Last week, I spent 10 minutes telling a friend why I wasn't going to buy Secret of Mana on iOS. Ten hours later, despite my fears about poor controls and a lack of multiplayer, I bought it anyway.

I brought my Wii to my parents' house for the holidays and used a Wii Points gift card I received to buy Super Mario RPG. It's nowhere close to as good as I remember.

A few weeks ago, I tried to list my 25 favorite games of all time. My list only contained six games released in the last decade. Now I doubt my selections.

It's easy to assume things were better in the past. Nostalgia clouds our judgment and causes us to idealize the old days. But the cold, hard reality often doesn't match our fond memories.

That's why I'm grateful for Telltale Games' first episode of Back to the Future: The Game. It takes all the best things about an old, beloved license -- and an old genre -- and makes them new again.

One of the strongest points in the Back to the Future films is their internal continuity. Every action Marty McFly takes has repercussions on the future of Hill Valley, and the films make sure to set each one up so you notice it. For example, Marty tells diner employee Goldie Wilson he ends up being mayor, thus planting the idea in his head to run for office in the first place.

Telltale wisely focuses on this. From the moment you set foot in the game's Prohibition-era Hill Valley setting, you start to see analogues to the city's 1986 counterpart. A wide establishing shot shows both the similarities and differences in the town square. Marty quickly meets up with the relatives of Mr. Strickland (a busybody reporter), Biff Tannen (a pinstripe-wearing mobster), and George McFly (Tannen's lackey). The familiar diner is now a soup kitchen that serves as a gang hideout.

It's a perfect combination of old memories shown in new ways. You feel instantly at home but eager to explore, excited to find the next link in the chain of history.

One thing Telltale doesn't try to reinvent is its point-and-click adventure gameplay. You know what you're getting into here -- you click on environmental objects, choose dialogue options, and combine inventory items. But in the Back to the Future universe, it makes complete sense.

Think about it -- in the movie, Marty uses a radiation suit, a set of headphones blaring heavy metal, and a few Star Wars/Trek catchphrases to threaten his father into asking his mother to the dance. Doesn't that sound exactly like an adventure-game puzzle?

No wonder, then, that it fits perfectly here. Gamers often accuse the adventure genre of using illogical, nonsensical puzzles. In Back to the Future, that isn't an issue. While the solutions are still zany and keep the tone of the original films, the first thing you try is usually the perfect fit. It might make the game shorter and easier, but it also makes the experience tighter. That lets you focus on the tone and humor instead of wracking your brain.

That tone is maybe my favorite thing about this game. It manages to capture the essence of that humor -- that camaraderie between Marty and Doc -- that made the Back to the Future movies so great. Consequently, it feels less like a game and more like another film in the series -- one that you just happen to be able to participate in.

Amazingly, Telltale manages this without the voice talents of Michael J. Fox. You've probably heard about actor AJ LoCascio's creepily accurate performance of Marty. If you haven't, check it out below. It's incredible.

The Back to the Future movies are a prime example of how knowledge of the future can negatively affect the past. It's fitting, then, that Telltale's first Back to the Future title perfectly illustrates how to learn from the past in order to improve the present. I wish all game developers had a DeLorean and a flux capacitor, so they could figure this out, too.