24 - Phalanx (SNES)

Lost Joystick Network

The year is 1992 and you work for a marketing company. It's your job to help market and sell mediocre games from an average developer and publisher. A package arrives with a single Super Nintendo prototype. You have to ask your son what to do with it because your job is to sell games, not play them. He sets you up and you take a look at a pretty average side-scrolling space shooter. You head to the bathroom because that is where you do your best work. As you traverse through the doorway, you slip and hit your head on the toilet.

While laying face down on the cold linoleum floor, you have a vision.. a vision of a man. He's an older man. Some would call him a "salt of the Earth" kind of guy, wearing a flannel shirt and denim bib overalls. A brown fedora lays gracefully on his distinguished head. His best friend, a dog, is by his side and, with his thick grey beard, he saunters in unassumingly and sits down.

Suddenly, a ship screams into view. It's so bright you can barely make out that it's an A-144 Enforce Fighter. A bolt of lightning cracks through the starlit sky. Knocked off of your feet, you gather yourself and look back to the man in the chair to see that he is now holding the most powerful musical instrument in the world:

The Banjo

It's at this very moment that you awake from your concussed blackout and scream "THAT'S IT!" as you're strapped a gurney and placed in the back of an ambulance.

And thus the legend of Phalanx was born...