Super Back to the Future II

Super Back To The Future II is a 1993 video game by Toshiba EMI that was only released in Japan on the Super Famicom home console (SFC), or known in the western world, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES).

Even tho the game was never released in English officially, it's still found a small cult following from fans of the film. Plus, if you're familuer enough with the film, you pretty much know what the text in the little cut scenes are saying.

The game is somewhat based on the film, but by characters only... well that and the use of a hoverboard and appearances by the Delorean Time Machine. However, that's about where the similarities end. I mean, each level does throw a tonne of somewhat related things into it, but....

Do you remember that part of the movie where Marty skated through platforms and collected a bunch of pickups, or took out random thugs by jumping on them? No? Well, according to this game, that's how it went down!

You control Marty skating around on a hoverboard in a side scrolling platformer in the attempts to get from one end to the other and reach a goal, and every 4 stages or so is a boss to defeat, which is usually a Biff Tannen of each timeline and year the level is in.

It's pretty much like a Super Mario World type of deal, with all the things in between to avoid, collect, or lay it out in one punch. Visually, however, it's BTTF themed for each level and enemy..... well, for some parts anyway.... a lot of things included are typical Misc items, objects, enemies that all these based on a film games get filled with, and that is of coarse the public domain or filler things every video game studio had access to to just shove into any game, like swooping birds, barrels and bull-ohlala. Don't forget the bats. Every NES game like these had to have bats, so why would this SNES release be any different? It surprises me it didn't have any random snakes!! I especially don't recall any scene in the film where Marty had to knock out a Jazz musician with a bunch of cannonballs, but feel free to correct me on that just incase I am having an aneurysm right now.

Marty travels through time throughout each level, the same as in the film. From 2015 to 1985b, to 1955. The controls are pretty easy. It's pretty much like Super Mario Controls. However, tho I've compared it to Mario twice now, it feels and plays nothing like a Mario game. The controls can be a little less responsive sometimes and could've been much approved upon.

The graphics are a kinda anime-ish style. Or just that kinda thing 16-bit games often did by sorta going a realistic cartoon look with decent shading and making the head larger to look like a bobblehead. I dunno, maybe some people are supposed to find it cute or something?

The audio I found a bit annoying at times. The first couple of levels belt out the movies title score, but being so familiar with that score, it's really noticeable where they stopped creating it in this midi form, and just set it to repeat/loop, and it starts to sound irritating after a while... luckily, later stages use custom music.

Another downfall I felt was the lack of variety. Each level changes to the time you're in, but overall, every level feels just like the last. There are 3 or 4 variants, but it is too similar to feel fresh or different. It just feels like the same manure with a different coat of paint for every level.

What the game needed was some bonus levels, maybe play a mini game of Wild Gunman, or something that involves allowing the player to interact with the Delorean and take it for a spin? Instead of it just being an animation that drops you back into the game when spawning and respawning.

The game does feel much better than its NES counterparts and it's predecessor, but to me, thats the only thing I think its had going for it once westerners discovered this title in the early 2000s via emulation. It slowly picked up the steam it probably would've recieved had it been released in English outside of Japan in the 90s, but I can't say it's worth rating highly just because it's a game we should've had in the 90s, and would've loved, because I'm not convinced it would've actually been any better than the majority opinion being "Meh, it's OK. But I wouldn't buy it" had it actually been released outside of Japan at the time, and that's still how I feel about it today. Sure, it was heaps better than the NES titles, but it still lacks variety, has stiff controls, doesn't have great replay value, doesn't have much in discovery of anything new, and it's not really a game that can be mastered, it usually always comes down to luck, or just having a good day, but once the game is beat, it has no feeling of reward, just boring credits nobody cares about and no desire to come back and play it again anytime soon.