Obscusion B-Side: Flash Traffic: City of Angels: That Entire Title is an Oxymoron

In 1991, Edmond Heinbockel left his job as CFO for PC adventure game maestro Sierra On-Line to form his own studio, Tsunami Games (a.k.a. Tsunami Media), in the same exact city of Oakhurst, California. At first, Tsunami's focus was primarily on making PC adventure games, just like Sierra, but these initial efforts didn't look to do so well critically, though I guess sales were good enough for the company to stay around. In fact, in 1996, Issue #148 of Computer Gaming World even named two of Tsunami's games, 1993's Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch (based on Larry Niven's iconic sci-fi novels) & Blue Force (designed by Police Quest's Jim Walls), two of the 50 worst computer games of all time, slotting in at #14 & #37, respectively; ouch. In late 1994, though, Tsunami released something different from anything it had developed before, so much so that it wasn't even published by the company itself, but rather saw Time Warner Interactive (formerly Tengen) sign on to handle that part of the equation.

Of course, this was also for PCs in the mid-90s, using this tech called the "CD-ROM" that had only recently caught on due to the massive success of the game Myst...

Well, they certainly didn't break the budget for the title card...
Nothing screams "Just like a movie!" quite like Mechanical Extended.

Making its debut at COMDEX in November of 1994, Flash Traffic: City of Angels is an "interactive movie", i.e. an FMV game where you primarily watch full-motion video footage play out until you arrive at a point where you can respond to the scene via various choices. Despite Windows 3.1 being around & supported by many PC games of the time, Flash Traffic requires MS-DOS to boot, so today the game needs a workaround to be playable on modern hardware, like the emulator DOSBox. However, due to Tsunami Games going out of business in the late 90s, it's unknown when exactly, the game isn't something that you can just go to Steam or GOG & purchase in a ready-made form. Luckily, a person going by the name "White Bob" went through the trouble of making a custom installer that's compatible on Windows 7 through 10, and even uploaded it to Archive.org back in November of 2020. Considering the status of the developer, this would constitute being "abandonware", a type of orphan work; the legality of this, of course, is dubious, at best. However, I should point out that this only reflects the original version of Flash Traffic, not the later "RealMagic Interactive MPEG Version" (which features better quality & proper full-screen video), as that release is only playable on period-accurate computers, due to its reliance on a specific range of MPEG playback boards that Sigma Designs released in the mid-90s & naturally aren't compatible with modern-day computers.

Why am I bothering to do a review for a forgotten interactive movie from a failed game studio? Honestly, it's simply because Flash Traffic has remained in my mind ever since I first saw it as a young child on an early PC Gamer Demo Disc from the time (I think it was the Vol. 2 disc, which was the first demo disc I ever experienced), and now I finally want to see it in full for myself, so I figured "Hey, why not gather my thoughts together here, & share it online?"; also, this kind of thing fits Obscusion B-Side perfectly.

Here's an example of how the game normally looks.

You're an FBI agent working in Los Angeles who's been woken up at 3 AM by fellow agent Dave Sawyer, much to your chagrin. Dave goes on to explain that the DEA recently hit a warehouse, but what they found weren't drugs, but rather were materials that would allow someone to build a nuclear bomb, one that's seemingly been built & is hiding somewhere in the "City of Angels" itself. Now you & Dave have to find out who built the bomb, find where it's being hidden away, & defuse it before it goes off, all before midnight. As it is right now, there are only two leads to go off of, & they're the sole survivors of the DEA raid: A German scientist named Walter Heinbockel & a Polish radio engineer named Stanislaus Krupinsky.

As I mentioned earlier, this is in the genre of interactive movie, so you don't have any direct control over any characters seen on screen, but rather make choices (always in packs of three) based on the information you've been given in a situation. Though there are Game Overs where you can die, they really only can happen in certain moments, usually the result of you not taking the time to look at a situation completely, and when interrogating someone the worst that will happen is that you simply find yourself into a never-ending loop of scenes until you manage to find your way out. In that regard, Flash Traffic is pretty lenient & even relaxed of an experience, and if you forget to save in advance, it's not hard to catch back up to where you left off at really fast, since simply pressing Esc will skip forward to your next set of choices. On the one hand, therein lies the flaw with this kind of game, with some even arguing that these really aren't even video games, but on the other hand this does result in a very focused & straightforward experience, one that can be played with either just a mouse or just a keyboard (though I'd just go with the latter, since the mouse is super sensitive on modern hardware, due to it expecting an old ball mouse, not an optical one).

Being a game made up entirely of full motion video, it's not really a surprise that its overall length doesn't really reflect the fact that it takes up three CDs. Disc 1 is nothing more than the intro sequence showing the DEA raid, Dave setting up the early details, and investigating what Heinbockel & Krupinsky know. Once you get what they know, which leads into finding out about an airline stewardess named Gabriella Devereaux & an ex-Spetsnaz Colonel named Ivan Belinko, who went rogue after commanding an anti-Gorbachev coup, you move straight into Disc 2, which deals with interrogating Gabriella & an initial attempt at catching Belinko. After that fails, you come to Disc 3 & the final attempt to stop Belinko, after he's planted the nuke underneath a sports stadium in L.A.; you then return to Disc 1 for the epilogue & credits scroll. If you know exactly what to do, you can finish Flash Traffic in a little less than 45 minutes, while a first time playthrough (complete with some conversation looping, the occasional death, & repeated cutscene skipping) should only really take maybe 1.5-2 hours, max; you can save at any decision point or disc swap. There's honestly only one bit of "alternate pathing" to be found, which is catching Colonel Kim, the man Krupinsky & Heinbockel were both supposed to meet up with, but it doesn't affect your ability to see the ending in any way.

