Back to the Future II & III (NES)

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Back to the Future II & III
"There's gotta be one good thing about this game, and I know what it is. It fits in a toaster."
— The Angry Video Game Nerd
Genre(s): Platform
Platform(s): Nintendo Entertainment System
Release Date: September 1990
Developer(s): Beam Software
Publisher(s): LJN
Series: Back to the Future
Predecessor: Back to the Future

Back to the Future II & III is a 1990 platform game based on the two sequels to the first Back to the Future movie. The game was published by LJN in 1990, who published the first game as well.

Plot

The game follows the two sequel movies to the 1985 Back to the Future movie.

Part 2

Biff Tanner steals a sports almanac and brings it to 1955, creating an alternate dystopian future. Marty McFly must go around retrieving various items and bring them back to their correct time periods.

Part 3

Marty must go to the old west and convince Doc Brown, who has been living there for 6 months to come back to the future.

Why It Doesn't Travel Back In Time

  1. It barely follows the movie at all, except for the introduction sequence.
    • It even has an error in the introduction of Part III: It says 1875 instead of 1885.
  2. Many characters who are in the movie are absent from this game, such as Emmett Brown, Jennifer, Biff, to name a few. One of Biff's henchmen appears on a hoverboard, but that's the only human character from the movie.
  3. Despite being incredibly long the game must be completed in one sitting due to the lack of any sort of save or password feature with the exception of a cheat code to skip to Part 3 (see point 11).
  4. Just like in the first game, Marty looks nothing like he did in the films.
    • The other human characters are also lacking in detail.
  5. The jump mechanics are very floaty, making jumping on small platforms almost impossible.
  6. The controls are also not responsive. You have to jump in a specific way to avoid falling into holes or avoid hazards in the mini-games.
  7. The enemies are all random. Things like trash cans, piranha plants, monkeys, bats, fish, bird creatures, drones, lizards, evil Marty lookalikes, and creatures that look like Spinys from Super Mario.
  8. The items are behind locked doors, to open them you need to find keys which instead of lying around in plain sight appear randomly. They also fall off-screen as soon as they appear, so if you miss it, you have to leave the screen, then come back to it.
  9. Some doors won't let you in even if you have the key.
  10. The minigames to get the items are too similar and really repetitive. They're also filled to the brim with artificial difficulty does not help things.
    • You are completely defenseless in mini-games. The fire flower-like power-up doesn't work there, and if you get hit or fall into a bottomless pit, it goes away.
  11. Taking the items to their correct places is very difficult. You have to put them in a specific spot (kind of like in Mario's Time Machine) and unscramble the word that goes with the item. If you select the wrong item, the item explodes, making you lose it and making you have to get the item all over again.
  12. The level design is extremely convoluted. There's a lot of bottomless pits and holes everywhere, and it's made worse with the floaty jump mechanics.
  13. It is extremely easy to get lost in the different maps. Even worse, there's no in-game map, nor did it come with a map.
  14. The cheat code to skip to Part 3 (hold Select and B on the title screen) requires you to unscramble a ridiculously long password after entering the code. The password remains the same each time but that doesn't make having to solve it every time you use the cheat any less frustrating.
  15. The "song" when you run into a bird-like enemy is obnoxiously loud and annoying. It only goes away when you kill it or allow it to go off-screen.

Redeeming Qualities

  1. The soundtrack is at the very least, decent.
  2. You get unlimited continues.

Tips

  • To skip to Part III, hold Select+B on the title screen and unscramble the password to FLUXCAPACITORISTHEPOWER.
"What were they thinking?"
The Shit Scale
Games that are debatably bad High level of shit contamination The very high category The severe zone Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Major code red
👆
This product belongs to the "Very High Category" category of the AVGN's Shit Scale.

Videos

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Trivia

This game gave The Angry Video Game Nerd his slogan for LJN, which is proudly displayed on its category page.

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