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The original review for this game was a long and rambling affair, a good third of which described my 2003 Christmas vacation, with the gimmick of "To Be Continued" and "To Be Concluded", which were finished off as a two-part series of blog posts on the original Carbon-izer blog. The new review is an updated version of it, including fixing a few errors.

Back to the Future: The Game seems to be conceived of the fact that the Back to the Future game for the NES (which was released a few years after the movie, though no doubt still doing well in VHS sales and rentals) wasn't good (we may make a review for that yet), but then decided to open a whole can of worms by making an original graphic adventure game after the premise.

It opens in a recreation of the scene from the movie: 1985 Twin Pines Mall when Marty is recording Doc unveil the time machine. Doc sounds okay as Christopher Lloyd reprised his role as Doc Brown, but the voice on the other end doesn't really sound like Marty, it's someone doing a Marty McFly impression, something where you can tell what they're going for but it doesn't really sound like them, especially when you try to put it to natural lines. It would be like someone doing a Donald Trump impression and then reading the 2018 State of the Union address without irony or humor. (It's gonna sound weird, right?)

Admittedly, it sounds a little more natural when you put Marty's voice to his computer-animated counterpart (matching his equally strange appearance) but that's where the second problem comes in. An attempt to make Doc and Marty stylized CGI but not too uncanny valley-like has made them into gruesome puppets and not at all what I imagined a Back to the Future game would be like. Thirdly, if you ignored the models and not-quite-Marty, then you'll notice Twin Pines Mall has fake names for the department stores. Having a prominent JCPenney in the background gave the original movie some grounding in reality, but here it's "JPPinney" with Robinson's being "Rubarbison's". It just shows how lazy the developers are. At the time, Macy's still owned all the legacy department store names they absorbed and probably would be happy to re-assert ownership over the name by granting permission. I think a mod swapping the names out would've greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the title in those little details (these little details often make the game), but remember, this is also the same developers who deleted the BMW logo off of Strong Bad's lighter with absolutely no in-story explanation. Things take a turn for the different when Einstein fails to reappear one minute later, and one of your answer choices is "This isn't the way it happened..." as Doc vanishes and the mall becomes Lone Pine Mall.

It turns out that the entire opening scene was a fake-out dream and it's now May 1986. A picture of Doc and Marty at the 1885 clock dedication sits on the shelf, reminding us that it is indeed movie canon. Unfortunately, the game shifts between obeying movie canon, acknowledging movie canon, and ignoring movie canon. Most of the game's puzzles are extremely easy, mostly revolving finding and using a few items and makes the game entirely story based.

It's now the year 1986 and Doc's lab is being auctioned off due to some unpaid debts and his disappearance since Marty last saw him. After a short sequence where you try to get Doc's old notebook back from Biff by letting him use the amplifier in the lab, at that moment, the DeLorean appears outside with Einstein (Doc's dog) and a tape player about Doc needing help. Problem is, anyone who saw the end of Back to the Future Part III saw quite clearly that the DeLorean was smashed to smithereens by a freight train in 1985. Marty doesn't question the time machine's sudden re-appearance, not even the possibility of the time machine still being extant in an alternate timeline. This happens just as I was starting to accept not-quite-Marty's voice too.

An old shoe in the car leads Marty to Edna Strickland, Principal Strickland's sister (inexplicably, Strickland is Vice Principal—that one's NEVER explained), who constantly spies on and shouts at what she thinks of "hooligans". This segment also contains a mention of how Marshall Strickland (of 1885) was gunned down by "Mad Dog" Tannen, which Marty claims he doesn't remember. This is a reference to a deleted scene from Part III...or at least I'm hoping it was, because it's a bit TOO clever of a reference. Soon afterward, Marty heads back to 1931 to save Doc from being riddled with holes by gangsters (long story), and while Marty is talking to Doc in jail, one can clearly see the wedding band on Doc's finger, yet Clara and the kids (or the new steam-powered train time machine) is never seen or mentioned. (Later it is hand-waved away, apparently Jules and Verne, Doc's kids, are now getting close to college ages, so he's at least in his mid-80s at the minimum...though a visit to the "rejuvenation clinic" in the early 21st century (as explained in Part II) means that he's more like more in mid-40s in terms of functional age. The time machine reappearing is finally explained as an exact duplicate created by the 1955 lightning strike that sent it back to 1885. As little sense that makes, it also still flies. In Part III it is stated "the overload [from the lightning strike] shorted out the time circuits and destroyed the flying circuits. Unfortunately the car will never fly again".

