Back to the Future - NES

If you ever want to waste a half hour of your life, go play Back to the Future for the NES. Oh, sure, the movie was full of excitement, humor, and good old-fashioned time traveling. Not the game.

The game, if that's what you want to call it, features the suave Marty McFly as he cruises up the streets of Hill Valley. That's all you do in basically every level: walk. Basically, you have to walk through the city, collecting little alarm clocks as you go. If you don't collect clocks fast enough, you die. I guess the alarm clocks are keeping you safe until you get back to your own time, though they don't do a very good job.

Aieee! Not another trash can!

Whatever time Marty is in, it's full of constant and very real threats, such as rabid, swarming bees and women twirling hula-hoops in the middle of the road. Sometimes, the hula-hoop women even throw marbles at Marty, causing him to fall down and die.

As if that isn't bad enough, Marty can also die by simply tripping over a bench or even a curb. If you can't manage to dodge the pot holes and oil slicks in the road, and somehow fall prey to their plan to destroy you, Marty falls face-first onto the pavement, waving his fists around as if throwing a tantrum. Lose all his lives, and he'll fade away into nothingness, which is actually a good thing, believe it or not.

It's not as exciting as it looks.

If you manage to complete four levels in a row, you're “rewarded” with a mini-game, which is somehow even worse than the real game. In the first mini-game, which is as far as I got, you have to throw milkshakes at bullies to defeat them. If you miss (very likely, due to the god-awful controls), you're thrown out of the bar and have to start the game from the beginning! I give up. Screw Marty. He's not going back to the future—he's staying right where he is.