Did you know that there are two completely different versions of Marble Madness on the Megadrive/Genesis? The European Megadrive and North American Genesis versions of Marble Madness were published by Electronic Arts in 1991. They were coded by Michael Schwartz, with sound and music by Steve Hayes, and while they’re excellent ports of the classic arcade game, they’re nowhere near as good as the superior Japanese version, which is a completely different game.

In this port you can choose a one or two-player game (although this is the usual take-it-in-turns format), and can select easy, normal or hard difficulty levels. You can also configure the controls, but that’s about it.

The controls are responsive and the physics and inertia of the ball feels great. If you can master use of the boost button you can really zoom around the six available courses and pull off some stunts you thought might not have been possible. To complete the final course (Ultimate) you really have to pull out all the stops.

As mentioned earlier: the Japanese version of Marble Madness on the Megadrive is a completely different game to this release. It’s faster, looks better, plays better, and is more faithful to the arcade original. This Western release is still one of the best conversions of Marble Madness out there, but there’s no doubting that it plays second fiddle to the Japanese version.

More: Marble Madness on Wikipedia