9. Phalanx
If you're ever feeling down on life, just load up the ridiculous box art for Phalanx, and you'll feel a lot better about yourself in approximately half-a-second. You probably wouldn't realise this from a quick glance at the bizarrely mis-representative box art, but Phalanx is in fact a space shooter, and the beardy old guy sporting a fedora while playing a banjo has nothing to do with it. The art has become infamous online, and as a result, the art designers did eventually pipe up to admit that they weren't bonkers - or rather, not as bonkers as we had expected - but that the box art had been an attempt to differentiate themselves from the glut of space shooters that were released around the same time. It certainly worked, though we have to wonder whether there's a less alienating way to draw space shooter fans in than deferring to such an arcane figure. In fact, we're a little disappointed there
isn't an old man playing a banjo in Phalanx; false advertising, much? Regrettably, the cover for the Game Boy Advance version was a lot less fun, resorting to a generic space shooter look:
