Game:

Marble Madness (1984)

Duration: 3:58

3,146 views

16

By Elliott Feiertag.

Author's comments:

Intro: I'm writing these comments on behalf of my brother, Elliott, who actually performed this run.

Marble Madness is possibly one of the all-time greatest arcade games for the NES, and, despite how laughably simple it looks, the game is very difficult to master. Hopefully it makes for a very short but entertaining download as my brother manages to beat the game extremely quickly and with no deaths. (BTW, thanks go out to SDkess for providing very, very close competition and sportsmanlike enthusiasm).

Level 1: No mistakes here. (My brother may have been able to shave off a quarter second from cutting corners, but he's a bit particular about his methods and was able to do a solid run anyway without such maneuvers).

Level 2: Likewise.

Level 3: Ditto. (Just for the record, navigating that beginning path without hitting walls is extraordinarily impressive in my opinion. Those who have played the game would probably agree).

Level 4: This level is notorious for those damn hammers at the end. It took a good dozen tries or so to find a perfect time to pass through the gauntlet. No mistakes, but the random wand of useless speedrun-interruption showed up and wasted a second or two (I think; I'm honestly writing this after having mailed the tape).

Level 5: The "silly" level is only truly difficult because of some rather unfortunate glitches. After the marble is siphoned through the horn, there is a glitch that prevents you from crossing the concave section of the floor unless you approach from a very specific angle. This is easily the most frustrating portion of practicing this run, and Elliott was lucky to get through it here. There is another glitch towards the end that prevents the marble from going down that tiny last ramp unless you fall off of it from the side.

Level 6: My brother possibly loses about 2-3 seconds here as he takes some precautions to ensure that he doesn't die, albeit with legitimate reason. The slow approach is much more reliable for bypassing the black marble, and my brother was a bit too nervous to attempt the final bridge area without waiting for maybe two seconds to get a fresh cycle. Someday Elliott may redo this run to perfect this, but I think his current run is great and will definitely still stand for a long while.

That's it. Hope you enjoyed the run! -Adrian/InsipidMuckyWater

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