Marble Madness

The Good
The Amiga version of this game is one of my favorite games ever - it's unbelievably addictive, looks great and the music is a classic. The PC version, on the other hand, has nothing in common except for the name and the concept.

The Bad
The graphics are horrible and could've been done a lot better, even though it's CGA. The music stinks (but what did you expect), and the gameplay is not nearly as addictive as the arcade and the Amiga versions - in fact, you'll put the game aside after a few short minutes. Even the controls are completely horrible!

The Bottom Line
A really bad conversion anyone in his right mind would stay away from.

The Good
Marbles. Crazy levels. Enemies of the marbles. Space. Madness.

I love this game. I once bought it for £5. That was a good purchase. It's a game that survives through it's simplicity. The marbles are easy to control and the levels are more than negotiable. It is somewhat typical of the era but this is not a bad thing. It stands up, even today. It's no throwback as there are few games that can claim to imitate this.

It's just a classic in it's own right. Accessible and conquerable. Is that not what gamers want?

The Bad
Well, the music wasn't exactly Beethoven but we got by.

The Bottom Line
Marbles can still be fun.

The Good
It's good to have people like Mr. Gabel around for rebuttals--it brings out more information about the game. :-)

Considering the capabilities of the common PC in 1986, Marble Madness was an exquisite conversion that clearly took a lot of work. Even on a 4.77MHz machine, the nearly full-screen graphics move at an acceptable clip. The graphics, albeit lacking in color to the original arcade game, are faithful to the original.

What Mr. Gabel doesn't know is that if you played Marble Madness on a Tandy or PCjr, you were treated to 16-color graphics and 3-voice music that was a huge improvement over the regular PC version with just 4-color graphics and single-voice sound. If he had ever played this version, he might have made his review a bit less harsh. Comparing PC conversions to Amiga conversions isn't really fair; conversions should be compared to what they're ported from instead.

The Bad
Playing with a joystick was effective, but it just felt... wrong. The original arcade game was not only controlled with a trakball, it was designed for one.

The keyboard controls were terrible. I'm sure they did the best they could, but there's no real way to simulate analog direction and speed control with a digital input device.

The Bottom Line
If you have a Tandy/PCjr and a joystick, Marble Madness is a joy to play.