The Amstrad CPC version of Melbourne House‘s 1986 release of Marble Madness is more or less identical to the ZX Spectrum version, but with a bit more colour. It was coded by the same author – John F. Cain – and suffers from the same problems as the Spectrum version.

These are the main issues I have with this game: 1. It has very dodgy collision detection. You fall off the course when you’re nowhere near the edges; you either bounce off black marbles when you’re not touching them, or you sometimes completely pass through them. You also die if you bump into certain enemies, but are literally centimetres away from them… 2. It bears little or no relation to Marble Madness other than the name (which has been officially licensed it seems), and that the gameplay is a marble rolling down an isometric landscape trying to beat a timer and avoid hazards. 3. Ball movement is very slow, and the control system is highly frustrating. 4. It has terrible sprite flicker when collisions occur. 5. The wait you have to endure for your marble to be replaced when it falls down a hole is ridiculous (all the while the clock ticks down…), and the screen is also re-set, so you have to start from scratch, with less time, and this is totally unfair. 6. It is a desperately inadequate representation of a classic game that deserved better. Oh, and: 7. If you ever see anyone say that this is “brilliant” (I’m looking at the Your Sinclair magazine quote on the game’s packaging…), you 100% KNOW they are NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

Marble Madness: The Construction Set on the Amstrad CPC is not subjectively good, it is objectively bad…

The ‘Construction Set‘ editor supplied with the game is a plus point and it’s very well-produced and relatively easy to use, but the slow and uninteresting nature of the gameplay doesn’t result in anything worth playing to justify the effort. It’s also worth noting that the editor is restricted by how much memory is left during construction. Every new element you add to your set of screens takes up a small chunk of memory and what you have remaining is shown on the information panel in the editor. If you go over that limitation then the game will probably crash. At least that’s what I found when I used it.

When I first played this game I was shocked because I expected the author to do better (since he’s produced some good games before). I can only assume that he wasn’t able to spend the time he needed to polish the game to his satisfaction. If Mr. Cain is reading this I would love to hear about the circumstances behind the making of this disastrous version of Marble Madness. Surely you can’t have been satisfied with it?

More: Marble Madness on Wikipedia
More: Marble Madness: The Construction Set manual on gamesdatabase.org