Flashback Legends: A disgrace to the Original?

Flashback Legends was meant to be the second sequel to the famous platformer Flashback – The Quest for Identity. The origin game got released on many different systems and consoles in the early to mid 90s. Its follow up, Fade to Black  broke with the side-scroll platforming style and featured three-dimensional over-the-shoulder gameplay instead. It received mixed reviews by critics and even fans of the series and it mostly remained unconsidered in the gaming world. The second and never released sequel Legends, developed in 2003 got entirely designed for the Game Boy Advanced and returns to the originals side-scroll action. But developement got aborted after Delphine Software’s bankrupt.

Fans of the origin game stated(1):
“Worse graphics than the original. colorful and unrealistic.“,
“In this one it feels more like a paint-bucket had taken over a jungle instead of a city.“,
“The original’s model doesn’t fit with the environment.”,
“Maybe it would all have been changed to cartoony in the end, but then it was canceled.“,
“A disgrace to the original.“

A ROM of a Flashback Legends prototype got leaked by an unknown employee and spread over the world wide web. It just includes many finished and even unfinished levels. Some of them could only be skipped by pushing all the GBA Buttons at once, since many exit points got missing. Actually, only french language could be selected in the language selection screen as well as mission select, passwort entry and difficulty selection-screens are missing too, but still hidden in the ROMS code. Later the prototype got translated into english by the VanishedOne.

Many characters and organizations from the previous games return in Legends, such as the Freedom Guard organization Mandrake, lead by Sarah Smith as well as Conrads Saviour from the jail island New Alcatraz in Fade to Black, John O’Connel. Even his long time friend Ian makes an appearance as leader of an later by aliens hijacked space port.

Instead of a continuing story, the protagonist must accomplished different missions, like finding a missing squad on the planet Titan (the first level of Flashback) or destroying a secret communications center of the Morphs. He even visits a new morphs home planet, even though the levels of the mission aren’t completed. Many more unused dialog and characters can be found in the code of the ROM, leading to expectations what could be indented later in the progress of the story.

My suggestion: Get the ROM and make your own opinion about
Flashback Legends!