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Nexus Reminisces: Flashback.
12 years ago
I made that journal before about reviewing games maybe, and I gave it a little thought and figured I could maybe not so much review modern games, or review retro stuff, but I'd instead review things that really stuck out in my memory. Hense, "reminisces".
I was debating about which game I should reminisce about first, but then today we got this trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsL1E4zSNrA
And suddenly it seemed obvious.
So, Flashback.
The game begins with a cinematic which is amazingly well animated for the Mega Drive, which is what I owned this game on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpjpjg-ifpE
Though the Amiga and MS-DOS versions had a longer intro with more animations to it, something I only found out years later.
So immediately you have no context for anything; some guy runs from two other guys, gets on a bike, gets shot down...so what? Well you play the game and wake up as the guy on the bike, named Conrad, and knock some cube off the ledge you're laying on. You go down and fetch it and find it's a recording of you telling you that you erased your own memory for your safety and now you must find some guy called Ian in New Washington to get it back. For some reason this is important (other than, you know, it's my memory dammit).
And from here on the game lets you work things out as you go, really. You walk through seperate screens, with each screen having various traps, pitfalls or hazards to navigate through. Considering the system I played it on and the game that normally came out on it, the controlls were very complex. If you've ever played Oddworld: Abe's Oddysey then you'll have an understanding of it, though I'd argue that game was a refinement of Flashback in many ways.
A was your action button. You jumped with it, fired your gun, activated machines, etc. B was use, you'd use the item you'd selected from your inventory. C brought out your gun. Start would open your inventory.
Early on, a problem you'd come across was the many, many ways you could jump. Press Up and you'd jump vertically on the spot. Hold A and press Up and you'd do a small jump forwards. Hold A and press left or right and you'd run in that direction. Press Up while running to do a long jump. Many people got stuck at the start of the second level because of a jump you'd never needed to use in the first level at all and barely have to use in the game. There's a ledge out of reach of both long and short jumps, you always *just* miss it. To get there you just have to run at it...and Conrad does the jump by himself. Got stuck there for, I'm not kidding, just over an hour. This is definitely not a game you could accuse of holding your hand too much. A lot of the objectives are little more than hints and suggestions, but that just makes it all the more rewarding when you figure out what you're meant to do.
The story is quite good, with some interesting turns. It turns out there's an alien conspiracy, a race of shapeshifters have infiltrated the population and are slowly taking over. Conrad is the only person who knows about it and subsiquently the only person who can stop it. He must journey to Earth to warn everyone or failing that stop the aliens himself.
The game's levels are nicely varied with something of a cyberpunk feel to them, especially when you get to a dystopian future Earth. The art work for the game is brilliant. We go from an alien jungle to run down edge-of-nowhere city to a futuristic neon gladiator-like game show and more. Though the game show feels a bit like padding the game length, since it doesn't really add anything to the game's plot.
The most stressful and by that token memorable parts for me were the race-against-time sections. And good god were these things tight on time. In the second level you're teleported into a busted-ass super computer to replace a broken part. You need to run through this gauntlet of traps, hazards, fizzing wires, disintigrator machines and pitfalls in what feels like *just* enough time. You'll probably reach it with about 5 seconds to spare. There are similar sections later where you're being chased by a disintigrator machine and you must get the jumps exactly right or you, erm, disintigrate. It definitely quickens the pulse. And that's to say nothing for the incredibly dramatic finale.
There's an HD remake of the game due out by the end of the year. I'll certainly be interested in seeing how well they do the controls; whether they keep it like the original or modernise it.
Here's some original footage to give you a flavour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AQvgbdtIJk
I was debating about which game I should reminisce about first, but then today we got this trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsL1E4zSNrA
And suddenly it seemed obvious.
So, Flashback.
The game begins with a cinematic which is amazingly well animated for the Mega Drive, which is what I owned this game on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpjpjg-ifpE
Though the Amiga and MS-DOS versions had a longer intro with more animations to it, something I only found out years later.
So immediately you have no context for anything; some guy runs from two other guys, gets on a bike, gets shot down...so what? Well you play the game and wake up as the guy on the bike, named Conrad, and knock some cube off the ledge you're laying on. You go down and fetch it and find it's a recording of you telling you that you erased your own memory for your safety and now you must find some guy called Ian in New Washington to get it back. For some reason this is important (other than, you know, it's my memory dammit).
And from here on the game lets you work things out as you go, really. You walk through seperate screens, with each screen having various traps, pitfalls or hazards to navigate through. Considering the system I played it on and the game that normally came out on it, the controlls were very complex. If you've ever played Oddworld: Abe's Oddysey then you'll have an understanding of it, though I'd argue that game was a refinement of Flashback in many ways.
A was your action button. You jumped with it, fired your gun, activated machines, etc. B was use, you'd use the item you'd selected from your inventory. C brought out your gun. Start would open your inventory.
Early on, a problem you'd come across was the many, many ways you could jump. Press Up and you'd jump vertically on the spot. Hold A and press Up and you'd do a small jump forwards. Hold A and press left or right and you'd run in that direction. Press Up while running to do a long jump. Many people got stuck at the start of the second level because of a jump you'd never needed to use in the first level at all and barely have to use in the game. There's a ledge out of reach of both long and short jumps, you always *just* miss it. To get there you just have to run at it...and Conrad does the jump by himself. Got stuck there for, I'm not kidding, just over an hour. This is definitely not a game you could accuse of holding your hand too much. A lot of the objectives are little more than hints and suggestions, but that just makes it all the more rewarding when you figure out what you're meant to do.
The story is quite good, with some interesting turns. It turns out there's an alien conspiracy, a race of shapeshifters have infiltrated the population and are slowly taking over. Conrad is the only person who knows about it and subsiquently the only person who can stop it. He must journey to Earth to warn everyone or failing that stop the aliens himself.
The game's levels are nicely varied with something of a cyberpunk feel to them, especially when you get to a dystopian future Earth. The art work for the game is brilliant. We go from an alien jungle to run down edge-of-nowhere city to a futuristic neon gladiator-like game show and more. Though the game show feels a bit like padding the game length, since it doesn't really add anything to the game's plot.
The most stressful and by that token memorable parts for me were the race-against-time sections. And good god were these things tight on time. In the second level you're teleported into a busted-ass super computer to replace a broken part. You need to run through this gauntlet of traps, hazards, fizzing wires, disintigrator machines and pitfalls in what feels like *just* enough time. You'll probably reach it with about 5 seconds to spare. There are similar sections later where you're being chased by a disintigrator machine and you must get the jumps exactly right or you, erm, disintigrate. It definitely quickens the pulse. And that's to say nothing for the incredibly dramatic finale.
There's an HD remake of the game due out by the end of the year. I'll certainly be interested in seeing how well they do the controls; whether they keep it like the original or modernise it.
Here's some original footage to give you a flavour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AQvgbdtIJk
