Flashback (1992 video game): Difference between revisions
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'''''Flashback''''' (also titled '''''Flashback: The Quest For Identity''''' [[Market-Based Title|in America]]) is a platform/adventure game released in 1992 on the Amiga, and later ported to the Mega Drive/Genesis and SNES in 1993. It pays homage to many classic [[Science Fiction]] films like ''[[Total Recall]]'', ''[[Blade Runner]]''
You play as Conrad Hart, a government agent. Using [[See-Thru Specs|molecular-density scanning glasses, he discovers alien impostors among the population]], known as [[Voluntary Shapeshifting|Morphs]]. Attempts are made on his life, and he creates a log of his memories as a backup. Kidnapped, his [[Laser-Guided Amnesia|memory wiped]], he escapes his [[The Guards Must Be Crazy|inattentive captors]] on [[Hover Board|hoverbike]] and is shot down over the jungles of Titan. [[No One Could Survive That|Left for dead]], he finds a [[Hologram|holocube]] log of himself that instructs him to go to his contact in the city of New Washington and retrieve his memory. He must make his way back to Earth, find the Morph base of operations, and stop their plans to conquer the galaxy.
Gameplay is similar to ''[[Prince of Persia]]'', but with a gun. You get a [[Deflector Shields|personal force field generator]] in the second level that lets you block shots- this, along with [[Unnecessary Combat Roll|rolling]], is the key to winning battles. The levels can get quite long, although checkpoints (misleadingly called Save Points) are scattered throughout.
Made by the same company that created ''[[Another World (video game)|Another World]]'', ''Flashback'' used a similar method to create polygonal cutscenes and rotoscoped animation that could be played on an Amiga, Genesis or SNES. It billed itself as "the CD-ROM game on a cartridge/floppy", and was stuffed with cinematics, most notably [[Item Get|when you pick up items]]. Later, it was ported to the CD based consoles of the era, with a replacement soundtrack and CGI cutscenes.
A sequel, ''Fade
{{tropenamer}}
* [[Quest for Identity]]
{{tropelist}}
* [[Advancing Wall of Doom]]: The end of the fourth level.
* [[Air Vent Passageway]]: Conrad overhears the aliens' plot from a ceiling grate... which promptly collapses under his weight. To the dungeon with you!
* [[AI Is a Crapshoot]]: Conrad's second mission in New Wasington is to track down a Death Tower android which has gone berserk and escaped.▼
* [[Alien Animals]]
* [[Alien Invasion]]: The Morphs are hunting for new real estate.
* [[Aliens Speaking English]]: The aliens converse in perfect English, even in private.
* [[All There in the Manual]]: A comic outlining the backstory was included with the manual.
* [[Artificial Human]]:
▲* [[
* [[Badass Longcoat]] / [[Jet Pack]]: The cops.▼
* [[Bittersweet Ending]]:
* [[Bottomless Magazines]]: Conrad never runs out of ammunition, which is fortunate. His blaster apparently does not fire bullets, yet it still spits out shells.
* [[Bowdlerise]]: "Death Tower" becomes "Cyber Tower" in the SNES version.
* [[Brain In a Jar
* [[Broke Episode]]: The second level has you doing odd jobs for cash.
* [[Casual Interstellar Travel]]: Conrad's prize for surviving the Death Tower game show: a first-class ticket to Earth.
* [[Cinematic Platform Game]]
* [[Collapsing Lair]]: Level 7, after
* [[Cool Shades]]: The cops wear Terminator-like sunglasses in the Amiga/Genesis versions.
* [[Deadly Game]]: Death Tower.
* [[Death Course]]
* [[Disintegrator Ray]]: ''Flashback'''s most irritating obstacle
* [[Dramatic Chase Opening]]: The beginning starts with a cinematic chase focusing on Conrad and his pursuers' feet, followed by a first person flying car chase.
* [[Easily-Thwarted Alien Invasion]]: The Morphs have a giant passageway leading directly to the planet's core. Dropping a palm-sized nuke into the hole destroys the planet.
* [[Escort Mission]]: There's one in the second level. The VIP is one ungrateful bastard.
* [[Exact Eavesdropping]]
* [[Exposition Beam]]: Ian's chair restores Conrad's memories with a laser directed at his forehead.
* [[Faster-Than-Light Travel]]
* [[Flash Step]]: The Flashmen's main mode of attack.
* [[Flying Car]]
* [[Government Agency of Fiction]]: The Galactic Bureau of Investigation.
* [[The Guards Must Be Crazy]]: The aliens erase Conrad's memory upon his capture, instead of killing him outright. He might have been more useful to them alive, but this is never explained. Later, Conrad is imprisoned yet again. When the jailer opens the cell door, there's nothing preventing you from simply dashing out of the cell and reclaiming your gun, which is conveniently lying on the floor.
* [[Guide Dang It]]:
* [[Guide Dang It]]: There's a jump at the beginning of the second level that requires a maneuver you won't use often. Also, there's the door in the sixth level that requires you to shoot it open, the only door of its kind. Nowhere in the game at all does it suggest to shoot any door, though the comic book in the game's instruction manual showed Conrad doing just this in that exact area.▼
** There's a jump at the beginning of the second level that requires a maneuver you won't use often. The obscure move was deliberately included as a form of copy protection. Unless you had the manual, you were unlikely to progress past the second screen of level 2.
▲*
* [[He Knows Too Much]]
* [[Humanoid Aliens]]: The mutants.
