The Game Boy Advance conversion of Marble Madness was released as part of a double pack with another classic Atari Games arcade game, Klax, in 2005 by DSI Games. It was developed by Italian Frame Studios Interactive, and the truth be told: they did a utterly dismal job of porting the game to Nintendo‘s capable handheld.

GBA Marble Madness is unfortunately far too sloppy and incomplete to be considered anything more than a slap in the face for Marble Madness fans. It’s more than a missed opportunity – it a cynical, rushed, unfinished mess.

For starters: half of the game is completely missing! For some unknown reason the game ends after level three (Intermediate), and levels four (Aerial), five (Silly) and six (Ultimate) are completely absent.

The developers have learned nothing from previous ports, and have added zero options or enhancements to this version to spice it up a bit. From what I could tell, it doesn’t even have a two-player mode, which is unforgivable.

To give the game its dues: it does look very good. Graphically, it’s as close as you could get to the original arcade game on the GBA (but with a smaller screen). The music is decent too, with jaunty renditions of the original’s tunes. What completely scuppers it, though, are the multiple playability issues, the missing levels, and the omission of many of the game’s finer details.

Some of the in-game timings are wrong (like the game not keeping the added time on-screen, so you can actually read it, before adding it to the total, which I found annoying), and enemy placement is also completely wrong in a lot of places (and black marbles are completely missing). The draw priority of the marble and the landscape is all over the place too. Everything points to the game being rushed-out unfinished, which is extremely disappointing.

The feel of the ball’s weight, bounce and inertia seem off too. And when the marble rolls down a pipe the ‘camera’ doesn’t follow it down, as it should, it just cuts straight to the exit! What the absolute f**k?! At first I thought I had a corrupted ROM, so I tried different versions. But nope… The developers clearly didn’t have time to add it. Just as bad: the waves are completely missing from the third maze! What a travesty!

Overall, Marble Madness on the Game Boy Advance is terrible, and the people responsible deserve a kick up the backside for messing it up.

More: Marble Madness on Wikipedia