Marble Madness (1984)

Preliminary: Oh wow not what I expected. People said platformer and puzzle, hm this is the first I know of of a genre that I don't know the name of. Move-a-circular-object-through-a-level genre? And I read there are 6 levels? Seems doable! Hopefully there's a set ending tho as an arcade game, it would make sense if it re-cycles. Here goes nothing. (I just now read the wikipedia page and influences/references in the game--I love it! Escher, minimalism, the undeniable surreal vibe of it.

Look: 9/10 Love the sine waves, visible grids, celebration of game creation itself--all accompanied with the retro-"futuristic" vibe of the music. Immaculate! Tho I'm usually not a fan of isometric games, this has a nice look to it (and translates surprisingly well to the gameplay/actually makes sense to be isometric in this case unlike Q*bert and Crystal Castles). And the enemy sprites and cute self-referential-computerized look kept pleasantly surprising me. I know I'm weird for this but it kinda reminds me of some of the launch PS1 games, that early 3D look. And reminds me of 90s PC games that acted as "minigames" of game series, and yes of course I'm thinking of Pajama Sam Sock Works and Putt Putt and Pep's Dog On A Stick, etc. Heh. Yes Humongous Entertainment games dominate my videogame reference list >.< smh

Sound: 9/10 Wow, the most shining surprise of all. What an incredible first track, and all the tracks continue to be well-done. Almost all are standouts in their own way, either experimenting with unorthodox effects in videogame music (for its time), or achieving real perfect futuristic ambient, or just hypey classic arcade music vibes. The music to Level 3, I believe it is with the sine wave animation part in the middle of the level (so cool), reminded me of Mothersbaugh and the Rugrats videogames' music ha. Omg! And on that same level if you let these vacuum trumpet enemy things stay standing and just ring out, they become more and more a straight up sine wave drone and become more and more ambient, almost becoming a single tone at a point it seems.

Play: 9/10 Dang, I wish I had access to the original arcade machine, so it's properly played on a trackball. Those acid pools are brutal! Instant death and hard to avoid. For the most part the mechanics and velocity/gravity/bounce effects were well-done, but sometimes the bounce effects didn't make sense or overexaggerated the velocity.

Feel: 9/10 I usually don't like the roll-the-circular object games, like those ones you control the level/platforms themselves, but in this case I got oddly addicted to it! Narrowly making it through a part, riding barely on the edge, getting catapulted across, hearing the absurd sound effects mixing into the music. All accompanied by this constantly phenomenal music and the usual tight controls you can expect from arcade games. The more I think about it, this might honestly be a new favorite. I think it's cuz I can picture myself showing my brothers this game and everyone gasping/groaning as we try to get through it (tho the final level's difficulty is a bit extreme, again it's forgiving with lives and nowadays with ability to savestate at start of levels, it would be fun to each try over and over.

Attachment: 8/10 Okay, 6 levels. Seems short but people say it feels longer. I'm already at Level 4 and feeling like it's going too fast--that I'm enjoying the gameplay and continuously surprising Sound and Look enough to want to keep playing more than that! I really appreciate that you spawn right where you were and it's not about a brutality mechanic with lives (necessarily, I suppose the time limit killing you is quite brutal, but I liked how this was done regarding fall-offs etc). And at last (but felt like the perfect amount of time, and to think it's an actual set ending), I finished that insanely hard last level! Definitely had to use savestates on that last one. It maybe could have benefited from a couple other endgame levels to ease into that difficulty level, because I felt like I was gliding along--and indeed, didn't have to use savestates to make it in time for any levels, up until that last level! Lot of fun, worth a playthrough, and I hope I get access to it on an arcade machine some day! Because I will for sure play it again! This rating might rise as I replay it and show others in the future, or it might just stabilize as a 5 star non-favorite. It definitely caught me off guard tho! Figured this would be a passable playtest--1984 really doesn't want me to finish it (this game came out Dec 15 1984 haha). Edit: And indeed, this ended up being the last game for me to play of 1984! On to 1985 we go! That was a long, arduous year, because I backlogged every single game from it (smh, even text adventures I can't read the language of lol) and because it was the Videogame Crash era so I was curious what kept the industry alive. I believe I also over-backlogged in 1985 and 1986, so I have a couple more years of onslaught. Now that I look back, I wish I would have been that thorough in the years I know I love--SNES, PS1, and early PS2--because I wound up burning out with backlogging (and getting overwhelmed by the total number heh) after 1986, and who knows how many amazing games I wound up missing after that. Guess the goal of this was early games, once I'm through this backlog and I can go back specifically for my most beloved eras!

Completion: Main Story (all 6 Levels) Playtime: ~1 hr