Image Works
£10.99/£14.99

All set for a ring-dingin', rootin', tootin' conclusion to Back To The Future? This is part three of the saga and it's a pretty hot cookie!

Set way back in the Wild West (1885, to be exact), the action starts with Doc Brown on a horse. He has to chase after the runaway carriage that holds Clara, the woman he is about to fall in love with. You help the Doc control the horse and keep the enemies at bay. Jumping cliffs, ducking from barrels and collecting bonus points keeps you busy.

The second section of level one is a vertically scrolling shoot-em-up, bullets flying everywhere. Survive all this and you come to...

The Shooting Gallery: more bullets! You've now changed characters to become Marty, and he ain't yella! Armed with a shiny new gun, he has to shoot all the pop-up targets such as ducks, geese and cowboys. A careful trigger finger is needed, however, as the odd granny (not that all grannies are odd!) pops up. Shooting her reduces your score. Now, off to the streets.

Being a bit of a frisbee king back (or is it forward?) in 1985, Marty takes on the local baddie (Bufford) and his cronies, armed with nothing more than a few tin pie plates! He has to score a direct hit on all the cowboys and then do away with big bad Bufford himself.

Now get back to the future! The DeLorean has been strapped to the front of a steam train which has to reach the magic 88 mph before it can travel through time. To reach this sort of speed the train has to do some impressive puffing (missus). Collecting Presto blocks to give it that extra boost is your task.

Back To The Future Part III came as a big surprise to me. The last two games have been pretty shoddy, to say the least, but part three is a real joy to play.

Graphics are excellent. Large animated sprites and colourful backdrops are used in most of the game, with only the vertically scrolling shoot-em-up levels letting the side down.

Gameplay is totally addictive. Once you've started playing you just won't be able to put the game down. To complement all this are some toe-tapping tunes. Wild West classics like 'Ghost Riders in The Sky' and 'The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly' (known as 'Nick, Richard and Mark' in the CRASH office) play through the levels. Imageworks are on to a real winner here, rounding oft the trilogy with such a wonderful action-packed and varied game (Great scott, Marty, it's a CRASH Smash)!!

NICK [93%]

Back To The Future Part III is happily a great improvement over its predecessor: it plays well, looks good and sounds good! The game's four action-packed levels follow the film plot closely. The sprites are really great, moving as fast as the smooth scrolling. Level three is especially speedy, Marty chucking pie plates all over the place! I loved the film and highly recommend the game. It's a pity it's taken until the last film to get a decent Back To The Future game. So, it's my last chance to shout 'Marty, you've got to come with me back to the future!' at an annoyingly loud volume (sniffle)!
MARK [93%]

Image Works
£10.99 cass/£15.99 disk
Reviewer: James Leach

I do wish that brat Marty McFly would stop mucking about with the orderly procession of time. It does all seem a bit dangerous doesn't it? (Mind you, he's probably thinking of all the money he'll earn from BTTF 4, 5 and 6, so why give a fig, eh?)

But anyway, enouhh of me pontificating - what's this BTTF3 jobby like then? Well, for those who've never seen the movie it might be handy to quickly sketch out what's going (or gone, or about to go) on.

Doc and Marty have travelled back to Hill Valley and found themselves in the days of the old Wild West. A stray arrow from an Indian attack has caused the DeLoreans fuel to leak away thus well and truly dumping them in it. Further to this, Doc then goes and falls love with a girly called Clara, and then he and Marty do something which doesn't exactly put them on speaking terms with a gang run by a big bad bully called Buford (a very old descendent of Biff from the previous 2 games) Groo!

RIGHT, LEVEL 1...

Well, as you may well have spotted from playing our super-spanky demo on the cover cassette, Clara's in a ponytrap heading over a ravine. Doc, on horseback, is racing to catch up, but being hassled by loads of rocks, tumbleweeds and debris from the cart, all of which hes got to leap over or shoot. The level's actually split up into two - a standard horizontal scroller, for the jumping and shooting, and a vertical view. This second bit's better - it's a sort of Ikari Warriors type thing, with Doc galloping along and dodging the shots of injuns who are firing down on him from both sides of a canyon. Bit tricky, that, and lots of fun! Then there's another stint at the horizontal view, then there's another bout on the canyon ride, and so on and so forth...

