NES RATING #1 - Back To The Future Part II & III

NES RATING #1

Back To The Future Part II & III

Produced by:  BEAM Software

Distributed by:  LJN
Released:  1990

On the heels of the horrendous Back to the Future NES video game, came it's sequel, or sequels, with a "2-for-1" gimmick putting both the futuristic Part II and old western Part III on one game cart.  Add as many "Parts" as you like, but you still have a lackluster game here.  This is a major step up from the first, however, and has some playability value.
As Marty McFly, you must retrieve hidden items that Biff Tannen has hidden and then destroy his Sports Almanac to set things right.  Hey, it follows the movie plot (well, somewhat...) which is a step above the original awful NES game.

First off, you best tape a bunch of paper together to create a map, because there's a billion doors leading to screens that all look the same.  Oh, and no SAVE feature.  No joke.  You can continue infinitely, but unless you have a day or so (or a properly filled out map, which some claim has taken over 6 hours to properly create) to play around with this game, you're not beating it.

Not that Back to the Future Part II & III (and shouldn't it be "Parts" and not "Part") is really anything special to be worth defeating, anyway.  Just another generic and random effort of a game.  Collect those...nuclear symbols?  And pizza slices?  Pizza, did they get the wrong movie franchise here?  Don't miss those elusive... bottles of soda.  Just dull, dull, dull.

The graphics and background are all lackluster.  For a game that relies on you going back-and-forth between so many rooms, they could have done a little better than "black background, pink platforms, and the name 'BIFF' lit up in random places" here.  And the game control itself is very lacking.  Jumping can be a pain, as Marty's leaps need to be well-timed, but instead  they can often be stiff jumps that have him leaping too short and dying.

 The music is repetitive and annoying but anything trumps the music from the first game, I suppose.

This plays more like Bart Vs. The Space Mutants... collect the yada-yada-yada... but unlike that game, which had plenty of flaws itself, there is just jumping around on the same looking levels without anything very unique to do.

 Pass on this.

Rating:  D