Who would've thought that a sports almanac from the future would've caused so much trouble.
I can tell you this was one really confusing game, if you don't make a map, a very detailed map at that, describing locations of every door and which screens each are connected to, as well as every object room (which are all locked and you must find a key by killing certain enemies) and what items are earned in each, you're going to get lost. By the way there are 30 object rooms you have to beat with 30 items total which you need in order to retrieve the Sports Almanac, and not only that but after you earn each object you have to return them to their rightful time and place which are hidden locations in either pipes or manholes, and then you have to unscramble the word of the name of the item so that you know what item is supposed to be dropped off there, place the wrong item and you lose it only to have to go back to where you'd gotten it and get it again. This ranks up there with the only other game that I ever had to make a map for to beat, Castlequest, oh, and mapping Swords & Serpents certainly helped me beat that one too. It may take from material that appeals to most everyone (the Back to the Future movies and Super Mario Bros.), but the game is one of the most complex that I've played on the NES, which very few gamers will take any remote liking too.
Those 30 objects are all your every day ordinary stuff: Skateboard, Baseball bat, Binoculars, Computer, Stop Watch, Video Camera, Handcuffs, ect. I had a really hard time on a handful of those items being as I couldn't tell what they were supposed to be, or wasn't sure of what they were calling it in the game, such as with the Roulette Wheel, Slot Machine, Fax Machine, and Tambourine, none of which I could tell what they were supposed to be, and I mistakened the Windshield Wipers for a Pick Axe, but most items are better represented in their graphics. Once you have gotten every item and returned 'em to their proper time and place, then with the final one you'll have won this very long first part of this duo of games, destroying the Sports Almanac, and then its on to Back to the Future III, and this is when they give you the one and only password.
I really enjoyed this game back when I beat it this past summer, been wanting to take it on for several years prior to then, but knew it'd take a lot of time and effort to do it, with all the mapping and whatnot. I like the different mini-game-like object rooms which are all one-screeners, they kinda all have an old early 80's arcade platformer feel where you have to collect all these clocks on screen, avoiding various strange enemies and ever changing obstacles and challenges and then get the trophy when it appears. There's also a good dozen bonus rooms which only contain food, fuel for the DeLorean, and keys, and if you get everything before time runs out a big pizza appears, get that to get 5 extra lives. Marty is also smaller within these object and bonus rooms than he is when wandering around outside in Hill Valley.
Aside from losing any keys you collected, as well as putting your fuel back to default of 10 units, dying isn't really too big a deal, afterall they give you infinite continues, its trying to figure out where to go and what to do next that is the challenge. Firstly you have to get the Remote Control for the DeLorean so that you can time travel, this found in plain sight in the ticket booth a couple screens north of where you start, and then you have to find a Compass, without it you won't know where the hell you are, this is in the year 2015, once you have those 2 items then you're ready to jot down coordinates for everything you find. Its all very time consuming, you have to really love making maps 'n stuff to be able to immerse yourself into this game. If this is the kind of thing for you, then its a very rewarding gaming experience tackling and beating this game.
Overall gameplay is the hop 'n bop sort, like Super Mario Bros., only that this game is nonlinear, you can go anywhere you want, whenever you want, as well as any of the 3 time periods (1985, 2015, 1955) you want, so long as you have fuel to get there, or a key to enter any one of the many locked doors to the object rooms. There's some places in the game where rooms are out of reach, impossible to get to, this is when you have to go far enough back in time and plant a seed at those coordinates (as with keys, only certain enemies drop these special seeds), then travel back to the future and you'll see that a tall plant has grown there which you can hop up onto get to those few high up doors. Each time period has a total of 16 very long screens. This is a big ass platforming adventure, it really needed a regular password feature to at least save the items you've acquired, unfortunately it doesn't. Traversing each screen takes a while, what with all the platform hopping, jumping on or over foes, collecting stuff along the way, and constant backtracking, the game isn't small, and so the time needed to finish it won't be either, certainly wasn't for me, I hadn't kept a game running for that long a time in many years.
