Guy on the cover was a man named Bertil Valley who was indeed a Mall Santa Clause. He also appeared on magazine covers. I read somewhere that he also played the banjo.
He passed away in 2004, sadly.

James description off the idea off the cover was indeed true. The company in charge off making the cover thought the game was an average generic game and then somebody came up with the idea off an old guy with a banjo.

[AlluMan]

It just makes me wonder how much more awsome this game would have been if the old man was actually the player-character. Sitting on his rocket-powered rocking chair, shooting his laser banjo while providing the soundtrack for the game simultaneously.

[pidrosoft]

This is actually a good cover. A memorable one.

It's the dream of this old man, playing the banjo at night, looking at the stars and imaging himself in his spaceship crossing the galaxies.

[dukespubber]

The guy actually was a rental Santa. XD Apparently the company in charge of making the cover also did some Christmas stuff for another client and the banjo guy was dressed as Santa. Somebody got the bright idea to hire him and put him in the hillbilly outift. Apparently he had recently suffered a stroke or something because he couldn't move much.

[CoreyMcGee]

Phalanx is a military formation, but is also a singular term for the phalanges bones in the hands. To play banjo you would use your phalanges so...makes sense?

[huff]

What am I doing here? Motherfuckers...Super Nintendo....what the fuck is that...

Need this on mp3

[geardog]

"Gather 'round, youngsters. Let ol' pop pop tell you how he traveled the cosmos, and beat back them alien immigrants for they could take our jobs."

"Mom! Grandpa skipped his medication again!"

[Vincent_Van_Vega]

THE PHALANX FACTOR

Q: What was the deal with that old dude on the cover of the SNES shooter Phalanx?

A:Phalanx was just another Super NES sidescrolling shooter that we all probably would have forgotten by now - if not for the inexplicable shot of the bearded geezer strummin' a banjo on the game's box cover. Why the old guy? The problem is that all the game art looked alike at the time - monsters or spaceships or something, " explains Matt Guss, head of the advertising company behind the Phalanx campaign. "We wanted to create shock value so somone would have to pick the game up. We called it the 'Heavy Huh?!' factor." Art director Keith Campbell says they did the photo shoot themselves, hiring a model for the role of the 80-something hayseed. "I'd used him before as Santa Claus on an album-cover shoot, " Guss adds. "I remember him coming into the studio, and I though the poor guy was gonna die right there on the stage. I think he'd had a stroke earlier - not earlier that day, but in the past . . . We stuck a banjo in his hands, and I think we stuck a spaceship behind his head that he was supposed to be staring at in wonder, sort of a Star Wars-come-to-the-Ozarks kind of thing." You gotta admit Guss' cover concept was mighty effective. After all, we're still talking about the game 10 years after its release. Heavy, huh? If you're too young to remember this game, don't worry Kemco's rereleasing it for the Game Boy Advance.

[wouldyoukindly]

Kemco actually responded to fans about the cover. Here's what they said:

"Phalanx was just another Super NES sidescrolling shooter that we all probably would have forgotten by now - if not for the inexplicable shot of the bearded geezer strummin' a banjo on the game's box cover. Why the old guy? The problem is that all the game art looked alike at the time - monsters or spaceships or something, " explains Matt Guss, head of the advertising company behind the Phalanx campaign. "We wanted to create shock value so somone would have to pick the game up. We called it the 'Heavy Huh?!' factor." Art director Keith Campbell says they did the photo shoot themselves, hiring a model for the role of the 80-something hayseed. "I'd used him before as Santa Claus on an album-cover shoot, " Guss adds. "I remember him coming into the studio, and I though the poor guy was gonna die right there on the stage. I think he'd had a stroke earlier - not earlier that day, but in the past . . . We stuck a banjo in his hands, and I think we stuck a spaceship behind his head that he was supposed to be staring at in wonder, sort of a Star Wars-come-to-the-Ozarks kind of thing." You gotta admit Guss' cover concept was mighty effective. After all, we're still talking about the game 10 years after its release. Heavy, huh? If you're too young to remember this game, don't worry Kemco's rereleasing it for the Game Boy Advance."

[undeadtarnishedhunter]

0:48
Funny thing is, that guy was really working as a part time Santa Claus. His name was Bertil Valley, he died in 2004.

[NoEntertainment]

1:18-1:23

This ditty got stuck in my head today.

[FyberOptic]

This was during a time period in the 90s where everything was advertised rather stupidly, with lots of weird, random, and hyperactive things, and maybe three actual seconds of gameplay footage in the commercial (if that). I'm not surprised it made its way onto box covers as well.

[UberNeuman]

The old dude with the banjo was remembering all times when the aliens came to his farm and anally probed him.

[MutilatedMetalhead]

I'd like to imagine that man is playing a banjo version of Space Truckin by Deep Purple.

[mustangmike]

Actually I always thought like this guy with the Banjo was the pilot of the Phalax ship, but now he is a intergalactic war veteran who has fond memories about the war and now he remembers all events playing his banjo and the game is a tribute of his war efford.

[Untouchaable]

This is what the banjo playing kid from the movie "Deliverance" end up doing.

[gggg-dthj]

It's a space shooter on the Super Nintendo. The old man represents how archaic space shooters were at that time, how they represent simple, old time gaming of the days of atari. It's laughing at itself by pointing out "hey, we made an old style game on a brand new platform". Making a space shooter in the 90's was like saying "we got a game your grandpa might like"