Phalanx

Phalanx (full title: Phalanx: The Enforce Fighter A-144) is a 1991 horizontally scrolling shooter developed by ZOOM Inc. and Kemco for the X68000, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and Game Boy Advance. The game was released for the X68000 in Japan in 1991, for the Super NES in Japan on August 7, 1992, in North America in October and in the same year in Europe, as well as for the Game Boy Advance in 2001 in Japan on October 26, in Europe on November 23, and in North America on December 27.

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 advertising company responsible for the box art 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 used a redesigned cover with a prominent image of a spaceship.

A "mini" version called Tiny Phalanx was featured in the 1995 fighting game Zero Divide.