Flashback

Flashback is one of the high points of the so-called cinematic platformer, and on the Mega-CD it arrived in a version that benefits from the extra disc space. The player takes on the role of Conrad Hart, a man whose memory has been wiped and who wakes up in the jungle of the planet Titan with no idea who's after him. From there, the trail leads through an illegal television contest all the way to uncovering an alien infiltration, with the story unfolding through cutscenes that were unusually cinematic for their time.

The controls are deliberately clunky and precise at the same time. Conrad breaks into a run, carefully approaches the edge of a platform, grabs onto ledges, and above all takes cover around corners, from where he fires his blaster or drops force shields. Fights are short and lethal, so it pays to scope out a room before stepping into it. Besides shootouts, the game builds on finding cards, switches, and paths through the levels, so progress is as much about logic as it is about action. The character's rotoscoped animation gives movement a weight that platformers of the time usually lacked. It's precisely this combination of cautious movement and fast, hard-hitting gunfights that spawned an entire school of games still referenced today, from later platformers emphasizing physical believability of the character to modern indie titles.

The Mega-CD version adds disc-based music and voiced dialogue, which bring the cutscenes closer to an animated film; the core gameplay itself, on the other hand, stays the same as in the original releases. The atmosphere is cold, lonely, and slightly paranoid, wonderfully supported by the sterile station corridors and the nighttime streets of New Washington. At the time Flashback was very well received across platforms and became one of the best-selling French games ever. Today it will punish anyone who approaches it with reflexes learned from modern games, but whoever accepts its slower, cautious rhythm will find an extraordinarily stylish sci-fi experience that still holds up. The hand-drawn backgrounds, meanwhile, have aged far better than the early attempts at 3D graphics of the era.