The ‘Deluxe Edition‘ of Marble Madness on the Spectrum was again written by John F. Cain and published by Melbourne House in 1986, and it contains a new set of screens to play, as well as the ten screens from the previous release, plus the Construction Set editor, as a separate load on side ‘B’ of the cassette.

Unfortunately this ‘Deluxe Edition‘ is no real improvement over the previous version. It’s very slow, somewhat featureless, and still suffers from horrible collision detection and terrible sprite flicker when sprites are in close proximity to each other.

This is not the Marble Madness we know and love, and it’s certainly not what I would call “Deluxe“…

While the Construction Set editor is well-produced and is easy enough to use, the results that can be achieved by using it are just not very good, in light of the slow and moribund gameplay underpinning the game. It does take some practise, planning, time and effort to produce something that is half decent, but who’s going to give this the time it requires if the end result is not much fun to play?

Overall this is a big disappointment from John Cain and it isn’t enjoyable to play at all. If you want a good isometric ball-rolling experience on the Spectrum try either Gyroscope, Bobby Bearing or Bubbler.

More: Marble Madness on Wikipedia
More: Marble Madness: Deluxe Edition on World of Spectrum