* [[In Medias Res]]: Somewhat subverted. The plot should be no secret to anyone who bought the game legitimately, and you learn the truth behind Conrad's mission in the second stage, anyway.
* [[It Got Worse]]: The sequel
* [[It's All Upstairs From Here]] / [[Wrap Around]]: Level 3. Justified because it's a cylindrical tower.▼
* [[It's All Upstairs From Here]]: Level 3, which is set in a tower.
* [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]]: Played straight, and then literally flipped right around when Conrad's memory is reimplanted by... lasers.
* [[Laser Sight]]: Appears ominously on Conrad's back in a [[Flash Back]] sequence, right before he's tranquilized and tossed into a car.
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* [[Lock and Key Puzzle]]
* [[The Many Deaths of You]]
* [[Marathon Level]]: New Washington is particularly obnoxious with its sheer size, tedious subway travel, and a surprise [[Timed Mission]].
* [[Meat Moss]]: Planet Morph (though it looks more like bubble gum).
* [[Multi Platform]]: Oh, so very much; ''Flashback'' is one of the most widely available non-puzzle games in existence, being published on the Amiga, ''several'' PC models, the Macintosh, [[Sega Genesis]], [[Super NES]], [[Other Sega Systems|SegaCD]], [[Atari Jaguar]], [[Philips CD-i]], [[
** Interestingly, the SNES port was released a year after the Genesis version, yet each of the cutscenes have different music.
* [[Mysterious Middle Initial]]: Conrad B. Hart.
* [[New Neo City]]: New Washington.
* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]]: While on planet Morph, Conrad finds another human survivor. Unfortunately, you can't reach him without triggering a motion sensor, which leaves the stranger wide open to getting shot by an alien lying in wait.
* [[No Body Left Behind]]:
▲** [[I'm Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin]]: At least he's nice enough to hand over all the info you need to {{spoiler|blow up the planet}} before he croaks.
** Flashmen (quite rightly) explode once defeated.
*
** The Morphs revert to a plume of blue smoke and disappear. Which is a pretty unique way to expire.
** The mutants' corpses are persistent, however.
* [[No Hero Discount]]: An old hillbilly who lives next to a giant chasm on Titan won't fork over his [[Artificial Gravity|Anti-Grav]] belt for less than 500 credits. New Washington is even worse, with a 1500 credit requirement for advancing to the next stage.
* [[No New Fashions in the Future]]: Conrad wears a brown leather jacket, jeans and Nikes.
* [[Nothing Is Scarier]]: The cartridge versions have no music, only brief leitmotifs.
* [[Pistol-Whipping]]: Replaces the standard gun attack when an enemy stands too close to Conrad. Can also be used to [[Window Pain|smash out windows]]... too bad there's only one breakable window in the game.
* [[Pixel Hunt]]:
*
**
* [[Police Are Useless]]: Extortion, corruption
* [[Post Cyber Punk]]
* [[Real Men Wear Pink]]: Conrad wears a magenta shirt that mysteriously turns white for cutscenes. Except in the Genesis and original Amiga versions, where it's white all along.
* [[Recycled in Space]]: It's ''They Live''... in SPACE!
* [[Reptiles Are Abhorrent]]: The Morphs are blue-skinned lizards in red pajamas.
* [[Scenery Porn]]: The Death Tower and the Morphs Planet levels.
* [[See-Thru Specs]]: Conrad's transparent green eyepatch doohickey, used to spot aliens who are hiding in human guise. Features prominently in cutscenes as well as the box art, yet you never actually get to use it.
* [[Sentry Gun]]: They can't be destroyed, but a few have adjacent switches that turn them off. The firing rate is also slow enough that Conrad can duck, roll or jump over the shots.
* [[Shapeshifter Weapon]]: Morphs LOVE to pop up under you and attack.
* [[Shout-Out]]: The final image of the game is
* [[Spirit Advisor]]: During the final sequence of the game, an "inner voice" (implied to be the survivor from earlier) guides Conrad in planting an atomic bomb in the planet's core.
* [[Stationary Boss]]: The Auxiliary Brain and Master Brain.
* [[The Taxi]]: Conrad's first task upon returning to Earth is to hail a hover-cab.
* [[Teleporters and Transporters]]:
* [[Terraform]]: Titan (Saturn's moon) has been transformed into a lush alien jungle, with a metropolitan city beneath its crust.▼
*
** Other teleporters exist in the game, such as the one in New Washington's Job Center. This is also the mode of travel by which Conrad journeys to the Morph homeworld.
▲* [[Terraform]]: Titan (Saturn's moon) has been transformed into a lush alien jungle, with a metropolitan city beneath its crust.
* [[Unspoken Plan Guarantee]]: "A SPY... Throw the wretch into the dungeons. We'll interrogate him later."
* [[Used Future]]: New Washington is dank and grimy, full of rotating fans and endless basements. Earth is slightly cleaner, but still a dump.
* [[We Will Spend Credits in the Future]]: Money comes in floppy discs, in denotations ranging from 50 bucks to 15 grand.
* [["What Now?" Ending]]:
▲*
* [[Wretched Hive]]: New Washington. Strikingly empty of actual people, but filled with mutants and [[Going Critical|volatile energy reactors]].
* [[Zeerust]]
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Science Fiction Video Games]]
[[Category:The Nineties]]
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[[Category:Acorn Archimedes]]
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[[Category:Sega Genesis]]
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▲[[Category:IOS Games]]
[[Category:Atari Jaguar]]
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