Back to the Future II & III

"How bad can a game get? Read this to find out."

One of my all time favorite movies as a kid was Back to the Future II. I thought it was really cool with the hoverboards and the flying Delorean and all, and I thought the soundtrack was great, too. So when I, as an innocent, bright-eyed little guy saw an ad in a comic for an actual game based on my beloved movie AND the sequel all in one cartridge I figured there was no way I could lose.

Oh the ignorance of youth...

I have sought for a way to accurately describe how awful this game is, but every time I try, it escapes me. To give you some idea, the only reason I gave this game a 1 is because Gamefaqs doesn't have any lower rating. I would have given this piece of garbage a negative 500 if I could. This game has, for me, come to be the game by which all other horrid games are compared to. After I play a game I think is terrible I will ask myself, ''Was it as bad as Back to the Future II and III?'' To this day the answer has always come back a resounding ,''NO!!!!!'' But enough ranting, let me offer you a glimpse into the face of my worst gaming nightmare...

--Story: Well, I'm not sure if I should write about the story of the game or the story of the movie on which it was based, because they are two completely different things. In the movie, old Biff from 2015 steals Doc's time machine and carries a sports almanac back in time to the 50's to give to his younger self. That way Biff makes a fortune by betting on sporting events since he already knows the outcome of everything through 2015. Thus Marty and Doc travel to an alternate and very messed up 1985 and then to the 50's to get the almanac back and destroy it before Biff can use it. Are you with me so far?

Ok, now in the GAME, Biff has stolen the time machine and the almanac for the same purpose as stated above. However, he apparently made a lot of side trips as well and scattered something like 20 objects from 1955, 1985, and 2015 in time periods where they don't belong and before you can get back the almanac you have to get every single one of these objects and take them back to their proper time period. Why? Because if a roller skate from 1955 was left to sit around in a hidden room in 1985 the universe would clearly be out of balance. Besides, even if you restored the timeline to how it's supposed to be, Biff would still claim a moral victory if that roller skate was never returned to where it came from.

I know what you're thinking, though. It still doesn't sound that bad, right? Read on...

--Gameplay: How fun is this game to play? Having a rusty nail shoved through your eye would be more fun. Now I know that almost all movie-based games are bad, and most don't even follow the plot of the actual movie very well, but BF II & III really carries things to the extreme. The way this game works makes you want to find whoever thought it up and grab them by the shoulders and just yell, ''YOU INHUMAN MONSTER!!! DON'T YOU REALIZE THAT PEOPLE HAVE TO PLAY THIS CRAP???!!''

So we have the mission of finding these 20 or so objects and restoring them to their proper time, right? Good deal. Oh yeah, and it sounds really irresponsible of me to not give you an exact count of how many items you have to find, but that's because there is no list of them anywhere. Not what they are nor how many total. Not in the manual, not in the game...nowhere. The only lists of items in this game exist in one of two places: 1.In the house of some sick individual who actually played this game all the way through and took notes, or 2.In the godforsaken office of the guy who thought up this game. You're not too likely to find a list in the latter location, however, since that man was probably fired immediately after this game came out and then executed and his office burned to the ground.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me introduce the overall game mechanics first, if you can call them that. You, as Marty McFly, start off by leaping out of the flying Delorean on a street in the Biff-controlled alternate 1985. Now this is a really bad place that reveals the depth of Biff's evil influence. Not only is everything colored either orange or puke-green, but hamburgers with short legs prowl the streets trying to touch you and kill you, weird fish jump straight up into the air while shooting deadly bubbles, menacing guys with flattops launch what seem to be giant stones at you without moving their arms, and perhaps worst of all: horribly alternate-1985-twisted birds with their own high-pitched, constantly repeating, 4-note musical theme chase you all over the screen and shoot the same stones that the guys with flattops do. If anything sums up a nightmarish alternate reality, this is it. Biff...you bastard.

