Back to the Future
Overview
The first attempt at a Back to the Future game was released after the movie by several years and still managed to be a rushed cash-in and a disappointment to everybody.
Review
Having written about Telltale's Back to the Future: The Game, I wanted to take another look at the original Back to the Future NES game. I gave it a spin back in 2003, well before James Rolfe exploited it for Internet notoriety but well after its original release. It's not good, that's what, and most of it is just vaguely inspired from the movie anyway. Note that it was released in 1989, likely to capitalize on the new Back to the Future Part II in theaters and the general NES craze overall.
LJN's The Incredible Crash Test Dummies benefits from some rockin' music but sadly I can't say the same for this game. There's nothing even resembling the original theme or its longer overture. However, there is something to say for LJN itself. LJN is lambasted today for being "the company that makes crappy licensed games" (again, largely due to Rolfe) and did not consult with Bob Gale or other film producers, but get this—when the game was released, both LJN and Universal Pictures were both owned by MCA, so it really wasn't a "licensed" game in some sense. (In 1990, MCA sold LJN to Acclaim and MCA itself was acquired by Matsushita Electric). Even then, LJN didn't actually develop it, it was farmed out to Beam Software...which stayed intact as a studio until 2010, making licensed games all the way! Among their hall of shame was Baby T-Rex, an original title starring a skateboarding dinosaur, and was SPECIFICALLY SOLD as a title to slap a license on. In the United States, it was released as We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story to capitalize on the 1993 film of the same name. Absolutely shameful!
LJN deserves a little credit; at heart they were a toy company, not a video game company. They were the ones that got the toy license for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (the video game license went to Atari, and for as much as the story is mythologized, didn't go over so well), as well as the World Wrestling Federation...though unfortunately, the toy division wasn't the money-maker, and it was under Acclaim's direction that the toy division was killed.
Player Notes
I originally wrote part of this review as part of the Telltale game's entry and at some point around 2025 started to expand it again.
Screenshots
