Back to the Future (NES Review)

Back to the Future
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released September, 1989
Designed (?) by Mark Morris
Developed by Beam Software
Published by LJN
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Angela is going into filmmaking and is the movie buff to end all movie buffs. She loves Back to the Future. She loves “movie magic” and special effects in general. But, besides, pinball, she’s not so much into gaming at all. However, I have a blast showing her these old video games and their, ahem, “interpretations” of films. My longtime followers will remember me reporting on her tantrum when she found out that E.T. for the Atari 2600 didn’t contain flying bicycles. Showing her this game, just the first level, she was baffled. “Is it…… Grease? They made a Grease game? Oh wait. HEY DAD, what’s that show with the Fonz? Happy Days? Is it Happy Days?” It wasn’t until I got to the map screen that said “Hill Valley” that her face turned red. “That’s Back to the Future? Are you kidding me? Wait, that’s the photograph of Marty and his siblings at the bottom? Why does he look like a greaser? Where’s the life jacket?” However, she was impressed that it had the Enchantment Under the Sea dance and Johnny B. Goode and getting to use the DeLorean.

Well, I did the Super Famicom quasi-sequel, so I figure I might as well do the game that I THINK is single-handedly the reason Super Back to the Future Part II gets the occasional praise. I think SBTTF2 is a horrible game, but compared to THIS? Yea, I can see people thinking they just played a masterpiece. Part of me wonders if the main gameplay was even meant to be a Back to the Future game or if they had a generic gameplay template that they just plugged in vague BTTF references. For most of the game, Back to the Future is an auto-scrolling avoider/shmup. You have to simply stay on the road, avoiding enemies and obstacles while picking up clocks. If you pick up a bowling ball.. yes, a bowling ball.. you get unlimited firepower to take out enemies. What any of this has to do with Back to the Future is beyond me.

They remembered to include the memorable scene with the bees, though. Who could ever forget that scene? The scene where Marty dies from bee stings and Lorraine starts screaming and crying at his funeral about how he’s not wearing his glasses. Oh wait, I’m thinking of My Girl. Okay, well I officially designate this the NES version of My Girl. Oh Jesus, f*cking end me.

Okay, so the degree of difficulty in turning a fantasy comedy that has minor action bits like Back to the Future into an on-trend NES game was high. There was one scene in the whole movie, and only one, that lent itself perfectly to video games. No, not the Delorean lightning scene.  He literally just drives a straight road, and nobody wants to play as Doc. No, I’m talking about the scene where Biff tries to run down Marty with his car. I love car chases. They are my absolute favorite movie trope, bar none. But, that scene is not in the NES game, because of course it’s not. How is it that these licensed games constantly forget to put the one part of the property that feels like it’s in the movie/TV show FOR the video games into the video games? Krull did it. Rollergames did it twice. E.T. did it. BUT, in the case of Back to the Future, it kind of feels like the street scenes were meant to be the car chase, and they just forgot to include the car part. The problem with road sections is they’re so damn boring, but the game keeps going back to them. They don’t play badly or anything, but it’s a boring design that doesn’t feel like it connects to the property. It feels like an immediate rug-pull.

And this is where the game falls apart for good.

There’s four other gameplay styles, though. In the first, you have to throw mugs at bullies as they enter a cafe. This scene goes on FOREVER. Like, seriously, if this had actually been in the movie, Marty would still have been throwing mugs at bullies while George watched with binoculars from a safe distance as a drunken Biff approached Lorraine to um.. well, yea. Marty then would have blinked out of existence, meaning he never went back in time to push George out of the way of a car and we’d have a major paradox. What I’m saying is this level is so bad it could end the universe. The same engine is then recycled for the next break from the road levels, only this time you have to shield yourself from your mother’s affection as she fires a continuous stream of hearts. If just one heart gets past you.. uh, what? Take me down this road. What’s the consequence? Look at it this way, Marty: it’ll make for an interesting bar story some day.