Strangely there's a few things in the game totally ripped of Mario, such as the enemies that look like Spinys and Piranha Plants, and then the pipes throughout the world and in the bonus rooms, and even some of the sound effects. Even so, its not completely a bad thing, afterall this is the sorta thing that most NES games are made of, because I tell you, this game's got some strange mix of enemies, barely anything makes sense for earthly creatures, with bizarre animals, robots, and aliens, the only foe true to the movie is Biff. But then what else did the movie have for villains anyway, Biff's toadies? Some locations are recognizable from the movie's three time periods, but as far as characters goes, aside from Marty, Biff and the DeLorean, there's no sign of any other characters including Doc Brown whom I don't recall ever seeing at any point in the game. Oh, and there are points where you can temporarily ride on a hoverboard, usually after dismounting Biff from one of them, allowing you to travel across an expanse quicker, though only limiting you to moving left or right, but it disappears after a few seconds then its back to walking.
One thing I just remembered that I nearly forgotten to mention in Back to the Future II, once you've travelled to a time period and then revisit it, there's a chance that you could run into yourself, your other self. It seems random, sometimes you'll encounter yourself once in a great while, other times several of yourselves in a row, and if you do, you have to run away, because coming in contact with one of your other selves will take away one of your lives, and you also don't want to attempt to kill your other self either.
I think that covers most of the basic stuff about the game, I know I'm missing telling a lot, but you'll either play it and hate it for the complexities, or enjoy it and discover on your own.
Now Back to the Future III was much smaller than part II, only 10 screens, obviously there's no time travelling, and the item count is much smaller, 10 items (opposed to 30 in BttFII). I couldn't really make a map for it due to that you don't have the compass anymore in this part of the game, but then you don't really need it as part III is very linear compared to the 2nd game. Object Rooms with the items and the rooms that you have to return those items too are on the same screen as one another, so unscrambling the words isn't even necessary to know whether you have 'em in the right place.
The hard part about part III is actually getting those items, the rooms are much harder than in part II, extremely tough puzzles to figure out. You are able to pick up and use certain things within these object rooms to help you beat them. You'll have to use TNT in these rooms, also having to pick up and use pieces of ladders or blocks to climb or step on to reach higher or further away parts of the screen, and some rooms have blocks falling too, oh and one room I thought was particularly interesting had these spider webs floating towards you that caused you to get stuck for a few seconds. Enemies make more sense in this game as well, everything that's here fits in with the wild west theme. Oh, I did get stuck in a few of those rooms in part III, stuck between falling blocks, but the code to access the single password in the game, pressing select and B, also gets you out of those rooms, taking a life away from you though, but at least I didn't have to wait for time to run out.
As for graphics 'n sound, I won't go into detail on it, afterall if after reading all that I had to say about Back to the Future II & III thusfar doesn't make this game appear appealing to you, then no amount of graphical detail or tunes are going to make you somehow enjoy this type of game. But the graphics and sounds do their job well enough, overall the graphics are good, even though Marty doesn't really look like Marty from the movie. The music is fun enough that I was humming along to it, though I tend to do this with most every game that I play, except the really annoying few.
I'm glad that I'd never passed this game up or gotten rid of it, I'd been missing out on what ended up being a pretty good game. Its got its faults, firstly not being able to save due to the extreme length of part II, but its got those infinite continues. Still I'd really loved to have had passwords for this game every time I got an item, I'm a password freak so I'd preferred that over battery saving. Also collision detection when hopping on enemies is sometimes off, clearly hopping on a enemy and dying from it pissed me off more times than I could count, but again, thank goodness for immortality. But I really think they should've put those items that you get to use, only purpose all this stuff serves is to destroy the Almanac. I'd love to have selected the skateboard, or hoverboard whenever you want to once you've earned them to get around quicker, or hit enemies with the baseball bat or throw a basketball at 'em. The game had room to expand, plenty more room for improvement, but what they did with it wasn't bad, its much better than I initially thought it would be.
LJN always picked up all the popular movie licenses, though whether they made any of them at all I'm not sure, still don't know about who did Friday the 13th, Jaws, and Karate Kid, but everything else was developed by various other companies, such as Back to the Future 2 & 3 was made by Beam Software, Bill & Ted was by Rocket Science. Though many gamers put LJN down for having nothing but crappy movie-to-game titles, most of what I've played from them I've enjoyed, not always spectacularly, but not really anything too terrible either.