Enlarge / A view of what could have been …
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For decades, Atari’s Marble Madness II sequel arcade prototype has been one of the unadulterated “holy grails” for the popular MAME cross-platform emulator. This has limited the game to a handful of collectors of rare cabinets and convention attendees. That changed this week, however, with the unexpected and unexplained leak of a full ROM of Marble Madness II that can now be played around the world at large.
After confirming the authenticity of the ROM by comparing its gameplay with existing images, we discussed how and why this game works by emulation, and talked to community experts about the unique mix of Marble Madness II d an exciting arcade story and a disappointing game.
A story of two Marble Madness II
First, a little background. In 1991, seven years after the success of Marble Madness, Atari Games set out to create a sequel that included “most of all,” as designer Bob Flanagan said in a 2020 interview with Antstream. That sequel prototype, subtitled Marble Man, full of 17 big, tricky mazes, lots of new enemies, three-player support, a pinball-style bonus game, and even power-ups that allow players to fly through the level or crush the threats on your way.
The original Marble Man prototype of Marble Madness II featured some exaggerated animations.
Initial testing of Marble Man cabinets with internal focus groups and an external test site did not go well, however. While this could have been the result of stiff competition from more striking new cabinets like Street Fighter II, Atari blamed the performance on the game’s trackball controls.
Announcements
“From Focus we have learned that work [sic] is the most intuitive control for throwing a ball, and that is the desired control for the high-end player, “Atari wrote in an internal document” Changes to Marble Madness II “filed by AtariGames.com historians.” But the joystick was perceived as an easier control for a beginner to learn the game. So we would like to change the job for a joystick and see if we can reach a wider audience. “
We all like a good story “And yes”, [and] Unpublished games like this are the closest we are to looking at alternative realities.
Frank Cifaldi, founder of the Video Game History Foundation
Flanagan would later call the change to a joystick and accelerator button control scheme a “mistake” caused by a lack of faith in players. “When the game was due to come out, more people had played the game that way in the local market and didn’t even know what a trackball was,” he told Antsream.
Early Marble Man testers also reacted badly to the short animations in which Marble transformed into a one-faced humanoid superhero, releasing silly sound clips like “The Adventures of Marble Man” (as seen in this footage of Marble Man). ‘a collector). These transformations were described as “hockey, stupid and pointless,” according to Atari documents, which led the team to “remove Marble Man from the entire game” for a second prototype.
“I chose the design to target an audience that was too young with the Marble Man character,” Flanagan told Antstream. “It should have been kept as abstract as the original.”
Two prototypes of Marble Madness II in the hands of a single collector. Note the joystick controls and buttons for the cabinet on the right.
The second prototype of Marble Madness II, without trackball and without Marble-Man, did not work much better than the first in limited location tests. Instead of reworking the game again, Atari Games quickly abandoned broader production plans for Marble Madness II to refocus on Guardians of the Hood, a simple fighter with digitized human actors. Marble Madness designer Mark Cerny, who was not involved in the development of any sequel prototype, told Next Generation magazine in 1997 that “there are a maximum of 10 to 12 boards” of the unfortunate Marble Madness II. .