Marble Madness Arcade Stereo Music Suite

This is a musical suite from the classic arcade game Marble Madness (1984).
I pulled the tracks and sounds from the original arcade game chip. The programmers included an option in the maintenance menu to listen to the music by itself. I recorded it all and put together a suite with all the music plus some sound effects for maximum listening pleasure.

BTW: I wonder if any arcade owner back then ever pushed through all the submenus to actually listen to the music... A big thank you to the original programmers for including that option, otherwise we wouldn't be here now... :-)

Remember, this was 1984, and just two, three years before video games were only beeping and humming so this was basically a step from black and white TV to 3D in one year, so to speak. A classic game with marvellous music.

Hope you like it!

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Marble
• Madness
• Arcade
• Game
• Music
• Suite
• Atari
• 1984

[afn2]

I don't really know what you are referring to, I'm afraid. The only thing I did was to add a little reverb to give it more space and ambience, that's all! I certainly didn't "add sound effects"... These are the original sounds and musical pieces.

So you mean the suite without the reverb?

[afn2]

God? Too much of an honor... ;-)

But it pleases me very much if I could make your life happier!

Thank you for listening and loving MM!

[rdt1970]

hi @ 2:22 yeah you can alter the playback speed via on board dip switches what board you using

[afn2]

@rdt1970 Actually, I got it from MAME. ;-)

Really, you can alter the speed? But why would you ever do that as an arcade owner? Just wondering, makes no sense to me from a 1984 arcade business point of view. As for my suite, I guess it's normal speed, I surely didn''t alter any speed. Thank you for enlightening me, nevertheless!

[rdt1970]

tempo is to fast

[afn2]

@rdt1970

What do you mean "too fast"? That's the original arcade tempo, taken straight from the original software.

Thanks for listening anyway!

[syltefar]

I think its unfortunate to add sound effects to what is essentially a historical recording. I have never encountered the arcade machine, so your original recordings would be interesting to compare to the emulated version. However, the modifications makes the recording unusable for that particular purpose. You could consider posting the unmodified recordings, if you have them?

[meldonlandless]

Marble Madness was my first videogame, on my olivetti prodest pc1, with CGA graphics and the internal sound (beeper). Hearing this music is like Dante Alighieri's voice for an italian (as me). Thanks so much, my new god

[afn2]

What's your email address?

[jdebler]

Thanks for posting this. One of my favorite tunes of all time. If you have an MP3 of this, I would certainly appreciate it!