The Japanese Megadrive release of Marble Madness is completely different to the North American and European release of the game and was developed and published by Tengen in 1993. It is far superior to the Western Megadrive/Genesis release and is more authentic to the arcade original. In fact: it is very, very close to the arcade game, in terms of graphics, sound and gameplay. If you didn’t know that the Japanese version of the game was different, I’d recommend checking it out as it may shock you to find out how good it is…

The Tengen port features a variety of options, including: control type (normal or grid); move scale (speeds up or slows down the marble movement ratio when using a trackball); game difficulty (very easy, easy, medium, hard and very hard); widescreen display on or off; sound mode (mono or stereo), and sound test. The option screen mentions use of a “Trakball“, although I couldn’t find any information about trackball controllers for the Megadrive. Were there any? If you know, please leave a comment below.

The game can be played one or simultaneous two-player (just like the arcade game) and the action is fast and super challenging. This version is much more difficult than the North American/European Electronic Arts port of Marble Madness and requires serious practise to reach the last of the six available courses. And completing the last course would take a superhuman effort…

In-game you can press the ‘C’ button on the gamepad to bring up ‘quick options’, where you can change the control type, the move scale and the sound type on the fly, which is a nice touch.

Overall, this is a superb port of Marble Madness. In fact: it’s one of the best conversions of the game I’ve played (emulated versions of the arcade game don’t count). If you want the authentic Marble Madness experience, this is the version to play. If you want an easier, more enjoyable time – go for the Electronic Arts version instead, although it doesn’t look or sound as good as this.

More: Marble Madness on Wikipedia