When I first played Back Track, my instincts screamed at me that this was a terrible game. The graphics are messy; the enemies look awful; the explosions have a really bad horizontal raster-style visual effect; health packs are called “Band-Aids“; the weapons are unimpressive; the draw distance is masked with a solid black shadow, which is disconcerting; the environments appear flat, empty and uninteresting, and the premise of the game – to rescue kidnapped humans from inside tubes – doesn’t seem very exciting. BUT… I persisted with it and found Back Track to actually be quite absorbing and challenging, when I eventually got into it.

Back Track was developed by JV Games and published by Telegames, for Windows PCs and the Game Boy Advance, in 2001. It was one of the first first-person shooters to be released for the Game Boy Advance, and it had the unfortunate fate of being released at the same time as the GBA version of Doom. So you can imagine the panning it got… But I actually don’t think it’s that bad a game – if you can forgive it of its weaknesses.

You play as special agent Jim Track, who is sent to the dark side of the moon to rescue 110 humans that have been kidnapped by Domingoaniax‘s robot army. You start with 100 health and 70 bullets, and must survive and fight your way through a large, multi-level base filled with killer robots, looking for large tubes with humans inside them.

When you approach something that you can use (like a door – to open it; or a cryo tube – to rescue a human; or a switch – to change something), you automatically put your weapon away and press the fire button to use whatever it is you’re facing. And when you turn away from it, your weapon is automatically drawn again. And this is quick enough to feel unobtrusive and natural.

When you free a human, the game tells you how many remain to be rescued. Pressing Start brings up a map of the current level, with your current location and the direction you’re facing shown as an arrow. A compass in the top right-hand corner of the screen also helps you stay oriented.

Your default gun is a bit of a pea-shooter, but is effective enough – as long as you keep it topped-up with bullets – which you can find scattered around, or dropped by defeated enemies. Thankfully, there are better weapons to be found, but they use bullets at a higher rate, so you have to be careful not to run out. If you do run out, you can fall back on a pocket knife that you have, but killing robots with this is like trying to kill a T1000 with a can-opener…

Back Track seems overly difficult in places, until you realise that you can just run through densely-packed enemies, rather than having to shoot them all. And also that the player movement is fast, fairly smooth, and intuitive. The map is good, and there are the occasional NPCs that deliver exposition so you know what to do next.

What I didn’t much like about Back Track was the lack of ammunition. You always seem to be low on bullets, and it isn’t until you find the laser gun on level three that your ammo situation improves. So, for the first few levels of the game at least, you have to be very careful with your shooting and try not to waste bullets.

Back Track has two multiplayer modes for up to four players, and it also includes bots as opponents, if you’re playing on your own (according to the marketing blurb, it was the first GBA game to have bots). Deathmatch mode is fairly straightforward, but there is an interesting feature where you can change character by walking up to a cryo tube and pressing fire. There are five playable characters, each with their own different weapons, which adds some variety, but doesn’t affect the gameplay much. Matrix Assault is a deathmatch mode where you have to kill each type of character a certain number of times, and your kill count is shown on-screen as you play.

Overall, Back Track is an okay first-person shooter on the GBA. I don’t think it’s quite as bad as some make out, but it’s certainly not a classic, and it definitely could have been presented better.

More: Back Track on Wikipedia