Marble Madness

1984 · Platform / Puzzle · Arcade

Overview

Marble Madness (1984) is Mark Cerny's isometric arcade game, played with a trackball, in which a marble is steered down six courses against the clock — Atari's first game programmed in C.

Deep Dive

The player rolls a marble through six isometric courses, from "Practice" to the fifth course, "Silly", before time runs out. Time left over carries into the next race, and two players can race each other at once. Mark Cerny drew on miniature golf, racing games and the art of M. C. Escher, and the courses were stored as heightmaps and rendered with ray tracing.

Developer Story

Mark Cerny designed the game and programmed it with Bob Flanagan on the Atari System 1 board, with music by Brad Fuller and Hal Canon. It was released in December 1984 and later converted to the Amiga, Commodore 64, NES (by Rare), Mega Drive and many other systems.

Did You Know?

It was among the first games with true stereo sound.
Around 4,000 cabinets were sold, and it briefly became the highest-earning arcade game.
A sequel, Marble Man: Marble Madness II, was planned for 1991 with seventeen courses but cancelled after poor location tests.