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What simply occurred? For the final a number of many years, the one technique to play the unreleased sequel to Atari’s Marble Madness was by way of a handful of prototype arcade cupboards. That all modified this week with the surprising leak of the Marble Madness II ROM and no person appears to know why.
As the story goes, Atari developed a sequel to Marble Madness and created a handful of prototypes for inner focus group testing within the early 90s. Feedback wasn’t all that sizzling, nevertheless, and Atari reportedly blamed it on the sport’s trackball controls. Another prototype was made with an up to date management scheme that changed the trackball with a joystick and accelerator button nevertheless it did not fare a lot better.
Rather than strive a 3rd time, Atari scrapped the sport and moved on to a different challenge. It was thought that possibly a dozen or fewer prototype recreation boards survived.
Recently, an emulator-ready ROM of Marble Madness II began circulating on the Internet. As Ars Technica highlights, it is unclear who’s liable for the dump however longtime MAME contributor David Haywood has a idea.
“I feel the more than likely clarification is the only: a PCB turned up, the proprietor dumped the ROM knowledge from it and put it on The Internet Archive, not wanting the eye it might convey with a extra public announcement,” Haywood mentioned.
The leaked ROM is of the second, trackball-free model of the sport. Its launch is important from a historic perspective however that does not make it an excellent recreation.
“Marble Madness II is a basic instance of [when] a ravishing recreation is created and the sequel utterly forgets why the unique was nice,” mentioned Jason Scott with the Internet Archive. “I’m excited that this long-anticipated recreation is out within the wild, as a result of folks can notice how uninteresting the sport is and transfer on.”
“I feel Marble Madness captured numerous imaginations, and whether or not the sequel was worthy of it or not, it is laborious to not be compelled by the thought of it,” added Frank Cifaldi, founding father of the Video Game History Foundation. “We all love an excellent ‘what if’ story, [and] unreleased video games like this are the closest we get to peeking into alternate realities.”
Image credit score: The Arcade Hunters
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