So this is the environment where your quest begins. The areas where you travel are supposed to be different streets in hill valley. Most streets have connections to other streets (kinda like in real life) and you have to walk around and explore each one while platform jumping with the akward to control Marty and while avoiding enemies. You are stuck in 1985 until you find the remote control for the flying Delorean and can summon it. This is odd since you are in the Delorean when the game starts and every time you die you start off again by jumping out of it. It seems like you'd remember to park it instead of set it to 'fly really far away' every time. It's also odd since the only remote control I remember was from the original movie, and I don't remember them having one that flew the Delorean around. But hey, if you try to apply logical standards to this game you're not going last very long, so let's move on, shall we? The time travel aspect is actually the only positive thing about the game. It is kind of neat to see the different streets in the different time periods and they feature some of the landmarks from the movies like the cafe, the clock tower, etc. You can also do neat things like get an acorn and plant it in the 50's and go to the future to have a full-grown tree help you reach a previously out of reach door. However, it's all downhill from there. As a side note, you also need to collect nuclear symbols that float around in the air to fuel the Delorean, even though the movie makes a point of showing how the car gets fusion-powered and can get energy from empty soda cans and used coffee filters. Like I said, though, don't concentrate on the details.

To aid you in your quest you can collect junk food in the form of what is probably supposed to be chicken nuggets that float in midair. And guess what, if you collect 100 of them you get an extra life. Original, huh? Speaking of originality, the only way to kill stuff is by jumping on top of it. That's kinda cool, because when you kill some things a star pops out that gives you the flattop guys' ability to shoot those neat stones without moving any part of your body. Of course, some things you can't kill by jumping on them, like the fish. Any contact with a fish results in instant death, no exceptions. You can kill the musically-themed birds by jumping on them, but that's not advisable since they fly around like they're drunk and you have to land on them EXACTLY right, otherwise they kill you. The other thing that sucks about the birds is that their theme plays from the moment they get on the screen until they die, and that music gets REAL annoying REAL fast. For the most part, the short-legged hamburgers are the target of choice. Another easy way to die comes from these platforms that are placed randomly on the ground over pipes and are shot into the air presumably by steam or something. Now, the platforms are supposed to help you, because you need to use them every once in a while to get to hard to reach places. However, if you touch the side of a platform...you die. You can only stand directly on top of it. I don't know why, exactly, they don't SEEM that dangerous, but I guess they are. And since the control is so quirky and sluggish, timing your jumps is a lot harder than it should be. Oh yeah, and you HAVE to jump onto the platforms, b/c if you just stand on top of one and wait for it to launch into the air it won't. You have to be standing a certain distance away from the pipes for the platforms to launch off them. The pipes are too wily and clever for you, Marty McFly!

So, now to find the objects. Well, you're gonna need these yellow keys that you find in the air or that enemies drop, and you're gonna need lots of 'em. Every once in a while you come upon a random door in the middle of the street. This is the doorway to a ''puzzle room'' where you can get one of those 20 objects that you need. This is also the point where the game loses any semblance of sanity and where the designer lost any chance for something positive to add to his resume. And by the way, this is the area that secures this game's title of most frustrating game ever for me.

Once you use a key on a door and go in, the view changes to this original-Donkey-Kong like level where a tiny Marty with a big head has to do ridiculous and almost indescribable things. This is one of those things you really have to see to fully appreciate. In these rooms the control and jumping is even worse than on the normal screen, and you have to do things like dodge giant, bouncing alarm clocks that are thirsty for your blood and solve inane puzzles while doing the usual platform jumping and such...all within a certain time limit. Each of these rooms has a trophy that you have to get which represents the object that you have been searching for. Should you happen to mess up in this room, though, you will lose a life and that key you used. No problem, right? You'll just go back in since you already unlocked it. Oh wait a sec, you have to use a key EVERY TIME you enter a door, not just once. That's right, the doors stay locked. However, if you are lucky and skilled enough to get the trophy, the day is yours! You are rewarded with a picture of mini Marty holding his hands up high and a grossly-pixelated and unrecognizeable object falling into his hands with the words, ''You got the ?????'' over him. No, they don't even tell you what the object is, and it is literally impossible to tell what most of them are because they are shown in tiny pictures and you only get to look at and study them during two times. One is when you first get them at the 'victory' screen, and the other is when you attempt to put them back where they belong.

