I for one enjoyed the NES port of Marble Madness. That did not stop me from playing a round of the arcade version at Funspot to get my trackball mayhem fix.

That fix was satisfied again when I got my fingertip flesh jammed in it. I swear, Marble Madness has to still be responsible for more injuries than multiplayer Wii games in close quarters.

The core gameplay mechanics are ripped straight out of Gauntlet :)

But yes, it’s a great game.

One aspect that I think it would lose in transition to console is the quirky control scheme: you have a joystick controller that moves forward/backward/left/right, but you can twist the controller stick clockwise or counterclockwise to rotate your facing. There’s something visceral about using one hand to control both movement and rotation (even modern PC FPS games require two hands for that) that makes it desireable to play on an arcade machine.

I mean, it’s still playable on console, unlike some games (I’m looking at you, Marble Madness). But still, I don’t think a PS2 version would displace the need for Funspot.

I would also say you should come to NYC to tour the game collection at the Museum of the Moving Image (you can play the collection for free), but they’ve taken the museum offline for the next two years while they expand and improve it.