Marble Madness full game (and 125,000+ points)

[thesodathief]

i got this for 5$ at a game store :D

[ulillillia]

Ebay will solve that problem!

[monkeypoo1993]

i hate it wen u ride faster than the screen scrolls xD

[ulillillia]

That does cause problems and it takes the fun out of the original 2D Sonic games.

[monkeypoo1993]

@ulillillia idk wat ur talkin about the original sonic games.... those were by far the best and have never been replicated well by today's standards xD.

Though i must say Colors is good :D

[ulillillia]

You commented on the screen scrolling at no faster than a fixed limit. Since it's very easy to get faster than 16 pixels per frame in the original 2D Sonic games, even 24 is fairly easy, it takes a substantial amount of the fun out of the original 2D Sonic games. Still, the 2D Sonic games are by far the best. Sonic 3 & Knuckles is the best of the best and I've got like 10 to 15 times more total play time on that game than all other 2D Sonic games, and 30 to 50 times that of the dull 3D ones.

[barfoom]

wow, having played Raptisofts hamsterball....

that game is a complete ripoff of this one,

the levels are practically identical...

[detoxscission]

I loved this game when I was younger. And almost beat it! Stupid last level!

[carolynphd012]

I can only get to level three. How do you get the fairy to come and give you more time? that hardly ever happens to me.

[ulillillia]

It's random. Even without them, I can still complete the game.

[ClassicTVMan81]

Unfortunately, David Wise (music director of Rare Ltd.) didn't get all the music right for the Intermediate and Aerial Race levels.

[cdwheel]

wow this where some diabolic games!

[Simmionla]

God damn this game was boring!

I remember I had it and it was definately one of the least played games. To hard aswell, but you're pretty good.

[ulillillia]

When you play Super Monkey Ball, you shouldn't have too much trouble here. It's basically like that, only it's 6 unique floors instead of ~100.

[LineRiderGod11]

Hampster bal was a better remake, i think..

[leakesonasucs]

i can only get up to level three because i'm not good at this game, but the game is still good

[ulillillia]

It takes plenty of practice or a bunch of experience with the Super Monkey Ball series (SMB has fairly similar mechanics and game play, just much more advanced and a little easier).

[einnor85r]

i can get to the last level but thats it. i can beat it with and emualtor and save states.

This game is more difficult on mame or midway arcade tresures.

[TommyBoy249r]

good god, i could never ever beat this game, kudos to you

[ulillillia]

It is a tough game. It's like playing Super Monkey Ball 2's master course, only, instead of 10 (20) stages, you get just 6. It can take a few tries, but watch how I deal with the various obstacles and learn from it. The final race is the toughest, especially that final area. With SMB2 experience under my belt, returning to this game made it seem a lot easier than before....

[pookie67]

the best game to come after the "boom" period of 1980-82, and infamous music which fills my childhood

[KnowFuture0221]

My favorite music from any video game ever starts at about 40 seconds into the this clip (basically the second level).

[ulillillia]

The first level is my favorite one with the sixth one my next favorite. 4 (aerial race) is the worst with 3 being a fairly close second-worst. 2 is neutral and 5 is a bit better than neutral. That's based on this game. None of these songs have the potential for 7 days straight, but I have one that has passed the 50 mark and two others that have passed the 40 mark.

[afo70]

Hahaha, solid stuff! I suck at this good. Good to see someone own it!

[ulillillia]

You should play Super Monkey Ball 2 or something and hone your skills. That game is quite similar in terms of the kinds of challenges you see in Marble Madness, though its levels are generally much smaller and are fast to clear. It's how I was mainly able to get very good quickly in Marble Madness, which is about as difficult as the expert course in SMB2, my favorite of all.

[professorhazard]

Great run, but you didn't take a moment to do my favorite thing - killing Steely! If you get a good run at him, you can knock him off the stage and he'll crack and die, and a little black brush will sweep him up. I don't remember what kind of bonus you get for doing it, but it's so satisfying, regardless.

[ulillillia]

I was strictly after the biggest score I could get. Knocking the black ball (if that's what you call "steely") off only gives a thousand point, not much to 100,000....

[professorhazard]

Yep, according to the instruction book, it's called "Steely", which is a reference to the steel marbles that used to dominate games of marbles (back when people played such things).

[ulillillia]

I've never seen the instruction manual so I would've otherwise never known. I play almost every game without bothering to read the manual first, even those that didn't have interactive tutorials built into them. I'm somewhat familiar with marble games and one of my versions of "Hit-a-bump" involves marbles and a ramp (version 4 I think).

