Stumbling through Marble Madness

[davidn]

I'm fairly churning these out now, aren't I? I've been working on the iPhone version of Running Free for most of the weekend after both my parents were absolutely captivated by it while they were here, but for a bit of a break, I had a go of Marble Madness. Because it's like playing a game, except with working on something also attached.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSVPrW5bCqw

This isn't really one of my more earth-shattering efforts - it turns out there's not a whole lot to say about the game, it's just four attempts (with varying degrees of success) at getting through its blatantly unfair obstacle courses. And according to subsequent research, I get up to halfway through the second-last level! That's not bad, is it? Though it does take some embarrassingly Wheatley-like gibberish trains of thought spoken out loud for me to get there.

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Have we discussed how even-eerier the FM-synth versions are? I know I've written about it...

[davidn]

Show me :) I can't really remember...

[kjorteo]

They actually remixed the Intermediate race theme in the NES version to be more upbeat, for some reason--originally it's like you're marbling it up in a haunted house for some reason. (And Aerial pretty much sounds like you died in Intermediate and have gone to Hell.)

[davidn]

That definitely wouldn't be out of place in the Chzo series. Most of the game's... sound seems to be this collection of snippets of madness rather than anything that could sanely be described as music. (Strangely, there's a definite "SE-GAAAA" just after the start of the Aerial race.) And I don't mind telling you that I get a bit of Runtime Error fear from the way that the bonuses at the end of a level are displayed...

Also, what an absolutely devastating video, for its conclusion...!

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Okay, I've been digging around for far, far too long now, and I cannot find it. It was about the music in Ecco, and Marble Madness, and some side-scrolling game with a dude with a sword and lightning or something, and how creeped out we all were by them despite there being arguably nothing creepy about them (until the later levels of Ecco), and then my pointing out that the commonality between them all was FM-synth drones with a particular sound in the music, which sounded to me like it was a case of having an overtone series that doesn't really add up right, i.e. an "impossible" sound (as far as the natural world is concerned), which might be one of those things that children are sensitive to despite adults not even perceiving it, which made me think about how much the synthesizers in the Warner Brothers VHS logo used to make my skin crawl as a child.

[davidn]

Could it have been in videogame_tales?

I know exactly what you mean, though - the way that the Megadrive in general, as well as older games with Adlib music, produced these absolutely unnatural sounds that don't resemble any real instrument (no matter what the general MIDI library tried to say otherwise).

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

I went through the videogame_tales archive, all the way to the beginning,and it didn't leap out at me, although the topic may have come up in the comment thread of an unrelated game. I also couldn't find it via google...

[davidn]

For all the things that I like about Livejournal that more modern sites seem to miss in favour of putting a few more "Like" buttons on everything, it could really do with a search feature that works. LJ Archive has helped me out with that a few times in the past, though it's on my old work laptop and I haven't updated it in ages.