Two very awesome things came out of the eighties: One was, of course, the NES, and the other was Back to the Future, without a doubt the best movie ever involving time travel, DeLoreans, and time traveling DeLoreans. It was about a guy who travels back to the year 1955 and has to collect a bunch of clocks, avoiding hoola hoopists and killer bees along the way. Wait, that's not what the movie's about? Well somebody should've said something to the producers of the NES adaption of the movie, because for all sakes and purposes that's what this game is about. A lot of times when you read these Print Scrn Abuse pages it's hard to tell how I actually felt about the game. I'm going to get this out of the way right now: I hate this game. I hate this game, I hate this game's mom, and if this game ever had kids I hope they got scabbies. It turned a very watchable movie into the NES equivilent of slamming your nuts in a car door.

This is the first screen you'll see upon starting the game. It's a map of the crappiest city ever designed.

Anybody remember killer bees appearing in Back to the Future? Well they're here, and for some reason they all hate you. These will pop up a lot in the game. I hate them more than I hate any other video game enemy (as well as most diseases). That weird deformed-S shaped black puddle is (probably) oil. Don't bother avoiding it, all it does is make you move forward a little faster than usual. You have to collect those clocks (scattered around each level) to help prevent your photo at the bottom of the screen from fading and thereby erasing you from existance. Not that you'll want to -- after playing this game for more than five minutes, death will be a welcome escape.

Another common enemy is "Hoola Hoop Girl Who Throws Purple Rocks." This was, after all, the 1950's, and if a girl was slutty enough to shake her hips in public (gasp!), she'll probably kill you with fluorescent stones and not think twice about it.

"Okay, so now I know that purple rocks, killer bees, and hoola hoops were major problems in the '50's. What about menacing, drunk jocks with tight pink shirts?" Appereantly yes. This common enemy will try to prevent your journey to the future by walking back and fourth in a haze.

"Gee, what are those guys walking back and fourth like that for, with their arms in a position as to suggest they're holding something? Oh well. I'll just walk through them."

Oh man! You got owned! They had glass, you idiot! Oh man. Good laughs. You know what's interesting about this? The fact that those idiots aren't doing anything at all with that sheet of glass.

MAN 1: Say, what should we do with this very big, dangerous pane of glass?
MAN 2: I dunno... wanna put on our matching blue shirts and walk around with it in the middle of the street?
MAN 1: Good call!

I hate this game.

One of the rare aspects of this boring game that makes it a bit more fun is the skateboard (and to be honest, that's not saying much -- playing this game naked with paper cuts all over your body submerged in rubbing alcohol would probably make this game a little less boring). Nevermind that skateboards weren't popular (or probably even existant) in the '50's -- you'll find them everywhere in Hill Valley. Another power-up that makes the game at least a bit easier is the bowling ball, which you can throw at enemies to kill them. I must've missed a few scenes from Back to the Future, like the one where Marty is a professional bowler/shotputter capable of throwing a bowling ball with great distance and accuracy.

Me in super-hot skateboarding action. Those bowling pins appear randomly throughout levels if you have the bowling ball. 10 bowling pins standing on the sidewalk in perfect alignment may seem weird at first, but you have to remember that we're talking about a town in which hoola hooping teenagers and muscular gay men in pink tank tops are trying to prevent you from using your time traveling car to return to the far-off, futuristic year of 1985. Marilyn Manson would seem normal in this town.

Get it?! Because it's a cafe, and they're saying "bullies to go!" Oh man. Creative genuises. This is the screen you see before you begin the first boss level. These are featured at the end of every level.

In this boss level, you must defeat the "bullies" by hurling milkshakes at them before they reach the bar. Nobody who works at this cafe seems to care that you're stealing food and assaulting people with it. By the way, you have to defeat 99 of these guys. Since this is a feat of Superman-like proportions, you'll more than likely witness the following scene a lot:

He slides you down the bar and into those glass doors, which somehow don't break. I wonder why Lou's Cafe is so empty? It seems nobody but "bullies" eat here, despite their very good 5 cent coffee deal.

You'll see little messages like this after every boss level. This one is congratulating me on my excellent job tossing milkshakes at people.

The next few stages are pretty much like the first few, with the bees and the glass carrying twins and the such, only a bit harder (and, for some reason, orange). Because of this, I don't feel the need to cover anything from here to the next boss, Lorraine. Yep, Lorraine's a boss.