The stated object of this level is “break Lorraine’s heart.” I mean, seems a little late. I just always assumed the mom got freaky with him after he got hit by the car. She’s insatiable, and besides it was the 1950s. Ideas like consent were still purely hypothetical. Could have made for an interesting sequel. “Marty, you have a long lost older brother named Mortimer. You see, your mom.. uh.. had her way with this guy named Calvin Klein while he was unconscious and she ended up pregnant.” “Whoa, this is heavy!” “Yes, and so was your mom when she was 17. For about nine months, at least. Weirdly, he wasn’t named after his father. Actually, you were, Marty. Also, I just realized you’re a dead ringer for him, too. Hey, wait a second.. oh, oh that whore! LORRAINE!! IS THERE SOMETHING YOU WANT TO TELL ME?” I’m probably going to get in trouble for this review.

The worst of the levels is the Johnny B. Goode scene, where you hold a guitar up and down to catch music notes. The difficulty spike of this section is pretty bonkers. During my play session with Back to the Future, I only died once on any of the road scenes. They’re fairly easy to clock and, once you have the bowling ball, it’s not really THAT hard to avoid touching enemies. But, I wouldn’t have passed the guitar segment (or the cafe scene, for that matter) without cheating. The notes just come flying in too quickly, and the amount of memorization required was too much for me to handle. Thank God for save states. By the way, I had a giggle when I realized using save states alone made this more of a Back to the Future experience than any of the gameplay did.

It’s basically an LCD game at this point. Like, seriously it’s not that hard to imagine that if Tiger Electronics did Back to the Future, it would look something like this six-channel spinning plate mini-game.

Finally, you have to avoid lightning strikes (and the ground they’ve touched) and get the DeLorean up to 88 mph. There’s no sense of speed and the road is too narrow for all the lightning strikes that happen, but at least they worked the DeLorean into the game. That’s what’s astonishing about NES Back to the Future. The core gameplay could be any property BUT Back to the Future. It doesn’t look like Marty McFly and it doesn’t look like 1955. It is what it is. BUT, they did include major scenes from the film. They all suck, but they’re there. I go back to how high the degree of difficulty was to make a logical video game out of Back to the Future. Not every great movie lends itself to video games. Or, as Angela put it best: there’s a reason why there isn’t a Citizen Kane video game.

It’s an ugly game, too. Even by the standards of 1989. Remember, this came out nearly a full year AFTER Super Mario Bros. 3 was released in Japan. I don’t expect a four-man crew to be able to pull off that kind of look. But, this is one of the lower-tier games in raw appearance. Part of the reason the game plays boring is it looks boring.

Back to the Future is yet another throwback to the Atari era, only on the NES. But, that by itself doesn’t mean the game is fated to be bad. Another LJN game based on a famous Universal Studios film, Jaws, was actually not a bad little game at all. If you actually sit and watch Jaws, it doesn’t lend itself well to video games either. So, it can be done if you focus on one gameplay style and optimize it. The skateboarding angle was probably the right way to go, and they just needed better level design and better set-dressing to make it feel more like the movie. When you play that Jaws game, you really do walk away feeling like it couldn’t have been anything BUT Jaws. Even with scenes lifted directly from the movie, Back to the Future relies too heavily on the road stages that come across like Template #048D-59, with minimum alterations. A plug-and-play engine that was never fun to begin with, only with the name “BACK TO THE FUTURE” slapped on it. Do I think this is among the worst NES games? Probably not, but I also understand how it earned that reputation. There’s a ROM hack that changes the graphics around to make it look more like the movie.

Well, slightly more like the movie.

Nope, doesn’t help. Which is strange, because the road levels control relatively well and never come across as unfair. They offer the right type of challenge. The mini-games that buffer them are all awful, but the core gameplay isn’t broken or anything. Few games on the NES play as well as Back to the Future and still have a scathing reputation that’s so well-earned. Because, plain and simple, Back to the Future on the NES is BORING! It’s certainly not what I or anyone else would want from Back to the Future anyway. Really, during this era, a point and click game similar to Shadowgate would have made a LOT more sense. Or, not making a game based on it at all. It’s not exactly the Terminator or Escape From New York. Do you know why there’s no good Back to the Future games? Because a Back to the Future video game is a dumb idea, period.
Verdict: NO!

Just tell her that she’s going to be in Howard the Duck.