Title and history Flashback inevitably associated with certain names, in particular such as Paul Quisset and Delphine Software. Names that probably don’t mean anything to the younger generation, but which were surrounded by a certain fame in the early 90s. So here we are in 1988, when Paul de Senneville, creator of Delphine Productions, decided to give his music label a video game spin-off. Delphine Software International (or DSI) began by publishing games from independent developers, and it was then that the firm came into contact with the young Paul Quisset and Denis Mercier, who were at that moment hired by Elite and SEGA to port Space Harrier on Atari ST and Amiga. This was the beginning of subsequent fruitful collaboration, which quickly raised Kisse to the position of vice president of Delphine Software and creative director, responsible for all studio projects. In the beginning they were adventure games, point ‘n click, which were remembered for their visual quality and story, as well as the desire to get closer to cinema. Les Voyageurs du Temps, Operation Stealth or else Croisière pour une cadavre (“Corpse Crusade” sounds like something out of Steel Ball Run approx. translator) highlighted a catalog of games from 16-bit microcomputers of the era. The team forged around Kisse. Jean Baudelot periodically played the role of the composer there, and a cameo by Eric Chailly appeared in the credits Voyageurs du Temps, for which he did the visual component.

From point’n click to action games

“The future in the late 80s was pumped up with a good dose of neon.”

“The game was filled with short clips in vector 3D, which added a cinematic side to it that was highly valued at the time.”

But the connection between Eric Chailly and Delphine Software did not end there. After Voyageurs du Temps, Although part of the team was working on other adventure games, he began working alone on a new project, an action game mixed with platforming in a sci-fi universe. The project used rotoscoping technology and vector graphics to offer unprecedented levels of animation. This game, of course Another World, perhaps the first real pillar of what would later be called the French Touch (french touch) – a movement that expresses the peculiar French creative spirit, the desire for originality, but also a connection with the seventh art in production and in the visual component. Delphine took over publishing of the game in 1991. It was a success, the game went on sale for all possible platforms, and the company expanded its range with a project of a different kind, thereby moving away from point’n click. Flashback will complete this process. It’s hard not to notice the similarity between the games, not so much in the presentation of the gameplay, but in the complexity, graphics or even animation, which again uses technologies chosen by Chailly. The latter still did not apply to controllers, and so he stopped developing Another World. It was Paul Quisset who took over the development of Flashback on a rather unexpected basis.

“The jungle of Titan, Saturn’s moon, is the first location in the game: one of the most memorable for players, since some were stuck here without seeing the further development of the plot”

“Lost his memory at https://noaccount-casinos.co.uk/review/prive-casino/ the beginning of the adventure, Conrad must reach the city of New Washington to try to get it back.”

Delphine turns his back on Don Vito

In fact Flashback was born after an inquiry from US Gold, Delphine’s UK distribution partner, who at the time had their eye on a particularly lucrative license: Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather trilogy. If Delphine was not too fond of this type of deal, then the British side liked to ensure a minimum of sales with counterfeits (rather, it means passing off some projects as others, approx. translator) known licenses. It is for this reason Operation Stealth, one of the first games from the French studio, it was sold as James Bond on the Anglo-Saxon market. In The Godfather, Paul Kiss came face to face with a world that didn’t interest him at all. The young game designer was striving for the stars, but the very mundane old stories about the mafia, also wonderful in their own way, left him indifferent. However, the guy had complete freedom of action in the matter of adaptation. From that moment on, he planned to do everything in his own way and transfer the adventures of Michael Corleone into a futuristic context. “Originally, Conrad was called Cordoleani, and the story was about rival gangs,” Paul Quisse explained on IG Mag in 2011. Delphine made the first demo in an environment very familiar to players Flashback, we’re talking about starting level in the deep jungle. As we said above, Delphine Software’s game was close to Another World. This is not to say that it was a new adventure game, on the contrary, it was a platformer with a bit of action precisely because it was originally intended for the Megadrive.

“The aliens have mixed with the population, Conrad must beware of everyone, including the police forces”

“The New Washington bar provided an opportunity for Conrad to collect evidence there during his investigation, but most of all it served Delphine to create an atmosphere and a cohesive world.”

