Being the gaming geeks that we are, the talk around the non-existing water cooler somehow always seems to boomerang back to gaming in the good-ol-days. And as these conversations go, the Amiga is often brought up, and along with it such classics as Flashback. Now if you have never played Flashback, that’s okay, you can still enjoy the music; or at least pretend to enjoy so as to not be left out.
Now, back in 1992 when Flashback was created by the French developer Delphine, computer game soundtracks wasn’t exactly something you could pick up in your local record store. In fact, it’s not until recent years that game soundtracks have started showing up in stores, and even now they aren’t exactly easy to get hold of. So imagine my surprise, when one of my work mates pulled out a plastic encased cardboard sheath with big bold letters: FLASHBACK.
That’s right, what must be one of the very first game soundtracks ever released! A piece of gaming history, in my hands… Great stuff.
Now considering that Delphine is out of business, Flashback is some 13 years old and the soundtrack CD is pretty much impossible to get a hold of, I have taken the liberty of putting them up here for your listening pleasure.
I tried searching high and low for this, but I couldn’t find a scanned cover anywhere online, so I scanned and color corrected it myself. The CD, which I might add is gold-plated, or whatever you call it, and not silvery like modern CD’s, only contains two tracks. I have ripped them both in 192 kbps MP3, making them both just over 8MB. Both the front and back covers as well as the CD itself are included inside the MP3 files, so if you have iTunes, they should show up when you select them. Remember that you can cycle through the images using the small arrows above the cover, and zoom in by clicking the cover.
A funny note is that while I believe the soundtrack proper (which I will put up as soon as I can get away with it) was composed by Raphael Gesqua, AKA Audiomonster, he isn’t credited anywhere on this release!
Flashback Music #1 and Flashback Music #2
For those of you who know how to handle the old Protracker format .mod, can download the in-game soundtrack at Mirsoft. I’m off to bed, take care.
Flashback… Talk to me about it. This first mission has been my nightmare for quite some days. And then the pure pleasure…
And like a nice complete dream from the past, the flashback about FlashBack comes with the flashback about Amiga modules.
As for reading .mod files : WinAmp2.x can actually do it quite nicely except for ImpulseTracker .XM tracks, if memory serves. Don’t really have the material to check right now.
In any case, if some can’t wait for the MP3-converted version, this should help : United – Tracker
Thanks for the goodies! I’ve been a silent reader of the B until now thanks for keeping us all entertained. I’ve yet to play Flashback, but I was a huge fan of Out of this World, which was developed originally by Delphine too (I think). I know that Interplay published the title later for Sega/CD and the SNES anyway. Good times. (I don’t do a lot of blog commenting, but the live preview is really spiffy too…)
Flashback!
Damn dude, I used to really love that game..
Absolutely hammered it on my old Amiga 500 way back when games were less than 2mb, and didn’t need a P4 with gigabytes of ram to run :)
Great stuff! I reinstalled my SNES a while ago and found my Flashback cartridge again. Never finished it though, but that game sure was an amazing piece of software (the animations… full screen on my SNES!!! :D)
Tnx for the mp3s, I’ll be driving my colleagues crazy again tomorrow ;)
Wow, I had completely forgotten about that game. It rocked.
(trundles off on a (probably fruitless) search for ADF images…)
Ooh! Flashback! That sure gave me a (Wait for it, here comes the pun…) flashback to the olden days. I played it both on Amiga and SNES. The Amiga didn’t have a turbo card, so the SNES actually managed to show the cinematic sequences at a higher framerate than the Amiga.
I never did finish it, but I think I got all the way to the final level. Rarely did the setting of a game get me hooked as the one in Flashback did. The whole city level felt like you were a part of something bigger.
Another World (or Out of This World, depending on where you’re from) and Flashback were incredible games.
…and inspired by this my next Song of the
WeekToo Long Period of Time will be some game music.Flashback was alright, but Another World is where is was REALLY at….
So far ahead of it’s time. The only game I’ve played that came close to that level of storytelling was Final Fantasy VII
Flashback is an important part of my childhoold, together with Wing Commander and the Ultima series :D
Those were the days… games with great story that made you addicted to them – not like doom 3 kinda games
Thanks a lot for sharing this!!
Just imagine if some enterprising games company got it together, and translated the spirit, style and gameplay of Flashback onto a modern console. Now that would be something.
That’s a Flashback. As far as I remember, I’ve played on my first MAC, but I could be mistaken though, and it was on my Commodore 64.
Greetz Axel
That is so mad, I loved that game.
It looked so good at the time, probably still more playable than most modern graphical wonders.
I do remember a lot of other good mod’s from the Amiga too, Agony was a nice piece.
Bring back SWIV!
Question to all the SWIVvers (this one came up at a mate’s bucks show on the weekend): Were you a tank/car or helicopter guy?
Flashback was great! As was Fade to Black, the sequel on the PSX.
I don’t remember where I played Flashback, but it’s one of those games I had forgotten everything about.
I didn’t even know you could get the music, let alone as an actual CD… Cool.
Great!! (Although I don’t really recognise all of the music). Flashback was an awesome game, and so was Another World.
Thanks for that, M. I’m so excited to hear this again.
I played Flashback from beginning to end, non-stop, all those years ago. I remember being so immersed that I was shocked to hear the birds chirping from out the window, signifying that morning had come and that I’d played through the night.
