Okay, here's the lowdown from EGM Sept. 2001:
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.
