Developed for the Game Boy Advance, Flashback Legends was intended as the third entry to Delphine Software’s Flashback franchise before the Paris-based studio declared bankruptcy and closed in 2002. Someone eventually leaked a prototype ROM for Legends with sixteen levels, but the game was playable only in French — that is, until Robert Seddon released an English patch two months ago.

While you can play all of the stages (accessing later levels requires a cheat) in this beta, it’s still incomplete, as evidenced by numerous bugs, the unfinished soundtrack, and lack of saves. Still, it’s interesting to see a sidescrolling and more color Flashback sequel, as opposed to the drab 3D follow-up Fade 2 Black.

Seddon theorizes, “Whoever leaked [the prototype] to the public doubtlessly hoped to show us where the series might have gone, rather than letting Delphine’s final labours go to waste in concealment.”

Unfortunately, there’s little variety in the stage objectives, at least in the gameplay videos I’ve watched, and there’s nothing as interesting as the work permit quest in the original Flashback — I kept my rental of the Genesis version for an extra week (suffering Network Video late fees as a result) just to play that section over and over again.

See also: Screen taken from Policenauts’s fan translation

tags / flashback legends / gba / delphine / flashback / translation / patch / homebrew / robert seddon / ec