I think another game that I enjoyed as much but that looked like complete ass was Elite. Anyone remember that game? Now if there was a game I’d like to see revamped, it’s that game. I played that sucker on my Commodore 64.
Load * ‚8,1
Fav. Game. Ever. This is one very excited boy.
Thanks for the music.
Although I loved the game, you have to admit the music isn’t the best you’ve ever heard.
It’s definitely mostly for nostalgic causes ;)
Loved Flashback, but Out of this World (US title) was the one that had the greatest impact on me. I was already expecting greatness with Flashback.
So Out of this World was called Another World in other countries?
WHOA! I never finished the first level because it was so rough but the graphics were amazing!
Thanks for sharing these MODs. This soundtrack is great! It makes you wonder where all the good game companies have gone
Greg’s right mates, Another World kicked serious ass back in the ye olde days. I remember that Another World, Flashback and Blackthorne (not to mention shudders Prince of Persia) were my all time PC favourites back in the days of 286/386.
Perhaps the best game ever? http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?name=Out+of+This+World
Cheers ;)
Finally got PearPC to use the DHCP-server so now I can browse the net using the emulator, pretty cool.
Flashback, ah I had that game for my Amiga. Don’t remember much of it, I think it was a wee bit advanced for me back then.
I’ve played Prince of Persia, Out of This World and FlashBack on my first Sega Genesis back in ’96. I got the games from a cousin of mine, and still have them and they work :)
1996?
Nope that game is a view years older (Wikipedia on: Flashback The Quest for Identity. Here are some screenshots from the game View Screenshots
Greetz Axel
It’s actually from 1992, as the metadata in the mp3’s also say; but that doesn’t mean that Samuel couldn’t have played it in 1996 on his Genesis.
I played Flashback on the SNES… not sure how that helps but Alien Trilogy was fun too. And Fade to Black was on the Playstation, but you cant start a sentence with ‘and’ so I dont know what significance that might hold.
whoa! out of this world then flashback! fun times being a young computer gamer. now life seems oh so much different.
I remeber tweaking my autoexec.bat and config.sys for gaming. especially the smartdriver cache setting. and making my first ram drive and loading wolfenstien 3d in 1 second.
If anything I’ll be buying a gameboy for traveling and go to the arcades.
oh sweet 286 dx2/66 where are you???
and then there was the commodore 64/128 and dot matrix tracker feed printers…
sorry that was the 486 dx2/66… i believe.
I’d have to say Flashback was a classic, along with Out of This World, but I’d have to say of the three, it was Fade To Black that held my intrest. Sure, they were either 2D or low-poly 3D games back in the day, but they played well and had great plot lines, before all of the latest clicé or remakes.
I’ve still got my F2B discs for PC and PSX.
Pathetic invocation: Whatever happened to the French gaming industry?!
Flashback was great! I haven’t thought about this classic in a long time. This was one of the first “computer” games that I ever played. Years later I played it on playstation or some other system and really enjoyed going through it again.
Well, I guess it’s time to drag that old A1200 out from under my bed and see what I had installed on the 340Mb hard drive…
Thanks for the memories.
ahh i have some sweet memories and flashbacks from flashback.. great graphics and design. must play that game again someday =)
Wow seems long ago. I had this game on Saga when I was about 14 years old. Actully we just rented it. The story sounded cool to me but I had no idea that it was going to be unlike any game i ever seen. You know how Saga games are. Well i was so addicted I beat the whole game in 3 days. Just enough time to return it LOL.
I can still remeber the music and the smooth game play. And everything I did all the way to the end. I felt really sad for the ending. Story wise and that the game was over.
Best game ever.
Great great great!
I love Flashback and Another world –
Especially games from Eric Chahi (programmer/ designer – also from Heart of Darkness)
I really have 2 have this CD – as i collect all flashback things, games, boxes etc.
(I even have a pin badge!! but never came across this CD)
Anyone who knows more merchandise from flashback and another world?
Hey – great post. Could you possibly encode the music losslessly? Ah heck, just throw it all online as mp3. :) We need all tracks. :) If you like retro music then also visit remix64.com, remix.kwed.org, amigaremix.com and c64audio.com.
I’ve got the CD somethere…
Glen do you want to sell it?
Wow. Found this page via google.
I was not aware that such a soundtrack existed. Flashback has one of my favourite computer game soundtracks (a close second to Monkey Island 2). One of my favourite games of all time I’ve completed it several times on the hard settings (I’m not much of a gamer, so I’m quite proud of this fact). I still play it on the emulator when I get a chance.
Thanks so much for those mp3s. I think I prefer the original game soundtrack though. Raphael Gesque (aka Audiomonster) is a wizard. To get such a beautiful soundtrack into four 8-bit channels. The original (amiga) game came with the playable tracker mod files, which I’m sure you know. I remember spending lots of time watching and studying the mods playing in OctaMED, trying to work out how he did it. I loved them so much that I actually arranged them into a medley (Raphael Gesque – Flashback Medley) a while ago just for my own personal pleasure. Most of the main themes are on there (though I think the end of game sequence music is missing). I looped some of them a couple of times where I thought it was necessary. However, the renderer I used for the MOD files wasn’t that great and the songs are panned to the extremes (just like on the amiga: make sure both your speakers are working)… haven’t been bothered to redo it. Maybe if there was a demand I would.
Ok, well I hope that this is interesting to you and your other visitors. Thanks again.