Back to the Future
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Without a manual, a walkthrough, or a damn piece of paper with basic explanations, it's literally impossible to understand how to play. Inevitably, you find yourself wandering aimlessly through screens, awaiting death that never takes long to arrive. Conversely, once you grasp the mechanics, it turns into the simplest game of all time.
The goal mirrors the film's story: having returned to the past with the mythical DeLorean DMC-12, you must make your parents fall in love and prevent your mother from falling in love with you, thereby avoiding an incestuous temporal paradox.
Aside from your folks, an extremely annoying Biff Tannen roams the screen, whose sole purpose in the game is simply to hassle you by knocking you to the ground with his punches. Also present is the dear Emmett Brown, known as "Doc".
The dashboard of the DeLorean in the second ‘Back to the Future’ film: it's ready to come to our recent past...
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Your character will wander through a series of static screens—some representing the outside world—plus another four for each of the game's key locations: Doc's lab, the school, the venue where the "Enchantment Under the Sea" dance is held, and a dingy cafeteria where you can only get a coffee.
There are five items you can use during the game, displayed as icons at the top of the screen. When your character passes by an object you can pick up, the corresponding icon turns yellow. By pressing the fire button with the joystick pushed upward, the item will be in your possession.
The game screen: an apotheosis of '80s pixel art.
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To begin, it would be wise to retrieve the skateboard behind some crates in one of the three external screens—it will allow you to move faster. The photos at the bottom will gradually disintegrate, serving as a timer for your mission. Once they disappear, you've permanently compromised the future, and the game ends. The coffee will come in handy to immobilize Biff Tannen when your punches, retaliatory to his, aren't enough to calm him down.
The family photo is disappearing; Biff blocks our path as usual to annoy us, while Mom follows our every move. Thankfully, Doc keeps an eye on us...
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At this point, the mechanism to finish the game is as trivial as it is unattractive. Your mother will tail you wherever you go. You'll need to get your father to follow you as well, and to do this, you'll need the third item in the series—the book—which you'll find in the school library. Once both are following you, lead them to the venue where the "Enchantment Under the Sea" party is held and use the guitar on them simultaneously. This will daze them for a certain time, during which the family photo at the bottom will reassemble. Repeat this process until the photo is fully restored. After that, head to Doc's lab and get the radiation suit. Upon exiting the lab, you'll find the wonderful DeLorean waiting for you, ready to reach 88 miles per hour and return to 1985.
The Speccy version. Despite the usual graphical differences, the gameplay is quite similar.
The Verdict
Despite very clunky and perhaps somewhat banal gameplay, there are licenses exploited far worse in the history of 8-bit gaming.
Pros:
- Only an immense desire to reactivate neurons connected to specific childhood memories could compel you to replay it.
- Alternatively, the obsession to finish a game that, when you played it back in the day, was less clear than a wall of hieroglyphs.
Cons:
- The very concept of "game" is undermined at its core.
| Score | Rating |
|---|---|
| Game Commodore 64 | 65% |
| Game ZX Spectrum | 65% |
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