Megadrive, game converter

After years of working on microcomputers, the French studio has set its sights on the console market. “Contrary to the majority opinion, Flashback, in reality, was assembled and conceived for Megadrive. The Amiga version is nothing more than a conversion, even if the game first came out on that platform. This happened due to the fact that the time frame for releasing the game on the console is much longer – due to subordination – and also because we were already creating software for the Amiga and it was much faster,” Kisse explained to IG. Of course, this key change – driven by US Gold – will cause quite a bit of disruption in the way the DSI team operates. “We had to use a new interface, develop new methods to make the characters move. We had to rethink our way of telling stories […] and I decided to make a game with an emphasis on action,” the game designer explained on the Nintendo Life website. The gameplay has been reoriented and so has the script. From rewrite to rewrite, the traces of the Godfather have faded. Kisse had his own vision: science fiction on an intergalactic scale with an alien race trying to take control of the Earth. When US Gold returned to see progress on the project a year later, it saw nothing related to Coppola’s trilogy. Surprisingly, the British were fascinated by what Delphine showed them. The godfather went to jail, Flashback got on the rails.

Sacrifice and handicrafts

Of course, moving from microcomputers to consoles and choosing Megadrive as their main software, Delphine Software had to contend with less powerful hardware than what they were used to and in particular support for limited-size cartridges. Paul Quissé’s team had to sacrifice something and make do with makeshift methods to compensate for the console’s weaknesses. They developed an algorithm designed to create simple sounds to complement several parts of the game’s soundtrack. Movement through the game had to be carried out from screen to screen so as not to overwhelm the console memory and Delphine even had to use a sound chip to store backups and saves! The French studio even went so far as to create its own Megadrive cartridge thanks to reverse engineering (Study of some finished device, as well as its documentation in order to understand the principle of its operation; for example, to make a modification or reproduce a device with similar functions, but without direct copying. approx. translator): 24 megabits instead of the usual 16, which is unique. “We put it together before we talked to SEGA about it. When they were shown what had been modified… I’m not sure they were delighted, but they didn’t mind, they didn’t sue us. 24 megabit cartridges have already been announced, this was not a problem for us,” Paul Quisse also clarified for Nintendo Life. All this served one single purpose: to preserve the quality of the animation of the hero: Conrad.

Cartoons

“In 2013, Paul Quissé released a modern interpretation of the cult game, which was very poorly received by critics.”

We have already said that Flashback in that era he was noted precisely for the quality of animation, adopting how Prince of Persia or Another World before it, rotoscoping technology. Behind this scientific term lies a method of introducing real frames, one by one, into the game before breaking down the character’s movements. Jordan Meckner (developer Prince of Percia, approx. translator) filmed his brother, the Delphine team chose Denis Mercier to portray Conrad for the filming. “After we filmed the movements, we combined them and traced them onto a transparent sheet. Then, we combined the sheets on the Amiga screen, and everything was redrawn using the Deluxe Paint program,” Kisse explained in more detail for IG. The titanic work resulted in more than a thousand frames for the hero alone, and all due to the desire to achieve complete smoothness of movements, according to an interview with the game designer for Nintendo Life: “We tried different frame rates and decided to do 24 frames per second, because it was simply more beautiful. At 12 frames per second, it was ok, but not as smooth as required. Everything possible had to be done to maintain this smoothness. It meant taking other things away, but I believe we kept the main thing.”. If this animation, so sharp, gave the game its legendary difficulty, in the memory of the players Flashback stayed more for its unique atmosphere; for an amazing, dark, exotic universe; for fantastic backgrounds in colors typical of the works of Delphine Software; for cut scenes in 3D and for the naturalness of the movements of their characters and, in particular, for the manner of presenting their story through game design.

After an attempt at a remake in 2013 that completely failed, players can rediscover this classic on Switch in a version that Kisse touted as excellently faithful to the original with some useful ideas, like training, to demonstrate flexibility for a new generation.

Magazine: VIDEOGAMER Retro hors-série “Le collector retro gaming”, Juillet – Out – Septembre 2019