[nickrella]

i dont know how u got so many magic wands

[ulillillia]

I think it's based on getting to certain spots as certain areas seem to be more prone for magic wands than others.

[mewithoutYou52]

I've been playing this game for years, getting to the 115k point today. I never knew you could go for extra points on the practice stage like that.

Also, you got super lucky getting three magic wands. I get two maybe one out of every 15 times. You got really lucky.

And it was really funny when you got one on top of the green wave. Never saw that before. :)

[ulillillia]

Yeah, the one on top of the wave was indeed very funny and strange, though it costed 1000 points at game's end. I think I've had one case where I got 4 magic wands. If I could study the game's mechanics in detail, I think I may be able to get many more.

[boilingmoon]

the last level is solid.

[limpviscid]

EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG

[limpviscid]

Hey Ulil, what's your favourite Marble Madness song?

[ulillillia]

That of the practice and ultimate races, the practice being the better of the two and the latter I don't know how to get.

[basilisk128]

Wow, that was quite good! Marble Madness is suprisingly difficult for a game with so few levels.

[beehappy2day2]

Whoa the "Ultimate" race level music sounds like a Donkey Kong Country song at the beginning.

[hektopekto]

This is awesome. Can you play the real-life game just as good?

[ulillillia]

Real-life game? This is the real game, unless I'm misunderstanding....

[corbalt1]

you are really good at video games

[ulillillia]

I've been at them since 1988 and was playing them for as much as I absolutely could until around 2001 where I got involved with forums and learning losing almost all interest by 2003 as it was getting too difficult to find games of interest.

[LoveOfMules13]

I remember reading that this game had one of the shortest development times of any NES game. There were tons of ports so I don't know which the NES version came from, must have been an easy port.

[smoothvirus]

Nice. This was a hard game. I never did beat it. There was a secret level on the PC version called "The Water Maze" too.

[ulillillia]

Hmm. I never knew that there was a PC version.... I do agree, it is a hard game. I had a hard enough time even reaching the fifth level, but through studying game mechanics and doing crazy stunts in Super Monkey Ball 2 (care for going 2400 mph straight up?), this game is relatively easy now.

[Tarkusine]

The music sounds familiar, almost like it's from another game. Castlevania or Ghosts & Goblins?

[scurty234]

is this super mario galaxy?

[ulillillia]

I never heard of "Super Mario Galaxy". This is Marble Madness on the 2-decade-old NES system. I mentioned this in the video description (and even in the title!).

[scurty234]

so this isn't on the Wii?

[yourtubesPOLICE]

Wow shut up.

[scurty234]

This has some bad graphics for the Wii.

[ulillillia]

This game is not on the Wii. I don't even have that system, nor want it for at least 3 years. This is on the NES, a system that is over 20 years old, 7 years older than even the first Sonic game, probably even older than the original Mario!

[scurty234]

Is NES some kind of programming language? Was Mario that one "the first" FPS that had that guy fighting demons from hell? That game was sweet.

[ulillillia]

NES - Nintendo Entertainment System. It's a system from the early or mid 1980's making it at least 20 years old. 2007 is considered as the late part of the decade to me (Sep 1, 2006 starts the late part of the current decade).

[scurty234]

can you play World of Warcraft on it?

[ulillillia]

I don't know what World of Warcraft is, but it's likely a new game. If it uses 4-bit color, 2D only, has about 300 KB capacity or so, then there's a chance it may. Perhaps you should look at "NES" through Wikipedia - it's a third-generation system! We're now in the 7th generation.

[scurty234]

So is this game for the Wii?

[ulillillia]

I've mentioned it 4 times - no. I don't even have a Wii, nor even want it anytime in at least the next 3 years. Marble Madness is a game from the mid 1980's - like a system over 20 years later would really have it, outside being on a massive old-games CD or something.

[MasamuneCl0ud]

You can, but you can only roll Alliance. Also the Alliance is a marble.

[Psy500]

Marble Madness was originally a arcade game by Atari that was ported to:

Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Apple II Apple IIGS, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Gear, PC, Mobile Phone, NES, Sega Master System, Mega Drive/Genesis, Tandy 1000 and ZX Spectrum

It also appeared in Midway Arcade Treasures for PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox

[ADreamofaWish]

Impressive, this is a tough game.

[ulillillia]

This is actually a new record for me. My previous was something like 109,000 points so I've really bumped it up. You are right in that it is pretty tough. It must be all that experience with Super Monkey Ball that helped as this took about 12 tries to get. I recall needing 100 tries just to win when I first started....

[fartbuttes]

very awesome. i have trouble on the first level!