Yet another scrolling shooter goes into the archives, and one from way back in 1990.
Phantasm is a pretty neat looking shooter, which seems to have gone a long way before its cancellation. The preview consists of two levels in total and plenty of polish so far. The final game would have had up to 6 levels in total.
We assume that the game simply failed to find a publisher, and so it was assigned to the scrap heap. It’s a shame, as it looks pretty good at this early stage. Hopefully some day we’ll hear from the developers about the title and what happened exactly.
GTW team member Gaz Spence took a bit of a deep dive and found the following:
“The 1994 release looks like the most complete version, including the intro, a slightly different title screen, and a new gameplay element (holding down fire creates a force-field). Oddly, the 2004 release seems to be the earliest build but does include stills of more background graphics, and the 1990 release seems to fall somewhere in between. Sadly nothing major to add but it had the potential to be a nifty little shooter.”
Contributions: Gaz Spence
I took a bit of a deep dive into the various previews because the game looks intriguing. The 1994 release looks like the most complete version, including the intro, a slightly different title screen, and a new gameplay element (holding down fire creates a force-field). Oddly, the 2004 release seems to be the earliest build but does include stills of more background graphics, and the 1990 release seems to fall somewhere in between. Sadly nothing major to add but it had the potential to be a nifty little shooter.
Thanks for taking a look Gaz. I’ll update the page quickly with your findings!