Written by John F. Cain (who also made Booty, Moonlight Madness and Super Dragon Slayer on the Spectrum), and published by Melbourne House in 1986, the ‘official’ Marble Madness on the ZX Spectrum bears little resemblance to the classic arcade original.

The game uses some hazards and elements from the arcade game, but the courses are completely different, as is the gameplay. Instead of a constantly-scrolling play area the game scrolls to the next screen whenever you reach the bottom of the previous one – so it’s basically ‘flick-screen’ instead – and the way the timer works has been changed as well. Instead of having a set amount of time to complete an entire course you begin with just enough to time to reach the next screen, and must earn extra time by completing screens quickly.

Scoring is achieved by either traversing a screen quickly, and earning bonus points for time remaining, or by rolling over bonus points on the course itself.

There’s no boosting of the marble, and changing its speed and trajectory is done by repeatedly pressing the direction keys (or pushing the joystick) in the direction you want to go in. The movement of the marble is agonisingly slow and enemies and hazards are tile-based and indistinct. In fact: everything in this game is tile-based because it includes an editor, so you can make your own levels.

The cassette contains ten different screens to play through, and also includes the Marble Madness Construction Set editor, in a single load. While the editor is very well produced and is relatively easy to use, it’s not particularly easy to create your own levels. It takes a fair bit of planning, practise and effort to make anything worthwhile.

One really annoying thing about this game is that – when you exit a screen – the game remembers your trajectory, speed, and point of exit. It then transfers that to the next screen, and if you’re moving in the wrong direction, or begin in the wrong place, you’ll constantly re-spawn from the same point – with the same speed and trajectory – into whatever hazard you’re then faced with. This means that you’ll constantly die if you’re in the wrong place, or moving in the wrong direction, which can be super annoying. I guess you’re supposed to memorise the screens and make sure you exit a screen with the right trajectory, in the right place.

The biggest problem I have with this game, though, is the slow movement of the marble. Applying movement to counter the inertia means having to mash the keyboard in the opposite direction to which the marble is moving (which is fine), but the ball moves so slowly and erratically that it just doesn’t feel like Marble Madness. And even when you finally do get used to the controls the game still isn’t much fun. It’s just too slow and too featureless to be enjoyable. There’s also some horrendous sprite flicker when the marble is near other sprites, and that is also very off-putting.

To make matters worse, Melbourne House released a Marble Madness clone – called Gyroscope – the previous year to this, and it’s a better, more authentic port of Marble Madness than this…

I’m surprised that John Cain wasn’t able to make more of Marble Madness than this. Maybe there were mitigating circumstances during development that I’m unaware of, but overall this is a turgid and frustrating experience and I don’t recommend it at all.

A ‘Deluxe Edition‘ of this game was released by Melbourne House the same year as this, which has a different set of screens, but it’s no real improvement over this version. Both versions contain the Construction Set, so you can make your own levels (if you can be bothered).

Note: According to the quote on the packaging of this game Your Sinclair magazine said that Marble Madness was “brilliant” and that “you’d better buy it or you’ll never forgive yourself“, which is highly suspicious. Someone was either bribed or was plied with free booze and food for that quote… because there’s no way that this game deserved it.

More: Marble Madness on Wikipedia
More: Marble Madness: The Construction Set on World of Spectrum