About
Marble Madness is a 1984 arcade platform game designed by Mark Cerny for Atari, where players guide a marble through obstacle courses using a trackball controller. Trackballs is an open-source Linux game (GPLv2) that reimplements the marble-rolling gameplay of Marble Madness, guiding a ball through labyrinths of hammers, acid pools, and other obstacles across increasingly difficult timed levels. It uses advanced 3D graphics not present in the original and includes a Guile scripting extension plus a built-in level editor for creating custom levels.
How it differs from the original
The README explicitly states this is not intended as a replica of Marble Madness but rather inspired by it, and adds advanced 3D graphics the original had no use for, plus its own set of graphics and game data rather than the original's assets.
Getting started
Launch the game with the `trackballs` command to start from the first level, or jump directly to a specific level for testing. Custom user-made levels can be downloaded, though the README warns to only run tracks from trusted creators since the scripting system is powerful enough to pose a security risk.
Media
Additional notes
- Security
- The README warns against running community-made levels from untrusted sources, since the Guile scripting used in custom maps can pose a real security risk.