Flashback Longplay (Amiga) [50 FPS]

Developed by Delphine Software and published by US Gold in 1992

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Released in 1992, Flashback caused a considerable stir when it hit the shelves and gamers were, to not put too fine a point on it, blown away by the game's unbelievably realistic, rotoscoped animations. Although the Amiga version was the first to market, the game was actually designed for the Sega Mega Drive as the lead platform, with conversions to many other platforms as well.

The game's story, setting and art design is heavily influenced by Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall, itself based on a short novel by Philip K. Dick.

The player takes on the role of Conrad B. Hart, an investigator who discovers that aliens are infiltrating Earth's population and plan to take over the planet. Having been kidnapped and having his memory erased, Conrad manages to escape from this captors, only to crash-land in dense jungles of Titan, the largest of Saturn's moons. The game begins just as the amnesiac Conrad awakens in the jungle and must regain his lost memories and find a way to warn Earth.

The game is a flick-screen platforming-cum-action game that plays very similarly to Prince of Persia, although sword fights have been replaced with guns and a futuristic setting. Conrad must run, jump and climb through each of the game's screens, whilst shooting bad guys and solving puzzles. Most of the puzzles involve finding the right item to open a locked door, but many screens also require the player to think about how to deal with awkwardly positioned enemies and to make full use of all of the different moves that Conrad can perform.

One of the game's coolest things in the game are the animated cut-scenes used to advance the story. These explain how Conrad ended up in his current predicament, how he came to be on Titan and all other events from that point onward.

As well as cut-scenes for the main story, the developers went to the trouble of creating even more animations that are shown whenever Conrad picks up an item, or interacts with an object. However, there were many more of these animations included in the Amiga version than I first realised. I'd watched videos of Flashback for other gaming platforms and there seemed to be many more of these 3D animations than the Amiga version. Picking up many of the items simply displays a couple of lines of text, informing the player that the item had been picked up. I'd just assumed that the reason why some of these animations were missing was due to storage limitations of the floppy disks the game shipped on.

My theory, as it turns out, was wrong. In fact, the animations are not missing at all and are, in fact, on the disks. However, if you're playing the game straight from the floppies (as I had done back in the day), the additional animations are disabled by default, presumably because the disk access time would have slowed the pace of the game; only the scenes essential to the story are shown.

What is interesting about Flashback is that this is a game where as much thought has been given to the game mechanics, level design and player feedback, as much as artistic direction.

A case in point is is the placement of save points and energy recharge stations. If Conrad's shield has been depleted then the player can backtrack to a recharge station to top up, or can press on, knowing that another recharge station is likely to appear soon. Similarly, players are likely to find a save station just before certain platforming sections were instant death might occur, such as the disintegration traps. Unfortunately, there are a few annoying exceptions which are mainly found during the Titan base section of the game where Conrad has to earn credits for a set of fake identity papers - it would have been a really good idea if the devs could have included a save point nearer the mission areas in the event that the player dies.

Of course, you cannot talk about Flashback without talking about the graphics and animation. Even in 2016, the character animations, most notably those of Conrad, are simply superb and beautifully fluid - it's easy to see why the game was so heralded on it's arrival.

The sound design is also particularly impressive. Keen listeners might notice that sound effects from enemies and the environment play through the left or right channel relative to the player's current position. The game also features some fantastically meaty shooting and explosion effects, particularly that of the player's pistol.

For those who want to see the best that the 16-bit generation has to offer, Flashback is probably one of the easiest titles to recommend. As one of the most ambitions and technically impressive games of it's generation, it's no wonder that it is remembered to fondly by so many.
#retrogaming