History of the Game: Marble Madness

Marble Madness is a very cool game, and a very popular classic.  The game was published in 1984 by Atari games, and sold thousands of cabinets before it was later released for household consoles.  The game itself was developed by Mark Cerny, who took inspiration from mini golf and racing games.  You can see the influence from mini golf in the obstacles and strategy, and also the influence of racing by the speed of the game and time limit.  Also, Marble Madness was one of the first games to use stereo sound, while others were in mono.

The artwork of the game is unique and inspired by Dutch artist M.C. Escher, who is know for his mathematically inspired work that challenges infinity through architecture.

The Game itself is a from a third person perspective and uses a trackball to maneuver the marble through the courses.  There are six courses and each one gets progressively harder.  The game its fairly easy to master until the 5th stage called silly, in which the controls are reversed.  Here are some screenshots from the game. 

Marble Madness was extremely popular for about 2 months after it was released, but the game became less popular.  It was probably due to the fact of how short the game was, and that many people could of mastered it in those 2 months and moved on to other games.  The game was later released in many different versions, on many different consoles and handhelds.  Marble Madness is one of the greatest skill/puzzle arcade games of all time, and is a rare cabinet to find now a days.

Here are some videos of gameplay, the first one is a very fast completion time, and the second video shows the use of the track ball.

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