Monday 27 February 2012

Crap Game Corner's demented Cousin: Back To The Future (Electric Dreams, Spectrum - 1985)


Everybody knows the story of Back To The Future: teenager uses time machine, and accidentally scuppers his parents' first meeting, jeapordising his very exsistance. Cue much malarkying about, trying to put the time line back together again, and making sure he exists. It was a very good film. So was the second, and the third. But, the game that was made on the first's plotline......wasn't. Shall we head back to 1985? Or get hopelessly lost on the way?(my money's on the last option!)

Stating off, you have to pick up various objects and use them in the relevant areas. You have distractions, though, in the form of Biff, who knocks you to the ground, and Lorraine, who follows you about everywhere, trying to snog you all the time (ewww!). Encounters with the aforementioned people will not only make your progress a lot slower, but also deplete the photograph of Marty at the bottom of the screen faster than usual.If the photo is totally depleted, Marty ceases to be, and the game is over. The game scrolls either left or right, and you can enter buildings to find the objects you need, but you can only pick up one object at a time, meaning lots of wandering about.

I think thats the game covered. I'm not too sure, though, as the controls suck, the gameplay sucks, the graphics...don't suck (just about), the title screen is actually quite decent but the premise is sound. It's just not executed good enough. To think that the same software house would later bring us ALIENS and the home ports of R-TYPE (Big Trouble in Little China was also crap, but we'll come back to that at a later date. If I can ever fathom how to play the bloody thing!), we get this. It's a travesty to the good BttF name, and makes a mockery of the Spielberg/Zemeckis series of classic movies. Luckily, the two follow up games were better, and more playable. Go play them instead.

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