Really, the major appeal in an interactive movie like this is in the FMV itself, because the combination of filming, acting, & writing is what will decide whether something like this is either good, bad, or "So Bad, It's Good". Luckily, Flash Traffic is mostly on the good side, all things considered. With help from a (seemingly now defunct) company named Pressure Drop Productions, the overall production of the FMV looks rather solid, even with the limitations of the non-MPEG version, with solid camera work all around & even decent-to-good acting from the cast. This is backed up by the script from Chuck Pfarrer, a former Navy SEAL who moved on to writing movies, including Hard Target (which gets a shout-out during the Kim interrogation) & Darkman, & even wrote the Dark Horse comic Virus, which he would later help adapt into a live-action film in 1999. While Pfarrer's script for Flash Traffic isn't anything spectacular, it is extremely consistent & helps keep everything feeling somewhat realistic in what your decisions lead to, considering the subject matter, though there is the occasional bit of humor here & there (usually from Dave) to help keep that "game" feeling intact; Pfarrer is also credited as a stuntman in the end credits, which is cool. Sure, we get pretty much no real motive for Kim & Belinko's actions, but it's not really something that's needed in something as straightforward of a plot as this; you have an H-bomb to find & defuse ASAP, so get to it!

Finally, here's an image from the MPEG version
I was able to find online, for comparison.

As mentioned, the acting is overall very good, almost shockingly so for an FMV game of the era, which were notorious for usually being hammy, at best. While he's never shown on screen, since he acts as your "voice", the moments you hear the late Doug Hume voicing out each of your decision options sounds good & experienced, if a bit dry at points; looking at his IMDb page, Flash Traffic was actually Hume's final role, as he died in 1999. With you at all times is Ash Adams, back when he went by Jason Adams, and he does a fine job as Dave, delivering a mix of serious & sarcastic, depending on the situation. Considering how little there is to Belinko, I'd say that Michael Champion did about as well as he could, though his accent is more or less crap (he's a Russian who's faking being a German named "Deiter"... what even would that accent be?!); Champion would later also have a role in Digital Pictures' unreleased game Maximum Surge. Beyond them, there's Colette O'Connell as Gabriella, Yuji Okamoto as Colonel Kim, Kristof Konrad as Krupinsky, Magnus Hellberg as Heinbockel, & Chuck Pfarrer even plays the leader of the SWAT Team you direct in Disc 3. In a time where many studios tried relying on notable names to lead their FMV games' casts, or just cheapened out & seemingly went with any old actors, I commend Tsunami Games for finding a good middle ground, as while none of the cast are exactly known (Hume might be the biggest name, if only because his career dated back to the 50s) they all deliver solid performances that help elevate the overall experience.

Sadly, I can't say the same for the music by Charles Marshall & "Nation Rock Music", which is honestly the worst part of the entire game. The opening & ending songs are generic but overall fine, but those are literally the only bits of "movie-like" music you hear in the entire game. In all honesty, most of the game is played without any background music, and the few moments you actually do hear any music it's immensely boring & unmemorable MIDI tracks. Considering how I'm sure that the costs for filming the FMV likely wasn't cheap since it was all done in L.A. (I've seen word online that it might have been ~$1 million), I can only imagine that the use of MIDI for the soundtrack was a cost-cutting measure, but it does remove a bit of the cinematic feel the game is otherwise going for.

I honestly don't know if this guy on the cover is actually Doug Hume,
but for some reason I kind of doubt it. Regardless, he's never seen in-game.

As you can tell from the length of this review, there really isn't much to say about Flash Traffic: City of Angels, but that's not to say that this is a bad thing. Rather, I honestly had a good & fun time with this game, as short & straightforward as it was to get through. FMV games like this are generally short by their very nature, and Flash Traffic really is meant to be more along the lines of a literal "interactive movie", i.e. it's something you're meant to play from start to finish within the time it takes to watch your standard Hollywood movie. Is there a lot of replay value? Not exactly, unless you really just want to see all of the various ways you can Game Over, or you missed the Colonel Kim interrogation in the middle, but at the same time this is something I could see myself come back to when I'm in the mood just to enjoy it over again, similar to how we all re-watch movies that we enjoy.

Tsunami Games would follow up Flash Traffic very quickly with late 1994's Man Enough, an FMV dating sim that must have been in production at the same time (considering how soon it came out after), and in 1995 would release its final FMV game, Silent Steel, a Hunt for Red October-esque submarine story that was also written by Chuck Pfarrer. The latter, in particular, looks to generally be considered the crown jewel in Tsunami Games' entire catalog, with a solid story, good acting, & even two different good endings (alongside the usual "Game Over" bad endings). Silent Steel would also get re-released in 1997 on DVD-ROM, becoming the first ever video game released for the then-new format (1998's Tex Murphy: Overseer would be the first "new" game released on DVD), and in 1999 it saw a third release, this time as a DVD player-compatible release, i.e. you can still play this final version on modern hardware (even an Xbox Series X) really easily. Unfortunately, Silent Steel's DVD player release is nigh-impossible to find today, though YouTube channel NintendoComplete did at least upload a complete playthrough of it back in 2017.

Now if only Flash Traffic had been given a DVD player-compatible re-release...

Game © Tsunami Media, Inc.