Okay, you've done all that. Next you get to the town shooting gallery, with a highly detailed (well done, lads) 3D perspective of your gun and targets. As they pop up you get to show off your crack-shot skills and generally impress all the locals, led by Buford, the chief baddie. A cross indicates where your shot will go, so basically you manoeuvre it over your targets (or where you think they'll be). (Actually there are some nice touches of humour here - they've thrown that bit from the movie in when Marty calls himself Clint Eastwood, and there's also a bit when the ducks roll past on a conveyor belt and you see an alarm clock and a cuddly toy trundling by slowly. If only there was Brucie himself to aim at!)

Mind you, its not all japing around - if you aren't quick enough at popping all the targets socks off then the last one, a large and rather mean looking gunfighter, will actually take a pot-shot back at you! Blimey! That's not exactly what you pay 30p for, is it?! This section is great fun to play, and your trigger finger will itch as you wait for the next target to pop out.

Right, what happens next? Only that the locals suddenly get narked off and try to kill you? And what do you do in return? You throw pie-plates at them! (Weird, eh?) This is Level 3, where you are in the town square, and, armed with a big pile of crockery, you must take out each member of Buford's gang. It's a sort of bird's-eye angled 3D view as you scuttle back end forth collecting the plates to hurl. Once you've hit everyone, Buford wanders out into the Street, shooting you (great graphics, incidentally). Pie-plate him repeatedly until he collapses and dies (or goes unconscious. Or something. Anyway, until he's lying very still).

And this should be enough to see you onto the last level - getting a train to push the (rather knackered) De Lorean car up to the magical 88mph so it can break through the time barrier (or whatever) and transport you safely back to your cosy little 20th bedroom. Hurrah! What's more, while you're doing this, smelly old Buford reappears back from the dead to try and cock it all up! (Bit of a deviation there from the movie, but we'll let it go, eh?) Er, other than that I'm not too sure what happens on this level because although Matt got to have a look at it in the Megaprewiew (and said it was pretty stonking!) I couldn't, er, actually get that far (ahem). Just goes to show that the game's not all that easy to beat, eh? Ahem (You're fired, Ed)

LOTS OF BITS OF PIECES REALLY

Like BTTF II, this is really a collection of 5 smaller games with a common theme (5 games because Level 1 Contains 2 different sequences) Each little sub-game forms a complete (if rather tiny) game by itself and although none of them really grabbed me by the throat and yelled into my face, neither did they slope off miserably and cry in the corner.

The best section is the vertically-viewed ride in the canyon from Level 1. It's the simplest graphically with small, fast sprites, and proves that fancy graphics aren't the be-all-and-end-all of any game. (The shooting-gallery bit isn't too bad either - all split-second timing and big detail.) Talking about graphics, well, generally they're very good, and different too - we've got 2-dimensional, 3-dimensional and even 4-dimensional views represented here (time being the 4th dimension, of cours, hem hem). Sound too is different in each section, with nice touches like the theme tune to The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (or somesuch Clint-ish western) being playing out during the pie-plate throwing bit.

It's certainly better than BTTF II - it's more balanced. For example there's no annoying but-easy-to-solve puzzle bit to get in the way this time round. The games are all linked up quite well, and they're all fun. In fact the game's strength is probably that there's so much variety in it - taken individually these games wouldn't be all that incredible, but gelled together they'll see you through a few days' fun. (I suppose.)

Right then, now I'm off to nip forwards in time to see what BTTF4's like. (There isn't going to be a BTTF4. Ed) Oh. Er... perhaps I'd better stay here then.

