In 1984 Atari Games released Marble Madness, the first game on the Atari System 1. Later numerous ports were made, including one mod for Unreal Tournament 2003. Electronic Arts made a few ports for the personal computers market, where the Amiga version is one of the most successful.
In short the game revolves around you, the player, maneuvering a marble through six different mazes, with ever increasing level of difficulty. To control the marble you can use a trackball, a mouse, the keyboard or a joystick.
Trackballs were the original controls for this game on the Atari. However, these are hard to come by nowadays, which may prevent the player from getting the original “Marble Madness” feel when playing it. Those who have tried the game tend to agree that the trackball and the mouse are best suited for controlling the marble.
One of the first impressions when playing this game is its clean isometric style of the labyrinth and the excellent integration of sound effects and music. In addition to the fact that the levels gets quite challenging towards the end, and all the traps and obstacles that tries to prevent you from finishing each level makes this game both pleasing to the eye, ear and mind.
The game
has, in addition, a two player modus. This mode of play is quite challenging since you now have two marbles competing on the limited space and time in the mazes to get to the finish line. To compensate, each player is allowed to continue the game once, and receive extra time for reaching the finish line before of the other player. Since the game has only six levels you can choose between six degrees of difficulty. Beginning with the easiest level "Practice", you move up through, "Beginner", "Intermediate", "Aerial", "Silly" and finally "Ultimate". When completing one level, time from the previous level is carried over to the next, with additional awards granted at the start of each one. This is why speed is of the utmost importance. “Silly” is the most interesting level and is rather what it says. Choosing this level will allow you to play the game backwards, starting at the finish line and having to work your way back to the starting point. The dubious message “Everything you know is wrong” appears on the screen before you start playing.
All in all this game is incredibly addictive and great fun to play. I still turn to this game whenever I want to relive those nostalgic days in the early 80s. And now is a final note. If you have a C64, PC or the Apple IIe conversion you can reach a secret level, which is called the Water Maze. This is reached by being on the leftmost bottom platform on the first level at a specific time on the count down (13 seconds).
