Phelios by Namco - BlameTheControlPad.com

Phelios is a gorgeous, Japan-only vertical shoot'em-up developed by Namco and completely devoid of invading aliens and/or huge armies of any kind. Instead, it's very loosely themed around Greek mythology, which immediately makes it stand out between the many space shooters the genre is known for. Also notable is the inclusion of plot-expanding cutscenes, something shoot'em-ups don't usually need because of their lack of emphasis on whatever plot there might be behind the button mashing gameplay; but the main dish is its bright color palette, digitized voices, epic battle tunes, choice of difficulty level, and specially its boasting of background scaling and rotation effects. All of these so incredibly similar to what Nintendo's 16-bit hardware would be able to reproduce years later at home that you could fool anyone into thinking Phelios is actually a SNES title.

Phelios' plot makes itself perfectly at home in ancient Greece of legends, but not without some discrepancies. In your way to defeat the titan Typhon you will clash against various mythological deities and semi-gods such as the petrifying Medusa, the three blind witch sisters Graiae and their crystal ball, and the men-seducing Siren. But on the other side, for example, infamous hell gatekeeper pooch Cerberus has been somehow transformed into a three-headed dragon instead of a canine; and hottie in distress Artemis (goddess of the moon) happens to awkwardly be Apollo's (god of the sun and Phelios' protagonist) lover instead of sister twin.

On the first level, right after flying through a temple's hall and going under a stone arch, a small distant lake makes itself visible at the bottom of a cliff. Almost without notice, your winged horse dives swiftly towards the water at lightning speed while Namco's System 2 hardware zooms the background in and then rotates it 360 degrees left and right while a horde of red dragons try to keep our hero's tale a myth. This level is a fairly easy introduction to the game, but it soon becomes obvious that is was designed as a beautiful showpiece to lure players in. Unfortunately, the remaining 6 ( or 4 if you choose the "Easy Version" upon starting ) don't reflect the same quality. Sadly, scaling and rotation effects progressively go MIA and later stages don't look as impressive.

Surviving this Greek adventure depends primarily on two things: always anticipating where enemies enter the screen from, and abusing the Phelios sword's charged shot. Shooting the enemy down before it fires back at you is key, since they move and shoot very fast and Apollo's horse Pegasus's is quite big and doesn't do a very good job of dodging bullets.
Then there's the charged shot, your best friend. Unlike the ridiculously weak normal shot, the charged beam is extremely quick to get ready and very powerful too. Even some of the weakest enemies take up to a ridiculous 10 regular hits to kill, and although Apollo can take some punishment before loosing a life, charging up is the only way out when groups of 5 or 10 of them surround you at the same time.
Once per level the game throws at you a special weapon for a limited time, such as spread, homing, or wave shots. They are handed out by the game according to the kind of enemies faced and are specially useful in said situations, often reducing the difficulty so much it feels you are playing a bonus stage. By the way, be sure you get all those "Option" satellites too. Stolen right out of Gradius, the little firing aids will make your life much easier.

Because of the technical qualities previously mentioned, Phelios could have made a near-perfect transition to SNES. Yet the only home version turns out to be a Genesis port, finally bringing the game out of Japan for the first time. The colorful palette and all fancy effects are of course gone, digitized voices were kept but are now unintelligible, and the stages have been edited and redesigned to fit the console's technical specifications. There's a specially odd and horrible 4 frame animation that replaces one of the original zoom effects when Apollo goes through a broken window and into the caverns in the second stage. It's so cheap and jerky you will swear your Genesis CPU is melting down.
The captions that appear when Artemis communicates with you during battle have been translated into Zero Wing-quality "Engrish" (which of course, it's the most hilarious kind of Engrish) . Here's an example out of the game's briefing section for stage 6:

Most of the original's faults still apply to this 16-bit version too, like its progressive quality decrease, but perhaps the most notable difference is Artemis herself. As levels are cleared, Namco decided that Artemis' dress should be progressively torn off Gals' Panic style, so towards the end of the game she's only wearing a bathing suit.
Genesis Phelios is a little more forgiving than the original, so it does compensate for the technical handicaps by being more accessible. Still, without all the flare of the arcade version there isn't much left to enjoy.

Phelios - Genesis

Take that, Gals' Panic.

In the end, the original Phelios makes big promises with its fancy effects, epic sounding soundtrack, and beautiful graphics; but under the surface it lacks the polished play of classic shooters of the time and all the technical prowess seems like a smoke screen for an underlying half-decent game. The marked decrease in stage design quality as the game progresses doesn't help Namco's image either, making it look like its budget got suddenly cut short half way into it or the programmers were rushed to complete it.