Flashback: The Quest for Identity screenshot

Release year: 1993

Flashback: The Quest for Identity

Category: ActionAdventurePlatformer

The year is 2142. Conrad B. Hart comes to in a jungle on Titan. No memory, a holocube on the ground nearby, and someone already trying to kill him. Flashback: The Quest for Identity opens at a sprint and keeps going — through Titan's jungle and its teleporter puzzles, into the neon-soaked streets of New Washington, all the way up to "Death Tower", a TV game show where the prize is a ticket off the planet. Not making it out isn't an option.

Paul Cuisset built this at Delphine Software, and the Genesis/Mega Drive version hit shelves in 1993. It sold around 750,000 copies and holds a Guinness World Record as the best-selling French game of all time. A lot of that is the movement. The animation comes from rotoscoped footage of real actors. Conrad doesn't just jump. He tucks, rolls, lands with his whole body. There's real weight to it. Most players find that deliberateness maddening before they find it satisfying.

The holocube already told him why someone wants him dead — he invented a visor that can see through a Morph's disguise, and that was enough to have his memory wiped. In New Washington, Conrad reunites with his friend Ian, who runs him through a regenerator device using a digital copy Conrad had sent him before the wipe. His memories come back and confirm what the recording said. But remembering doesn't solve anything. He still needs credits, enough for forged papers, so he takes dangerous contract work. And Ian makes it plain: Death Tower is the only way off Titan. Win the show or don't leave. The odd jobs aren't filler. They're the price of finding out who he is.

Play Flashback online right here in the browser — it begins with Conrad waking up alone in a jungle, and it ends at the core of an alien world.

Start
Start / Pause in game
Joystick
Movement
A
Action / Shoot
B
Use item
C
Draw gun
Save / Restart / Load

Animated Screenshots

Flashback: The Quest for Identity title screen on SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis
Flashback: The Quest for Identity — New Washington level gameplay
Flashback: The Quest for Identity — Death Tower level gameplay
Flashback: The Quest for Identity — Earth level gameplay

Flashback level passwords

The original Flashback had save points within levels, but they only held until you quit — clear a level, get a password, and that password was your permanent checkpoint. Enter the right code at the main menu and you jump straight to that stage, no questions asked. Here on SEGA-Play, though, the emulator's save states let you save and load your progress at any point, which the original game never allowed.

Flashback: The Quest for Identity — password entry screen

Level passwords

Pick your difficulty, then find the matching password below — Conrad isn't waiting.

Easy

  • Level 1: PIXEL
  • Level 2: BETSY
  • Level 3: PANCHO
  • Level 4: STUDIO
  • Level 5: TOHO
  • Level 6: AKANE
  • Level 7: INCBIN

Normal

  • Level 1: FALCON
  • Level 2: DATA
  • Level 3: MILORD
  • Level 4: QUICKY
  • Level 5: BIJOU
  • Level 6: BUBBLE
  • Level 7: CLIP

Expert

  • Level 1: CLIO
  • Level 2: ACRTC
  • Level 3: BLOB
  • Level 4: STUN
  • Level 5: MIMOLO
  • Level 6: HECTOR
  • Level 7: KALIMA

To watch the ending without completing the game, enter CYGNUS as your password.

Key items in Conrad's inventory

Portable force field

Throws up an energy barrier in front of Conrad that blocks incoming shots — and you can use it as often as you like. Most players still take damage because they activate it too late or forget they have it entirely. The shield covers the front. Enemies that get around you don't care.

ID card

Gets Conrad through the security checkpoints in New Washington. He trades his teleporter remote to a wounded soldier he finds early on Titan — before he's even made it out of the jungle — to get it.

Holocube

Conrad watches it early, still in the jungle on Titan, before he knows what any of it means. A message from a version of himself that no longer exists, explaining a conspiracy that hasn't fully started yet. The holocube doesn't help in a fight. It just explains why you're in one.

Atomic Charge

Conrad receives it from Phillip Howard Clark, a prisoner he finds locked up on the Morph homeworld. A Morph executes Phillip the moment Conrad opens the cell. Dying, Phillip hands over the charge. In the final level, Conrad destroys the Auxiliary Brain to clear the way, places the charge on a loose platform above the core, then throws a switch that awakens the Master Brain — the tremor drops the charge in. The Master Brain goes up, and so does the planet. Conrad makes it out in a Morph spacecraft with seconds to spare. It's not subtle, but by that point in the story, subtle is long gone.

Gun

Conrad's only weapon, and it has unlimited ammo — but you'd never know it from how the fights feel. You draw and holster with a dedicated button, and with the gun out Conrad can't run or jump. So every engagement becomes a small decision: close the distance first, or shoot from where you are? Draw too early and you can't move. Draw too late and you're already taking the hit.

Death Tower: the game show that kills most players

By level 3, Flashback stops being a cinematic platformer and turns into something closer to a test of nerve. Death Tower is a TV game show, and Conrad has entered it to win a ticket off-world. He starts on the eighth floor and has to fight his way down to the first, facing replicants in enclosed spaces. The game gives you no buildup, no music cue. Just an announcer and an opponent walking toward you. The fights look manageable until they aren't, which happens fast. Players who go in shooting and moving constantly don't last long, and the game offers no explanation for why.

The arena is small enough that standing still and firing feels right — it isn't. Every fighter telegraphs before they connect, but the window is short, and moving in the wrong direction when they start means you absorb the hit regardless. The gun has a real pause between shots that doesn't register until it costs Conrad his life. Keep your distance and read what an enemy just started doing — not where it currently is — and Death Tower becomes a different level entirely. Until then, it's mostly the place where the game ends.

If you've read this far, you know what Death Tower is actually testing. The passwords get you to the door. Play Flashback online and find out if you can walk through it.