Contents:
The Intro
Title: Back to the Future: The Game
Release year: 2010
Developed by: Telltale Games
Genre: Graphic adventure
Platform replayed on: PC
What do you do with a much-loved film trilogy from the 80s, around twenty years after the third film and its associated video game were released?
Image via IMDB
You go Back…
…to it and make another video game, apparently.
Back to the Future: The Game released in late 2010, just over twenty years since Back to the Future Part III was released in cinemas in 1990. The video game, Back to the Future Part III, released in 1991 on a variety of platforms including Amiga, Commodore 64, Master System, and MS-DOS.
Image via Mobygames
Telltale Games had spent the 2000s releasing episodic video games. Some were based on well-known television franchises such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Wallace and Gromit, while others resurrected popular video games from the 90s, like Sam & Max and Monkey Island.
In 2010 it was announced that Telltale Games had a deal to create video games based on the Back to the Future and Jurassic Park film franchises.
But just because you can revisit an old classic, does it mean you should?
It’s time to go back…to Back to the Future: The Game and find out.
The Game
Back to the Future: The Game tells its own, but interrelated, tale featuring our intrepid time travellers Marty McFly and Doc Brown.
Back to the Future: The Game also follows the episodic formula that Telltale Games was now known for, with five episodes released over 2010 and 2011.
I’ve covered a couple of other Telltale Games here on Present Perfect Gaming before: The Walking Dead: Season One (2012) and Sam & Max: Season 2 Episode 1: Ice Station Santa (2007).
Where Sam & Max by Telltale Games follows the tradition of its predecessor Sam & Max Hit the Road (1993) and is a point-and-click adventure game, The Walking Dead was more of a graphic adventure game, and therefore more on the interactive fiction end of the adventure game spectrum.
Further, The Walking Dead presented the idea of player choice, where you get to shape the narrative at various decision points in the game. I struggled with this aspect, and thought it was more an illusion of choice, and ultimately the same story overall was being told.
Released two years prior to The Walking Dead, Back to the Future: The Game is also more graphic adventure than point-and-click. There is a lot of narrative, and as it draws well from its source material, it feels more like an interactive movie.
Though Back to the Future: The Game does also feature traditional point-and-click aspects such as inventory management, conversation trees, and timed events.
Events in Back to the Future: The Game take place after the film trilogy, finding Marty in 1986. Doc Brown has been missing for six months, and the bank is now foreclosing on Doc’s house.
Marty is at a loss as to what to do next, when the Delorean arrives at Doc’s house, with Einstein inside.
Unfortunately, the display showing where the Delorean has just come from in time is malfunctioning.
But at least Marty’s got the Delorean back. He just needs to find out “when” Doc is…
Back to the Future: The Game really shines in its fan service to the film trilogy. While Michael J. Fox didn’t return to his role as Marty McFly (though he does make a cameo appearance in the final episode), Christopher Lloyd did as Doc Brown. Claudia Wells, Jennifer Parker in the original Back to the Future, returns, and Thomas F. Wilson portrayed Biff Tannen in the 2015 re-release of the game.
And even though Michael J. Fox didn’t portray Marty, the voice actor that did, A. J. LoCascio did an exceptional job.
Back to the Future: The Game also features many references to the films throughout, and fans will enjoy seeing these, as well as familiar locations in a different time period.
And which time period will this be, given we’ve seen the 1950s, the 2010s (the future!), and the 1880s?
Let’s take a look at the first episode of Back to the Future: The Game, titled It’s About Time.
The Replay
Back to the Future: The Game begins with a very familiar scene…
You can take a look at the intro in full on my Youtube channel:
There’s a little interactivity with the scene, and you can play along and have Marty say those iconic lines, or you can choose to alter history.
Regardless of what you do, the scene ends with an unfamiliar outcome.
Einstein and the Delorean don’t return, and Doc Brown starts to fade away.
Apparently, Doc has made a horrible mistake.
Marty suddenly wakes up from this apparent nightmare, in 1986, following events from the film trilogy.
With Doc missing, and the bank foreclosing on his house, Marty has one last chance to find a hint as to what’s happened.
And speaking of hints, Back to the Future: The Game features an in-game hint system, should you require it.
I quickly turned these off, as knowing the immediate goal was more than enough to point me in the right direction.
A few more familiar faces are found at Doc’s house: Marty’s father, George McFly, and Biff Tannen.
It doesn’t take much of a search to find what Marty needs, but it also doesn’t take long before Biff snatches it away.
As Biff seems so intent on taking things Marty takes an interest in, Marty needs to get creative in a way fans of the original film will appreciate.
With Biff taken care of, and Marty in possession of Doc’s notebook again, there’s a sudden flash of light from outside.
And just like that, Marty is reunited with the Delorean.
And Einstein!
But where has the Delorean come from? And how did it get here? The latter question is answered by Doc himself, as he’s left Marty a tape recorder.
Finding where, and more importantly when, the Delorean has just come from is your next challenge in Back to the Future: The Game, due to the malfunctioning dashboard.
Up to this point, the game has been mostly cutscenes and dialogue—there’s been very little to actually do. Even the next bit of sleuthing isn’t hard to work out, as Marty finds a woman’s shoe left behind in the Delorean.
