Marble Madness is an arcade video game designed by Mark Cerny and published by Atari Games in 1984. The player uses a trackball to guide an onscreen marble through six obstacle-filled courses within a time limit. Marble Madness was Atari's first game to use the Atari System 1 hardware and to be programmed in the C programming language. It was also one of the first games to use true stereo sound; previous games used either monaural sound or simulated stereo. <br /> <br />Cerny drew inspiration from miniature golf, racing games, and artwork by M. C. Escher. He applied a minimalist approach in designing the appearance of the game's courses and enemies. <br /> <br />Marble Madness was commercially successful. The game was ported to numerous platforms and inspired the development of other games. A sequel was developed and planned for release in 1991, but canceled when location testing showed the game could not compete with other titles.
