MARBLE MADNESS

• At the end of the practice race, there are little numbers (3/4/5/6) in three spots at the end of the maze. Each one represents the number x1000 pts, so if you hit the 6 with the marble, it's 6,000 bonus points. To land on them, instead of rolling to the finish, you roll the marble off the end of a ramp and aim for the numbers.

• Stomping the Baby Baddies in the nursery on the silly level gets you an extra 3 seconds for each one.  Playing the game in 2-player mode (even if the 2nd player never rolls) gives you extra credits/time for “winning” each race.

• At the start of the 3rd race, each marble starts out on top of a tower and then rolls down into a little zig-zag valley. You can roll the marble off the tower (through the air briefly) and onto the middle section, completely avoiding the twists and turns of the valleys. Then near the end of the middle piece, just roll onto the down ramp. This saves a skilled player a few ticks of the clock.

• Hold either start button down while flipping the test switch (on the ARIII board).  The first flip bumps you up to 99 seconds left, from whatever you had.  Successive flips each add another 99 seconds (but won’t display on the screen as it will only show 99 max).

• This was the first Atari arcade game that used the Motorola 68000 CPU chip and the first to be programmed in C.

• BUG: Using the extra time trick will sometimes crash the game.