Marble Madness

align=center colspan=2|Marble Madness
lign="center" colspan=2|
a href="/encyclopedia/Video-game-developer" title="Video game developer">Developer: Atari Games
a href="/encyclopedia/Video-game-publisher" title="Video game publisher">Publisher: Atari Games
a href="/encyclopedia/Game-designer" title="Game designer">Game designer: Mark Cerny
elease date: 1984
a href="/encyclopedia/Computer-and-video-game-genres" title="Computer and video game genres">Genre: Platform
ame modes: Up to 2 players simultaneously
abinet: Standard
ontrols: Trackball
lign="center" colspan=2|Monitor
rientation: Horizontal
ype: Raster, standard resolution (Used: 336 x 240)
ize: 19 inch
lign="center" colspan=2|Notes
olspan=2|The game can only make horizontal and vertical lines, so diagonal lines had to be rendered by hand.
Marble Madness is an arcade game by Atari Games released in 1984. Using trackballs, players race marbles through an Escher-esque labyrinth against a strict time limit. While Marble Madness is a fairly short game, with victorious plays through its six levels rarely lasting longer than five minutes, its high degree of challenge and charming theme, sound and graphics made it a hit. The game can be played solo, or by two players competing against each other. The game is harder with two players, so to compensate each player is allowed to "continue" the game once, and receives bonus time for beating the other player to the finish line. After the first, training level, called "Practice," the player is given an amount of time to maneuver through five successively harder levels: "Beginner," "Intermediate," "Aerial," "Silly" and "Ultimate." Time from previous levels is carried over to the next, with modest additional awards granted at the start of each one. A small assortment of enemies are scattered through the levels, but the players greatest foes are the levels themselves, which contain many sudden drops and treacherous passages, and the trackball controls, which are purposely imprecise and difficult to master. This was the first Atari System I game; it was also the first video game with true stereo sound.

Ports

The game was ported to various home computers and video game consoles, including the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, NES, PC and Sega Master System. An emulated version of the arcade game is also available on Midway Arcade Treasures for the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox. Despite the plethora of ports, few of these systems support trackball controllers, so an authentic Marble Madness experience is extremely rare these days.
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a href="/encyclopedia/C64" title="C64">C64 Amiga Atari ST
a href="/encyclopedia/Electronic-Arts" title="Electronic Arts">Electronic Arts (1986) Electronic Arts (1986) Electronic Arts (1986)
|
a href="/encyclopedia/Nintendo-Entertainment-System" title="Nintendo Entertainment System">NES Game Boy Sega Master System
a href="/encyclopedia/Milton-Bradley-Company" title="Milton Bradley Company">MB/Rare (1989) Mindscape (1991) Virgin Games (1992)

External links

 

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