Flashback is a cinematic platformer. The player controls Conrad B. Hart, an agent who wakes with amnesia and works to recover his memory and expose a hidden alien threat. Like Delphine's earlier Another World, it pairs run-and-gun platforming with a heavy emphasis on animation and presentation: Conrad runs, jumps, rolls, hangs from ledges and draws a pistol through fluid rotoscoped movement, and the story unfolds through in-engine cutscenes rather than static text.
The game appeared across a wide range of platforms through the 1990s. Its console and computer releases, including the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive, SNES, 3DO, PC and Macintosh, ran the artwork at differing resolutions, with the Macintosh CD-ROM version presenting assets at a higher 512x448 compared with the 256x224 used by most other versions. The 3DO and CD-based editions added redbook audio and voiced cutscenes over the cartridge originals.
Flashback never received an official Sega Saturn release. In the years since, the Saturn homebrew community has produced fan ports built on Gregory Montoir's Reminiscence, an open reimplementation of the Flashback engine. A 2009 Saturn version by HkZ was followed by a later, heavily updated beta port that draws on the Macintosh HD assets. Flashback remains one of the defining titles of the early-1990s cinematic platformer, a form Delphine helped establish and one that fell out of fashion as 3D gaming took over later in the decade.