The next scene is a bit more involved from a gameplay perspective, as Marty ends up at Edna Strickland’s apartment. Edna is Principal Strickland’s mother, another connection with the films.
Edna recalls the time she lost her shoe as the day a local speakeasy burnt down.
Edna wrote about it, as a local journalist. Thankfully, she still has a copy of that newspaper. Unfortunately, she’s a hoarder.
Once you find a way for Marty to distract Edna so he can search through her newspapers, Doc’s location in time is revealed.
However, the stakes have well and truly been raised.
The rescue is on in Back to the Future: The Game.
After quite the lengthy intro sequence, Back to the Future: The Game finally opens up to some player agency as Marty arrives in Hill Valley, 1931 edition.
It’s not long until Marty bumps into the younger Edna Strickland, where he’s asked for his opinion of Carl Sagan (Doc Brown’s alias), the vigilante who burnt down the speakeasy.
Of course, Marty needs an alias too, and you do get a choice…
Marty’s first stop is to meet with Doc at the jail and come up with a plan.
Doc tells Marty that his younger self was working on a rocket-powered drill—perfect for a prison break!
However, it turns out that the young Doc Brown, Emmett, wasn’t always a scientist. He’s currently working for his father, a judge, as a law clerk. He’s not interested in science and certainly not interested in helping Marty.
This is really the story in Back to the Future: The Game, convincing Emmett Brown to help Marty break Doc Brown out of jail. Just without Emmett finding out what he’s actually helping to do.
It wouldn’t be Back to the Future without a Tannen getting in the way, either. Kid Tannen (Biff’s father) is the local crime boss, and he’s been keeping the alcohol flowing in Hill Valley during the Prohibition era.
Kid Tannen also has Arthur McFly, Marty’s grandfather, on his payroll as an accountant.
It’s all connected, of course. Marty needs to convince Emmett to reveal he’s a scientist secretly working on a rocket-powered drill.
Then he needs to source fuel for the drill, alcohol, which involves Edna mistakenly picking up a barrel she thought was full of soup from the local soup kitchen, which acts as a front for Kid Tannen’s alcohol operation.
Finally, Marty just needs to find his grandfather (Artie), currently hiding under Kid Tannen’s orders, so Emmett can serve him with a subpoena (to testify against Kid), and thereby allowing Emmett to return home to power up the drill.
All in a day’s work. It has to be, as Doc’s life depends on it.
For better or worse, actually achieving these goals in Back to the Future: The Game feels less like puzzle solving, and more like interacting with the scenes as they play out. It’s usually a dialogue choice, or the quick use of an item to keep the narrative flowing.
I liked the solutions, such as the use of some meta knowledge from the films, or the creative use of the tape recorder.
However, a couple of solutions were used twice: the use of the tape recorder, and utilising Einstein’s sense of smell.
Both were satisfying solutions, but it felt lazy in a game already short on puzzle solving.
One late-game puzzle in Back to the Future: The Game sees Marty needing to control a chemical reaction needed to activate the rocket-powered drill.
The idea was clever, with Emmett in the other room arguing with his father about being a scientist while emphasising key words for Marty to follow in the lab to keep the chemical reaction going.
However, it was too long and repetitive, and became like a quick-time event requiring faster and faster mouse clicking.
So, the puzzle solving wasn’t that enjoyable in the first episode of Back to the Future: The Game. With the focus on the storytelling, the ending surely had to be good, right?
Well, after going to the trouble of securing and activating the rocket-powered drill, it seemingly all goes to waste, as Marty is too late, and Doc is being transferred from his cell.
This turn of events changes history too.
And while the drill is no longer useful, the rocket is, as Marty chases after Doc.
It’s a daring rescue, and Marty soon discovers Kid Tannen is behind kidnapping Doc.
Unsurprisingly, the first episode of Back to the Future: The Game ends with a cliffhanger. Doc thought they could return to 1986, and all will be well.
But we know that you can’t alter events from the past in Back to the Future and not expect some repercussions…
Doc Brown always said it best:
The Verdict
The first time I played Back to the Future: The Game was just shortly after it was released, and the nostalgic value was high. Telltale Games paid a lot of respect to the film trilogy, and playing through the first episode, you really feel at home in Hill Valley.
Now, being much further removed from the hype and my initial playthrough, this time around the nostalgia and production values are not quite enough to cover over a limited gameplay experience.
The narrative in the first episode is established well enough, though again it relies on the familiar Back to the Future theme of altering the past and impacting the future.
The first episode took me about two and a half hours to play through again, and while I didn’t really remember any of the puzzle solutions, I was never stuck. Given the overall lack of puzzles, most of the time is spent in either cutscenes or in dialogue.
As an interactive fiction experience, the first episode in Back to the Future: The Game is a satisfying return to the franchise. The actual gameplay of puzzle solving, however, is lacking in both its frequency and variation.
But it’s a start. There are four more episodes to play through to complete Back to the Future: The Game. If you’re okay being taken along for the ride, and are a fan of the films, it might very well be worth your while going…Back to the Future.
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