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"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need ROADS."

Back to the Future. This is where I'd normally put a description of what the history of this series is, but I'm sure you already know it. You've seen George McFly go from dud to stud, you've seen Biff Tannen get his butt kicked by Marty McFly, a.k.a. Calvin Klein, and you've seen the "Johnny B. Goode" scene during the "Under the Sea" dance a million times or probably even more if you've watched Back to the Future Part II. For those few readers who have never seen this movie or the whole series before, I say this: GO SEE THIS MOVIE. It is a great movie and is one of the only examples I can think of that involves time travel that you don't even care about how ridiculous time travel is because you don't need to. You just accept that it works and go on with your life.

LJN, the producers of this game, knew that children were very familiar with and loved this movie by the time they released this game. Back to the Future was, in fact, the MOST popular movie of 1985. With the combination of that fact and that Back to the Future Part II was coming out in 1989, it is only natural that a game had to be released. It is probably safe to say that any movie that is made for kids, or that would appeal to kids in any way, will have a game designed based on it. Of course, by 2008, which is when I'm writing this, most people know that you should be wary of the quality of any game based off of a movie; in 1989, that knowledge wasn't common. There weren't many ways to see how good a game was because there were few magazines about video games and the internet was nowhere near being commonplace. I'm sure many kids bought or rented this game only because they loved the movie that it was based on. But was it worth it? That's what I'll be discussing.

Now, before I begin talking about this game, I will make a confession: I had never heard of this game when I was a kid. That's because in 1989 I was four, and by the time that I was old enough to have a Nintendo and rent games for it, this game was pretty old. In fact, I'd imagine that by the time I saw Back to the Future for the first time, the Super Nintendo was out and I was on to bigger and better things. I, like many others, only heard about this game because a certain nerd who is angry made it popular in one of his early videos. Even after watching it, I wasn't inspired to actually sit down and play through the game until almost a year after watching that video. As such, my judgment of this game will be based on my playthrough in 2008. This is a good and bad thing. The good news is that I won't have that "nostalgia" factor that clouds my judgment, like some of you may think if you've read my review for Where's Waldo, a.k.a. my favorite video game that no one else likes. The bad news is that I can't judge it properly because I'm playing it almost 20 years after it was intended to be played, and expectations for video games have changed greatly in that time. Thus, I may not be as forgiving of its flaws as I should be. I will, nevertheless, try to judge the game fairly based on what it is.

So what is this game exactly, you may be asking yourself? In short, it's a fairly decent game that probably isn't worth looking at today, if only because it's nothing too special. The main theme of this game is running. Specifically, Marty McFly runs from point A to point B while dodging obstacles until the game ends. These points correspond with certain plot points or concepts in the movie. For example, the first area that you get to has you throwing drinks at bullies in a fifties'-style soda shop. In other area, you have to avoid Lorraine, although sometimes a cutie like you finds that difficult. I also need to add that the running levels in between these "points" lasts for four or five stages, so most of your time playing this game is spent running. This brings me to the first problem with this game. You'd think that the running parts of the game would be tedious while the above mentioned "points" would be a breath of fresh air, right? Well, you would be wrong. I found the breather levels to be mostly pointless and a waste of time. Why do I need to beat up fifty bullies or avoid Lorraine fifty times? It just feels like a waste. The worst part is that if you fail, the game forces you to play the final running stage again before you can try again.

The running stages aren't too bad, but they are a little repetitive. I did like how it seemed like the game was gradually getting more difficult. The first running level was pretty easy, but by the end of the game I found myself being slightly challenged. There are also enough obstacles and things that you need to collect to make it interesting, albeit not that much fun. The music is also repetitive, since every time running level has the same music. Not that it's a bad song, but I don't need or even want to hear it over and over again. There is, however, a song in one of the "point" levels that comes directly from the movie and is quite enjoyable. Other than that part, you should put your headphones on and just ignore the in-game music. The graphics do what they're set out to do, and only that. Again, this is a game from 1989, so of course they're not as good as the games of today, but they work. I can tell what I'm supposed to pick up and what I'm supposed to avoid without and difficulty, so mission accomplished. I guess that you can call the graphics functional, if not anything else.

So, is this game relevant to the gamers of the present? In one word: no. It's not that the game is bad, it's just that there are so many other ways that you could be spending your time. This was a game created to give fans of a movie something interactive that would make its creators money. Although I can't tell you exactly how many units of this game LJN sold, I'm sure that it had enough success to make everyone happy. Gamers of 1989 would have appreciated this game more than the modern gamer, I would imagine. They would have thought that it was difficult and would have played it until they were good enough to win. I doubt that the modern gamer would give this game enough time to become really good at it, but at the same time I don't think that they should. Still, I found a decent game that was challenging enough to keep it engaging.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10