Flashback: The Quest for Identity

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Flashback: The Quest for Identity<tr><td colspan="2" style="font-size: 100%; text-align: center;">Image:Flashback cover MD.jpg</td></tr>
Developer(s)	Delphine Software International <tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Publisher(s)</th><td>U.S. Gold</td></tr><tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Designer(s)</th><td>Paul Cuisset</td></tr>
Release date(s)	1992
Genre(s)	Cinematic Platformer
Mode(s)	Single player <tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Rating(s)</th><td>ESRB: K-A (re-releases)</td></tr>
Platform(s)	IBM PC, Amiga, Apple Macintosh, Acorn Archimedes, Super NES, 3DO, Mega Drive/Genesis, Sega CD, Atari Jaguar

Flashback: The Quest for Identity, released just as Flashback in some countries, is an cinematic platformer developed by Delphine Software of France, a now defunct company, and published by U.S. Gold in America and Europe, and Sunsoft in Japan. The game was released in 1992 for IBM PC. Later a version on CD-ROM with new cinematic scenes was released. Flashback is listed in the Guinness World Records as the best-selling French game of all time.<ref name = "edge">"The making of…Flashback". Edge (magazine): 104-107. Retrieved on June 2006.</ref>

Flashback was released on IBM PC, Amiga, Apple Macintosh, Acorn Archimedes, CD-i, Super NES, 3DO, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, Sega CD and Atari Jaguar. The CD-ROM editions of the game featured better animation inbetween the levels and added voice actors to the character's dialogue.

The game features fully hand-drawn backdrops and for its time remarkably fluid rotoscoped animation of walking, running and jumping movements, reminiscent of the earlier Prince of Persia. The rotoscoping technique of Flashback was invented independently of Prince of Persia, using a more complicated method of first tracing video images onto transparencies.<ref name = "edge" />

The game began as a licensed adaptation of Francis Ford Coppola's movie The Godfather, but eventually strayed away from this theme as development proceeded.<ref name="edge" />

A sequel, named Fade to Black was produced in 1995. This game has completely different gameplay and generated mixed reviews from critics that felt that it was too different from the original game.^{[citation needed]} Flashback itself is often mistaken for a sequel to Another World.

1 Storyline
2 Version Differences
3 References
4 Related software
5 External links

[edit] Storyline

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The game begins on the moon Titan, progressing later to Earth and an alien spaceship in the year 2142. It details the journey of Conrad B. Hart, an agent for the Galaxia Bureau of Investigation, and his attempts to recover his lost memory to save the world. Fitting into the cyberpunk genre, there are government conspiracies, bleak world views, and cybernetic enhancements, all squeezed into the dystopian society the game presents. The game also seems to borrow themes from certain films, i.e. the deadly spheres in Phantasm, and many of the dystopian themes developed in Blade Runner and in Total Recall. The story is also somewhat reminiscent of They Live, including glasses that allow one to see aliens.

In Flashback, Titan is covered by an Earth-like tropical forest (unlike real life's freezing desert with a nitrogen atmosphere)

During one of his investigations, Conrad discovers a plot to take over Earth involving aliens called Morphs who disguise themselves as government officials. Conrad records a holocube for himself and makes a copy of his memory as a precaution against it being erased. As he feared, the Morphs eventually kidnap Conrad and erase his memory but he manages to escape and is left disoriented on Titan.

Conrad finds the cube he recorded earlier, he eventually regains his memory (in the titular 'flashback') and finds out that the people he used to work for have killed his girlfriend to make sure no one would report Conrad missing. In the end, he foils the alien's plans, once and for all, but at the cost of having to go into suspended animation in space and hope that he is picked up by someone. The sequel, Fade to Black, has Conrad being picked up by his old enemies.

[edit] Version Differences

The PC version has an extended intro sequence and more minor cut scenes than the Amiga version (such as picking up items). However, most, if not all, of the minor cut scenes are included in the Amiga version but can only be seen if the game is running off a hard drive. It was however possible to turn this function on, but it meant a short 2-3 second load from the floppy every time a cutscene was to be shown.