There are of course, other paradoxes and problems that aren't really worth covering here. In Telltale Games fashion it's split up into five episodes, and in Telltale Games fashion choices don't matter. You'll find that you lose inventory with every episode as the item's purpose has been fulfilled, and as a story it's not good either. Most of the "twists" are extremely predictable. Edna is actually the arsonist, lounge singer Trixie Trotter is in fact Arthur McFly's future wife (Arthur being George's father/Marty's grandfather), it plays a bit too much like the forgettable animated series where every character is related somehow (once again, you'll find a Tannen is the villain, and also Jennifer's family has been around the area since the 1930s).

Anyway...at the end of the game has Marty back home in 1986 and several alternate older Marty McFlys (voiced by Michael J. Fox, who makes a cameo in one of the later episodes, and it's apparent he can't quite pull off his own voice), including one dressed like Griff from 2015 come out of different DeLoreans and all start arguing. Then the credits roll, and there's a "To Be Continued" in case they decided to make another set of 5 episodes (unlikely). But in this "New and Improved" timeline, Kid and Edna have hooked up (in prison, apparently...I guess through letters), and Edna serves as a "good" stepmother for Biff instead of Gertrude, who was unseen screechy voice in the second movie. But that would also undermine the plot of the original movie, which hinged on Biff being an asshole. It would also make Principal Strickland his uncle. Basically, the damage it would do to the original timeline is incalculable. It would've been funny if instead of the nonsense ending, that their mucking around created an even bigger problem that they'd have to go to fix.

To be fair, the movies played pretty fast and loose with the way time travel worked, one of the most glaring ones being from the first movie where Marty returns home yet is bewildered by the changes at the McFly household, whereas his the rest of his family thinks he's nuts. When Marty goes to 2015, even if it's assumed that Marty will return home and become Old Marty in 2015, but there's never been a case where multiple characters of the same age come up to one timeline, nor where things radically change but old remnants show up, or how they got so many copies of the DeLorean. It just doesn't make sense, at all. At least the movies had their own sort of convoluted logic where the inconsistencies were few and others could be hand-waved away, but not this.

I'm not even sure at the time if the story was actually engaging enough to keep through to the end or because I endured debilitating injury to one of my fingers around the time I was playing it, making it difficult to play more intense games, but the numerous problems make it hard to recommend. Part of the problem was the fifth episode, which was scored the lowest by critics and rushed the conclusion. Part of the problem I guess was trying to mirror III's trip back to the Old West, but it would've almost been more interesting to see the "real" Hill Valley 2015. It was already hinted that our reality is the BTTF reality (Doc uses a modern video game controller at some point, which he admits to borrowing from his son's "early 21st century video game systems" or something along those lines), so maybe seeing the "real" 2015 would be nice. But to make that work, you'd have to see the prominent Burger King at 545 Victory Boulevard, Burbank, California (and in 2015 it looked very similar to its 1985 counterpart)...but given how they avoided every single brand name that appeared in the original movies (even Western Auto, which also isn't used anymore), I think I'll pass.

Since the whole thing is effectively licensed fan fiction, it was a real missed opportunity to not explore some of the fanon that surrounds Back to the Future. There's a popular one that suggests Marty of the "new and improved" 1985 was murdered by Doc to keep the old Marty, but there's other better ones, like how even though in the "better" 1985 Marty is more confident about sending in his demo tape to the record companies he'll now make irrational decisions when someone calls him "chicken" or a variation thereof.

There are a few bright spots (one of which is the music, which reminded me of why I liked the films in the first place) but I really can't recommend purchasing it.

FINAL RATING:   

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