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.

[4] 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.

Its Smart Bomb attack is a full-screen antimatter reaction which causes continual damage to all visible enemies.

Upgrading causes the options to fire similar balls of energy forward diagonally up and down, which bounce off flat walls or ceilings, and increases overall damage.

Its Smart Bomb attack combines the two options into a single homing drone which engages enemies at melee range, killing them before seeking a new target.

B – B-Type Missile: A standard side-weapon which launches forward firing rockets that do not detonate, and damage all enemies along their path.

In an interview with Destructoid, Matt Guss, an advertiser who worked on Phalanx's cover, stated that the idea for the art came from coworker Keith Campbell.

Campbell, who didn't find anything in Phalanx that stood out, decided to make the packaging eye-catching, hoping a potential buyer would stare at the box art and wonder "what just happened".