XP Arcade: Marble Madness

This column is “XP Arcade,” in which I’ll focus on a game from the arcades, or one that is clearly inspired by arcade titles, and so on. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Before Mark Cerny got his hands on Sonic the Hedgehog 2 with Sega, before he began his own consulting business, before he became the “architect” of multiple pieces of Playstation hardware this century, he was a teenage game designer. Hired by Atari in 1982, Cerny was the designer and co-programmer of the arcade hit, Marble Madness. While games featuring marbles racing around, trying to stay on the track and make their way through a labyrinth are more common now, in 1984, this was a new concept. And it was a hit.

Marble Madness released on Atari’s System 1 board, the first game to do so — the idea behind the System 1 (and System 2 follow-up) was that everything was interchangeable, so, one game could use a trackball, another an accelerator pedal, but it could all be swapped out. Along the same lines, unique methods of controlling games were prioritized by Atari post-1983 video game crash, as detailed by Retro Gamer back in 2008 (issue 53). While the crash wasn’t a global phenomenon so much as a United States-based one, Atari was first and foremost an American company dealing with the American market, so they had to navigate this sudden downturn in interest and revenue. Making arcade experiences unlike those that had been played before was a significant part of the business plan for reviving said market — in addition to the “unique” control schemes, there was also a focus on simultaneous two-player experiences.

Marble Madness would utilize a trackball to guide the marble around an isometric course, and, while the game could be played solo and be plenty enjoyable, it really sang in a competitive two-player mode, where players didn’t have to just worry about the terrain and the enemies and their own movements, but that of another player, as well: one who might be looking to bump them right off the course into the abyss, or off a ledge to a platform below that was just a little too far for the marble to survive the crash. It’s so simple, in so many ways, but getting the game to that point was anything but.

Originally, Cerny had dreams of the game being bigger, flashier, lengthier. But for multiple reasons, that’s not what ended up happening:

Instead, Cerny and fellow artist Sam Comstock simplified, going with the M.C. Escher design that, to this day, makes Marble Madness stand out visually. Super Monkey Ball and Marble Saga: Kororinpa could go wild, with a third-person perspective or an overhead view with a ball jumping from rotating platforms that the player has control of, but those both arrived on the scene nearly two decades after Marble Madness, on much more powerful hardware. Marble Madness’ team created a pseudo-3D playing area for the marble to race around in, with obstacles and enemies and an instilled fear of heights, and it worked wonderfully. And still does, over 40 years later.

Plans for a motorized trackball had to be changed, since it would have required four points of connection rather than the standard three — the chances of something going awry and the contacts not being aligned as necessary became higher with four, so, back to three the game went. And Marble Madness is not nearly as lengthy of a game as Cerny wanted, either: at just six stages, it’s fairly short even for an arcade game, given the idea is to complete the courses as quickly as possible, and you aren’t given all that much time for them in the first place. This was another side-effect of Atari’s revenue problems of the time, though. More stages would have meant a longer development time, and that in turn would have meant that their production factories were playing a waiting game, so, instead, six-stage Marble Madness was it. That information came from Cerny himself:

The short length of the game is part of the reason that Marble Madness went from one of the top (if not the top) game in arcades for about two months, and then basically fell off all at once to the point other Atari System 1 games came in to replace it. That being said, it was a huge success for that initial time period, and its influence is undeniable. Using a marble for a competitive racer that borrows from miniature golf was the kind of something new that Atari was going for. It was difficult, but not impossible, the kind of game you drop another quarter into because you know that next time, you’ll do better. Next time, you’ll take the other path. Next time, you’ll veer around that enemy instead of having them instant-kill you. Next time, you won’t go down that slope so fast, sending your marble into the abyss. You’ll land more softly on your next play, to avoid wasting time recovering — yes, even this non-sentient marble could be stunned if it hit anything too hard. And next time, you’ll get the drop on your buddy, so that you’re not the one whose marble is smashing into a million pieces as it hits the ground from too high up.

Besides its innovation in game design and its status as the first Atari System 1 title, Marble Madness was also the first game to use a Yamaha FM sound chip (as well as an early adopter of stereo sound). FM Synth chips weren’t new by any means, and weren’t even new to arcade games, but Yamaha ended up being the dominant force in FM Synth in video games, and it began with Marble Madness.

As Karen Collins explained in Game Sounds: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design, Frequency Modulation synthesis was “one of the major audio advances of the 16-bit era”:

Marble Madness was praised for its sound and soundtrack, which, through the Yamaha FM synth chip it utilized, was able to sync its soundtrack to what was happening on-screen. The difference between the arcade version with the FM synth and ports to 8-bit systems like the NES becomes pretty apparent not just through the visuals, but through the sound, as well. There’s nothing wrong with how it looks or sounds on the NES, by any means — Rare, responsible for that particular port, did a fine job considering the hardware differences — but the full impact of the 16-bit hardware and accompanying FM sound chip were better able to show themselves on platforms that could replicate them. It’s no surprise, then, that the Sega Genesis port of Marble Madness fares much better in this regard than the NES edition. Here’s what Marble Madness sounded like in the arcade…

…and here’s gameplay from the Genesis port:

The NES release is wildly impressive to look at and listen to, considering the differences in hardware, but you can really see and hear the differences when you put them right next to each other like this for comparison:

While Marble Madness had a brief run of success in arcades — profitable, but brief — it was ports like these that extended the game’s lifespan and impact. Not just to the NES and Genesis, but to the Amiga, multiple versions of the Apple II, the Atari ST, Commodore 64, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Gear, Sega Master System, IBM PC, X68000, ZX Spectrum, and, down the line, Java ME for ports to portable devices. It’s been included in multiple compilations, such as Midway Arcade Treasures, and, while the original trackball design is certainly the most reliable method, the game certainly works with a D-pad. Less well with the Xbox D-pad I have to use in the Midway Arcade Treasures version, sure, but still.

A sequel was made, but never given a wide release. A switch was made from trackball controls to joysticks during location testing, given the poor reception during said tests, with the assumption being that, given the changes in gameplay habits between 1984 and the sequel’s planned 1991 release, Kids These Days weren’t sure of what the trackball was even about. (It did not fare better after the joysticks were implemented.) Many of the minimalist efforts and visuals had been replaced — it was even given a mascot, Marble Man, whose name led in the game’s title — in order to give Marble Madness what it had seemingly lacked, which was “more, more of everything,” per programmer on the original and designer of its unreleased sequel, Bob Flanagan, who also, in the same interview, deemed the switch from the trackballs a “mistake,” as well as the targeting of younger players via visible mascot.

While Marble Madness II never got that official release, it is available in the present for the curious. All 17 levels, even, of the joystick version, which was leaked online in the spring of 2022. You can see it in action for yourself, as it was given the MAME Spotlight treatment on YouTube after the leak:

Marble Madness isn’t legally available anywhere at the moment. It hasn’t received an iOS or Android release, for instance, and, like every other Atari arcade game from the era, is sitting in a vault somewhere on Warner Bros. property rather than being re-released. You at least have your pick as far as emulation options go, even if you don’t have the trackball it was always meant to be played with to go with those.

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