Game Description

You are graduate student Conrad Hart, agent of the Galaxia Bureau of Investigation (G.B.I). Aliens bent on taking over the world have abducted you. Brave man and all around cool dude that you are, you escaped your captors on a speeder, but unfortunately you were shot down over a jungle outside of the city shortly thereafter. Amnesia quickly set in. Now, with gun in hand, you must find out your true identity and quash the alien invasion.

Flashback: The Quest for Identity takes you through seven levels of action and intrigue. Luckily, your agility and training allow you to run, scale tall structures, jump and turn somersaults, even with gun in hand. You'll also ride elevators, talk to people, examine objects, ride taxis, take the subway, open doors and teleport to other areas. ~ Brett Alan Weiss, All Game Guide

Roots & Influences

This game is similar to Out of This World, which was released for the Genesis in 1992. ~ Brett Alan Weiss, All Game Guide

Review: Enjoyment

Adventure fans will love every minute of Flashback's intense and mind bending puzzles and action ~ Shawn Sackenheim, All Game Guide

Review: Overall

From the creators of the immensely challenging Out of this World and Heart of the Alien comes Flashback. Staying true to form, Delphine has created another challenging adventure/RPG with realistic animation and lush graphics that look to surpass the Genesis' hardware limitations.

We'll put the graphics aside for the moment as the real showpiece in Flashback is the gameplay. Even more devilishly cunning than that in Out of this World, you'll be wracking your brain trying to figure out these puzzles while gunning down an onslaught of robots, alien goons, and rival humans. The whole game is like this, challenging with realistic puzzles (keycards, teleporters, and the like) but also packed with gunfire and action.

Also adding to the depth of the game are the shear number of moves that you can pull off, all of which are necessary for you to master to even stand a chance of living through this. Running, jumping, hanging, dropping, throwing, firing, and communicating are the skills that will become second nature.

Okay, now for the graphics. All of the animation was rotoscoped meaning that real people were filmed and their motion was copied into the game giving all of the human characters an alarming sense of realism. The backgrounds too are high quality and look surrealistically superb. All of the story is tied in through flat shaded animations that carry the look and feel of the game from level to level.

The soundtrack and effects are also high quality, for a Genesis title, featuring incidental music that will send a chill down your spine and ambient effects that will have you checking behind every corner.

Overall, Flashback is one of the greatest cinematic adventures around. Having been ported to several platforms, the Genesis version is clearly the best as the audio in other versions has been remastered and sounds worse, in my humble opinion. If you liked Out of this World, Flashback will have you enthralled for weeks. ~ Shawn Sackenheim, All Game Guide

Review: Graphics

Surrealistically superb with smooth and lifelike animation ~ Shawn Sackenheim, All Game Guide

Review: Sound

Great minimalistic soundtrack and diverse ambient effects ~ Shawn Sackenheim, All Game Guide

Review: Replay Value

You'll spend weeks with Flashback but after you're done there's little to come back to ~ Shawn Sackenheim, All Game Guide

Review: Documentation

The manual does a good job of describing controls and options and gives you a good grasp of things goin into the game ~ Shawn Sackenheim, All Game Guide