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Have you seen Stephen Spielberg's latest production
Back to the Future? If you're one of those who
hasn't then you won't know the story, so here's a quick
precis.
Marty,
the hero of the film, accidently gets sent back through
time to 1955. Still in his home town, only thirty years
previously, he starts to unwittingly change the future.
First of all he meets his Daddy, only he's the same
age as Marty. After saving him from being hit by a car,
Marty himself gets knocked down, and gets taken into
the driver's house to be nursed.
This
is where the problem really starts. The house he's been
taken to is where his Mother lives (only she's young
and very pretty). When she sees Marty lying on the bed
unconscious she fells in love with him . . . and history
starts becoming very muddled. You see, if Marty's Mummy
falls in love with Marty she'll never fall in love with
Marty's Daddy, and consequently Marty will never be
born -- oh dear, migraine time. Eventually Marty DOES
get his parents back together and returns to the future.
The
game closely follows the plot of the film. Playing Marty,
you must reunite his Mummykins and Daddypoos -- if he
fails then he'll cease to exist. Back to the Future
is really an arcade adventure where the object of
the game is to collect the correct objects and drop
them in the right place at the right time.
There
are five locations, the main one being a bi-directional
scrolling street which has four buildings, a cafe, the
professor's house (he invented the time machine), the
dance hall and the school. All the buildings have a
door, and entering through one leads you to a single
room inside. An object relevant to the game resides
in each room, only you have to work out which object
does what. Marty can only carry one thing at a time,
but when he's carrying something one of the five icons
at the top of the screen becomes highlighted so you
know which of the five items he's carrying.
Trudging
around the town are the four main characters from the
film, Lorraine (Marty's Mum), George (his Dad), the
school bully (Biff) and the professor. Some objects
have an effect on the characters, for example collecting
the alien suit and using it on Lorraine makes her stand
still so you can collect another object and use it on
her.
Throughout
the game a timer, in the form of two slowly decaying
photographs, one of Marty and the other of him and his
brother and sister, slowly ticks down. If Lorraine gets
near Marty then the photograph decays a lot faster,
so you have to be pretty quick about the whole thing.
Biff doesn't really play an important part in the game,
but trudges around hitting people. If he hits Marty
then he falls over, stunned, and has to sit down a while
to recover (meanwhile the photographs are merrily decaying).
If
you manage to use an object at the right time then the
photos begin to regenerate, and once they have become
whole, Marty can whizz to the professor's house, jump
into the time machine and whizz off back to the future.
If
the game is completed then Marty has to start again,
only this time there is a bigger chunk missing from
the family photograph, making the game far more difficult
to finish.
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