So now you have an object, you hopefully have the remote control, as well as enough nuclear points to do some time-travelling. So what do you do now? Good question. Assuming you can recognize your object, you need to figure out where it goes and take it there. So let's say your object belongs in the 50's. Ok, you go there. You now need to search out the hidden room where you need to take the object. And no, there's not one place where you take all the objects that belong in the 50's, each object has its own room. And remember, that's about 20 rooms hidden for each object over three time periods, and they are hidden well. They are usually located under those shooting platforms that I talked about earlier. You have to wait for it to shoot up in the air and get underneath it really quickly and press down on the pipe. If there's nothing there you have to get away fast or you'll die when the platform comes back down and touches you. However, if there IS something there you are transported to a scene of a grid with all the objects you've collected so far and a word scramble on top. Yes, a word scramble. They can't even come right out and tell you what the name of the object is that's supposed to be there. Well that's no big deal, right? Just select the different objects and see if it takes one of them. That's a bad idea, though. You see, if you try to select an object that doesn't belong there, it explodes and you have to go back to the time period, street, and puzzle room where you got it from. And you'll also need as many keys as it takes to get it back, as well as nuclear fuel points, to say nothing of the hassle of getting back to the street if it was one of those that's only accessible by going to a different street in a different time period and then going to the time period the street you're trying to get to is in b/c it's blocked off from all other streets in its own time period. Of course, this is all assuming that you have a map and know the exact door that you got that object from. Oh, and the game has no map feature, so you'll have to draw your own if you want one.

Anyway, as you return more and more objects to their proper places, the squares where they used to be start forming a picture of the sports almanac for some reason. This is were my knowledge of this game stops, because I never got too many of those items restored. I have no idea what the ''Part III'' of the game is like because I have never played it. Why? Because as if this game weren't already bad enough, there is also NO password feature and NO save feature. You have to do ALL of this in one sitting or at least without turning your NES off. I was never able to do this, and I'm glad. I know that somewhere out there SOMEone has actually beaten this game and gone all the way through it...and quite frankly that scares me. I can't imagine what playing this game all the way through would do to a person, but at the very least their perception of reality has been altered so that they could actually be a threat to humanity.

Audio/Video: Pretty much standard fare for NES games. The music is not actually too bad, but they didn't even try and base it off of the movie music, so they automatically lose points there. In fact, I think the only NES game that ever tried to have music from the actual movie/show it was based on was Duck Tales. Anyway, the graphics are decent for a NES game, I guess, but the 1985 stage is really nauseating. The enemies are also just ludicrous and don't make any sense. Guys with flattops shooting rocks that might be Biff? Ok, I can give 'em that. Evil Birds with their own song of doom bent on killing Marty? Mmmmm, well, I dunno... Hamburgers with crazy eyes that walk around and are replaced by walking barrels in the 50's and lit-up walking faces in the future??? HELL NO!!! That is inexcusable and no one has to take that affront to rational thinking.

Replayability: Hmmmm...if you went through the most horribly painful and excruciating experience you can imagine would YOU want to do it again???

Buy or Rent: Not only should you not pay money to buy this, not only should you not pay money to rent this, but you should not TAKE money from someone who is offering to give it to you with the game. The only way I could justify playing this game would be if for some reason the fate of the universe lay in the balance, and the only thing that stood in the way of utter annihilation of everything was playing this game. Even then there'd be a 50/50 chance of me playing it.

FINAL SCORE: An undeserved 1/10, b/c this game doesn't deserve to have a rating with a positive number, but that's the lowest number available to me.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 02/27/01, Updated 02/27/01