Label: Imageworks
Memory: 48/128K
Price: £10.99 Tape
Reviewer: Ian Watson

Hold onto your horses in Back To The Future III, Image Works' fairly accomplished conversion of the big screen favourite., there's plenty of opportunity to get reacquainted with the more painful side of the Wild west, ultimately acquainted in fact.

Marty McFly's in trouble again. Big trouble. Y'see he's got to go back to 1885, find the Doc, fix the DeLorean, and then skedaddle back to the thingy, all before the good Dr receives a pre-destined bullet in the back courtesy of bad guy 'Mad Dog' Tannen. All well and good so far but the game itself consists solely of solving a damsel in distress before her horse drawn cart tumbles into a ravine, a bit of pistol practise, throwing pies at the Tannen mob, and running along the top of a train picking up logs! Fine if you've seen the film, a bit nonsensical otherwise.

Once into the game however, continuity takes a well deserved back seat. There are four sections to the damsel bit, two side on where you have to jump over rocks/pits and dodge flying pieces of furniture and the like, and two with an overhead view where you have to weave your way through battling cowboys and Indians. Although relatively simple in concept, both will have you cursing your keyboard and your co-ordination as the deceptively straightforward obstacles trip you up again and again. Indeed simplicity is very much the key with BTTF3; the remaining three sections all operating on the premise that the easiest to understand challenges are often the most enthralling, something that's certainly very true where the pie throwing's concerned. The only drawback with this however is that once you've been through the entire game there's little to tempt you back for a repeat performance apart from the thrill of going through the motions; the sequences and scenarios eventually becoming more familiar than a Spielberg storyline. The practise, which comes in the form of targets at a fairground booth.

Mirrorsoft
Spectrum £10.99, Amiga £24.99

After the fourth-dimensional frolics of Back to the Future II, Marty McFly is back, and in even bigger trouble! Y'see, Doc Brown (manic inventor of the DeLorean time vehicle, and Marty's mentor) has been blasted back to the year 1885, leaving poor Marty stranded in 1955! The problem is, if Marty doesn't travel back to the Wild West, the good doctor will end up with a bullet in the back, courtesy of Buford Tannen, the desperado great-grandad of Marty's nemesis, Biff!

Having made it back to 1885 (and wrecking the Delorean's fuel line in the process), Marty now has to find Doc, who is madly in love with Clara Clayton, a schoolmistress from the past! Will the Doc get the girl? Will any of them get "Back To the Future"? We're not going to tell you, because it's down to the player of this movie conversion to change the course of history!

ROB SEZ...

I'm a big fan of the movies,- but found the conversions of Back to the Future 2 little more than awful. So, keeping this in mind, I expected the worst from BTTF 3. But Probe (the team behind such hits as SCI and Turbo OutRun) have produced a tie-in which not only follows the film (to a reasonable extent) but is entertaining to play, too. The in-game graphics on both versions are very nice indeed, with some nicely animated sprites, but the inter-mission screens on the Amiga are a bit duff - digitised pictures would have looked a lot better. The sound is okay, with some decent effects and background music, but the title track is a little weak. The only major quibble I have with BTTF 3 is the level of difficulty - you have to work like crazy just to get off the first level, so novice gamers beware. Four levels may not sound like a big game, but this is will keep hardened players going for a fair amount of time.

RICH SEZ...

I found Back to the Future 3 to be a reasonable game, desperately attempting to recreate the film, it succeeds quite well and has its own rather bizarre sense of humour. Fail in your attempts as Doc Brown to rescue Clara Clayton and an intermission screen shows her falling off the cliff with the caption "I wish I was Mary Poppins". For every failed rescue attempt a new caption comes up including the inevitable "Oh no! Not again!". Marty even steps in and offers to help the incompetent Doc after about your fifth go! The humour is extended to all the graphics throughout the game and they serve the purpose admirably. The sound consists of decent effects (though Marty's gun sounds more like Dirty Harry's .44 magnum!) and tepid tunes. BTTF3 is a nice attempt at capturing the humour and atmosphere of the movie, but none of the sub-games have the depth to keep the player hooked for very long.