You know I gotta tell ya, this is the first time I've ever had to beat a video game character in this particular method. I've killed them with fire, swords, the ever-lasting love of Jesus Christ, but never with emotional abuse.

A screenshot from my least favorite portion of my least favorite game. This is another scene from the movie I missed -- where Lorraine throws human hearts at Marty from across an empty classroom. Like a reverse of the Lou's Cafe level, you must move up and down the counter, blocking Lorraine's... hearts... with your shield, or textbook, or whatever it is he's holding. This level wouldn't have sucked as badly if the hearts weren't almost the exact same color as the floor, making them near impossible to see before they're right in front of you. How did nobody catch that during programming or testing? Universal probably hired some ex-Hi Tech employee to produce this game in three weeks in his basement. They paid him 10 dollars for his efforts because, let's face it, if you were crappy enough to get fired from the company that made Jim Henson's Muppet Adventure: Chaos at the Carnival, you don't deserve minimum wage.

If you lose (and chances are unless you're NES Jesus, you'll lose), you'll get to see this message. Being called "cute" is hardly compensation enough for having made it to 59 hearts and then lose because the programmers were color blind. Besides, does that mean that only the ugly people win?

If by some act of God or GameGenie you actually beat the level, you get to see this motivational message. Feel free to print this off and hang it on your cubical as a reminder that, hey, things are looking good! Also, don't miss that dance tonight.

Starting to see a pattern? This level is like the others only a different color (brown... they seem to be getting uglier) and a bit more difficult. No new enemies or anything. I suppose when you use up killers bees and angry pink-shirted men in your first level, there aren't a whole lot of things left.

The dance scenes of Back to the Future involved fighting (fun) and playing guitar (fun except for in a video game). Guess which one they decided to use?

Although less sucky than the rest of the "boss levels," this one is still not very fun to play at all. You must collect the various music notes with your guitar by moving it up and down. I believe the song that plays here is supposed to be a NES-ized version of "Johnny B. Good," but it sounds more like an NES-ized version of a Vietnam vet with no arms trying to play the piano and the drums at the same time. On a side note, Marty looks like he just escaped from an mental institution, complete with the crazy hair and standard-issue blue-green uniform. He sure is crazy -- crazy for rock and roll! Oh, and shiving institution gaurds. He's also crazy for that.

If you play the guitar good enough, it causes Lorraine and George to fall in love. You should probably feel guilty, knowing that George is in for quite a night of hearts being thrown at him.

Nice try, guys, but these little Tony Robbins messages scattered throughout the game do little to encourage me. At this point, I'm playing out of sheer spite.

You get to see this less-encouraging text if you lose the dance level. The purpose, I guess, is to keep you playing by questioning your rhythm and ability to, as the kids say, "get down." I wonder if anybody has ever actually played this and said, "hey, I've got mad rhythm! I'll show those guys!" Actually, I don't really wonder that at all. To be honest, I doubt anybody has really gotten this far in the game without killing themselves or the nearest living thing.

As uncreative as it was for the designers of this game to make all the street stages nearly identical other than color after level one, they further the boringness by not even bothering to change the background colors this time -- the same gray we saw at level one is present for the streets after the dance.

Excited? Don't be.

This level involves driving your time traveling DeLorean down a dark, mysterious, blue neighborhood, avoiding the scratches made in the street by stray lightening bolts. Hitting aforementioned scratches will result in slowing down. Why is that a problem?

Because when you get to the end, you must be traveling 88 miles per hour or you'll be stuck in 1955 forever! The wire-hanging-from-the-clock scenerio has been entirely ignored here, and replaced by a glow in the dark telephone wire, to ensure that the game meet it's stupidity quota (which they have by now far exceeded).

If you manage to hit the glowing telephone wire while traveling at 88 mph, congratulations! You just finished one of the worst non-religious themed video games of all time.

Wow, what a relief... my time travel is all behind me now...

Maybe?! No. No no. I'm not playing this or anything like this again. Trust me, my time travel is behind me. I don't care if the government asks me to go back in time to prevent Stalin's brain from being cloned -- I played Back to the Future on NES and I'm done with time traveling.

This is the screen you'll see upon a game over. Imagine the horror of being stuck in 1955! A life of Soviet paranoia and sock hops...

(Page requested by Parakarry)

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