Developer Namco has long been considered one of the top names in the arcade video game scene. They did invent Pac-Man after all, and they kept at it for many years releasing new hits. Tons of these titles went largely unnoticed by the gaming populace, but some of their later games such as Tekken became some of the most popular in their respective genres. This brings me to Phelios. This is a vertically scrolling shooter originally released in Japan in the late 80s. The genre was hugely popular in this time frame, but Phelios was quite different from your typical release. This is because while almost every other developer was flooding the market with space ship shooters or even ground based affairs where you play as a macho man with a machine gun Namco opted to take a different route. The entire scenario of Phelios is based around Greek mythology, and that fact alone sets it apart from most of the others. It was ported to the Sega Genesis home console a few years later, and this is the version of the game I’m taking a look at today.
The story here is as follows; you play as Apollo the Greek god of the sun. His lover, the goddess of the moon Artemis, is kidnapped by the evil god Typhon. Apollo mounts his trusty Pegasus and sets out to rescue her while doing battle against the evil army standing in his way. As you progress you’re given short sequences which serve to progress the plot. The depictions of Artemis in these are very ‘racy’ by 16-bit standards so much that I was shocked this passed through even Sega’s censors at the time. There’s minimal animation in these story segments, but they do feature text dialogue and even small amounts of voice samples which is quite impressive. Either way, let’s move on to the gameplay.
As I mentioned earlier Phelios is an overhead vertically scrolling two dimensional shooter. You guide Apollo atop his Pegasus steed in all directions around the screen dodging enemies, projectiles, and various environmental hazards. Aside from the directional pad and start all of the buttons serve the same function in this game. They each fire the default weapon, and though this may sound simplistic I rather liked the change of pace.
This means that there are no screen filling bomb attacks or other similar elements typically found in your garden variety shooter. That doesn’t mean Phelios doesn’t have a few tricks up its sleeve though. Your standard shot just fires a few blasts at the enemies, and this is not one of those titles where you can simply hold down the button for rapid fire. This is because when you hold down one of the face buttons it charges your attack on a sword shaped meter on the right hand side of the screen allowing for a more powerful blast. This is a fairly unique feature for the genre, but it’s not entirely original.
In addition specific yellow flying blocks (I can’t quite tell what they actually are) leave behind power-ups which offer a variety of different effects. The most typical of these is a boost to your speed marked with an ‘S.’ Your character starts off super slowly, and so this is extremely helpful. Others change the shape and strength of your primary shot. These include transforming it into a crescent shaped beam, a diagonal blast, and more. You also have those which add up to two different options that follow Apollo around the screen and fire in tandem with you. The spread of power-ups is pretty decent overall, but we’ve seen better elsewhere.
Phelios suffers from one major issue that holds it back from classic status, but before I get to that I’m going to go over what it does right. The stage designs are awesome. They’re thoughtful, offer a fair challenge, and there’s enough variety to keep things interesting to the very end. Enemies generally don’t switch up their patterns, but there are enough different ones offered up in the main quest that it doesn’t really matter. The only thing I didn’t really like about the basic design is how even just touching the walls results in instant death. I can understand this in space ship shooters, but your character is riding atop a Pegasus and therefore it doesn’t make very much sense to me.
The biggest issue with this game however is the fact that there’s no two player mode. That’s right; you’re limited to just playing this one solo. Multiplayer was an absolute staple of the genre at this point in history, and the fact that it wasn’t included makes no sense. Despite this major issue the main game is entertaining enough and well designed so this fact doesn’t completely ruin Phelios. What goes the extra mile to saving the experience is the unique setting and style.
For an early generation Sega Genesis title Phelios has a lot going for it in terms of graphics. A lot of credit goes to the fantasy theme. The enemies are very unique in appearance, and feature several frames of animation that come together in a very pleasant way. The boss characters are especially impressive here. These are generally huge, and have several moving parts. The only issue with this is the fact that it can be a little distracting but this is only a minor complaint. Phelios was released at a time when most high profile Sega Genesis titles suffered from drab color palettes. This is a rare case where the developers managed to make the most of the limited hardware.
This is a very colorful game and this is one of its strongest aspects. There’s a lot of rotational effects that look very nice even today. The most impressive element is a zoom in on the first stage that almost looks like the mode 7 graphics engine frequently used on the Super Nintendo. The soundtrack is also very pleasant too. At first the music fits the mythological themes well, but later on things take on a much darker tone, but it still sounds great in my opinion. There’s even some voice samples that, while heavily muffled, are very impressive by Genesis standards. The text definitely helps here.
Phelios is a very unusual shooter. It released in a time when most focused on space ships and scrolled horizontal. Sure, there were several ‘cute em ups’ in this time but this is far from that. The developers definitely took the route less traveled with this one, and it’s easy to see that Namco cared a lot about the end product because a lot of work was put into it. Phelios is well worth playing even today, and the only way to obtain this Genesis version is by purchasing the cartridge itself. I recommend doing so.
