Flashback™

I have purchased this as soon as it was released but when doing so I didn't realize I'm reinforcing a terrible trend. This port is bad. Ugly "modern" filters and "remastered" music. Even if you turn everything off, it's still full screen in a bad way (too zoomed in) and new bugs are introduced with the music incorrectly triggering at certain points. I couldn't stand this more than 10 minutes. But wait! The worst part is that this is now the "official", mandatory way to experience Flashback. Abandonware sites don't have the original DOS version anymore. Now, when I actually want to play Flashback, I can't, I have to run this abomination and there's no other way. This has happened for many other games, too. If you think a little about what this means for you, as a person who loves old games, the implications are terrifying.

I bought ‘Flashback: 25th Anniversary’ because I never got past the first level when I played the original PC game in the 1990s. Being older and a bit wiser now, I’m determined to finish it. But, I’m no fool – the game was hard back then and it’ll still be hard over 25 years later, perhaps more so with my slower reaction time due to old age. Thankfully, ‘F25’ presents the game in either Classic mode or Modern mode. The Rewind feature in Modern mode allows me to rewind time up to 2 minutes before the point I died in the game. It saves me the headache of restarting the level, as save points are far and few in between. Rewind makes ‘F25’ more accessible to contemporary audience, and to gamers who are older (yet less tenacious and/or inexperienced with the original game) like me. Aside from Rewind, ‘F25’ doesn’t have other major upgrades to contemporize the game. Filters like CRT and Noise & Static are gimmicky; antialiasing and bloom only add tiny visual improvement. The developers didn’t even try remastering the graphics properly. They just used a Post-FX filter, resulting in graphics that are less defined, less detailed, and frankly unappealing. ‘F25’ doesn’t even allow you to remap your keys. The original keyboard control configuration was already not optimal, and even more so right now. With SHIFT being used for firing, Sticky Keys in Windows gets activated a lot. So, I end up playing ‘F25’ with a game controller much to my chagrin. Yet, the controls remain janky and slow, and are still not ideal for combat situations. Claiming to be a celebration of ‘Flashback’, there’re no retrospectives or production notes from the original developer. You can hear the remastered soundtrack, and unlock ‘Flashback’ street art (yes, unlock) as a bonus for some reason. So, yay?! Honestly, ‘F25’ feels like a lazy remaster or update. Whether you liked the original or not, I think you’d agree that it deserves better.

The game itself is one legend of a game and worth considering. This version, however, is mediocre. It is great that they allowed players to use the "clean" version and you can change the settings any time, but the "clasic" version is still one of the worse versions of the game available. Music in the remaster is bad, I do not know what they were even thinking, but the 8-bit version is also an inferior version of what was available on other platforms at that time! Check Amiga longplays to see what I mean. The intro, with the poor, speeded-up intrumental variant, is the first example of that. Also, SFXs are more annoying than attractive - again, compare with the Amiga version from 28 years ago! Don't tell me that it was not possible to re-use it, let alone improve upon it! What was really annoying with this version were also the controls - cannot be changed, sometimes single hits register as double hits, sometimes register as a different one (e.g. when you use alt to get the gun and then an arrow right away, the arrow hit registers as the second alt hit, which makes your character hide his gun. You can imagine how frustrating it made some of the fights, which, btw, are also inconsistent in how the enemies react. What helped with this buggy key issue was the new rewind function, which is a very good addition to the game, especially to those who value their time. The implemented extra points to collect for unlocks is something extra that some folks might apreciate, and the street art is a nice addition for people who like the game, but for mee it is not a real selling point. Other than that, you get your classic Flashback. I cannot deny that it is nice that somebody has decided to work on it, and there is even an option to change the color of the t-shirt of the character to white, the Amiga version, but there is so much more that hasn't been addressed. All in all, thee game is worth the purchase, but the remaster could have been better.

I have never played Flashback back in the day, so this is my first time. I went with the everything classic (No rewind, no filters) except for sound. ===== The first thing you'd notice are the controls and how stiff they are. It took me at least 1 hour just to be able to get around well enough in the first area. But once I got the controls covered, the game became a lot of fun. The animations are so satisfying to look at for a very old game. And the levels of the game are different from one another, which helps make the game not feel repetitive. The overall gameplay is kind of like a puzzle. I played on Expert Difficulty (The highest) so I had to be careful when facing enemies by timing jumps, rolls and shots. ===== But despite all the goods, three problems stood out to me enough that I had to give it 3 stars. -Story: Well, the game does have one but it's so little that I honestly had no idea why I am doing what I am doing. Of course, for a very old game I can't expect a Hideo Kojima story game but still, felt lost with the purpose of what is going on. -Music: Lack of music to be more accurate. The game barely has any. 90% of the playthrough, there's no background music. A short background music (6s or so) appears from time to time when you hold your gun up, an enemy appears, or sometimes just randomly. This (with the lack of story) gave a huge dull feeling to the game. -Difficulty: Overall, the game is difficult but very manageable. That is what I'd expect from a classic. BUT, near the end, the game introduces a new type of enemy that is everywhere in the late stages of the game. That enemy is extremely annoying to fight and makes a lot of annoying noises and has a huge HP. It took me maybe 6 hours just to finish the last part of the game because of how many times I died. Facing that enemy wasn't fun at all. ===== Overall, a fun classic game with lovely animation and puzzle like gameplay but lacks music, story and gets too difficult at the end. Thank you

This game brings back memories. I played it for the first time on a 386 with 2MB of RAM. This version is exactly like the 90s game with some extra features. I highly recommend it for people that have played it in the past and liked it. If you like old school platform games this is a nice game to add to your collection.