In Your Commodore issue 51 (1988 December, Page 51-54) there was a rather interesting write up with Antony Crowther and Dave Bishop, talking about their development past and their work at the time at Imageworks.
During the interview, it was mentioned that Antony had seen the Electronic Arts release of Marble Madness on the C64 and was not impressed at all. So much so that he produced a proof of concept (possibly something more) and walked up to Ariolasoft and said something along the likes of “I can do better than that – give us a job!”. Not in those exact words i’m sure, but anyway – Ariolasoft were very impressed but couldn’t do anything with the code as they didn’t have the external rights – they did however give Tony a job.
After questioning Tony about this game, we discover that it was no more than the beginnings of Zig Zag. Tony suggested: “Zigzag was showing off, as they were saying it couldn’t be done. Mm on Amiga was brilliant. But my c64 tests weren’t half bad.”
So there is nothing to find which will show a Marble Madness game as such – but look closely next time at Zig Zag to see the clear influences which was the result of a poor C64 conversion of an arcade classic.
Case closed!
Contributions: Martin/Stadium 64