This is from an era of action games I like to refer to as Tall Platformers, where all of the characters are huge as to suggest importance and dynamics in the visuals. Games like Generations Lost, the two Genesis X-Men games, and this. Of all of the retro revival stuff, I feel like the Tall Platformer has been left largely untouched in favor of things like Metroid and Castlevania. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

I don't know if this game is a good or bad thing. I do know that when I was a child I thought this game was endless and couldn't be beaten. Even for games of this era, when you look up a full playthrough of this game it takes quite a while longer than most of it's contemporaries. For example, one of those tall platformers I played recently was X-Men 2: Clone Wars. A full playthrough of that on youtube is 47 minutes. A full playthrough of Phantom 2040 is over three hours. For these old games, that's a fuckin while! No wonder I thought this game lasted forever, it comparatively does.

I still can't tell you if it's good, just that I liked it and maybe one day I'll beat it.