This video shows you how to get to and beat the secret Water Maze level in the Apple II version of Marble Madness. (The secret level itself begins at 2:36.)
The secret level is ridiculously difficult
...
, since if you fall off the course at all, it's immediately Game Over. Using an emulator with save/load states (as I did in making this video) makes it a lot more reasonable, but it's still quite hard -- I can't imagine trying to beat this on the original hardware!
A few tips and tricks:
- You have to play this in 2-player mode (press "2" at the start screen), since you need one marble to stand on the colored square while the other one uses the boats; otherwise, they'll immediately sink. Fortunately, because you're only moving one marble at a time, it's easy to do with one person.
- To make the jump in the first level, hold up-left when you reach the corner. Then you just have to go to the right location and wait until the clock reaches 13.
- I never really figured out how the boats work. The most reliable way seems to be to approach from above on the diagonal, like I did for the blue marble, but this doesn't work for the red marble because you don't have enough space above the boat left to maneuver, so you just kind of have to approach from the right and hope for the best.
- To get through the water safely, keep tapping up-left. This slows you down enough that you can bounce out into the exit.
- Stay to the right when you're moving down on the moving platform, otherwise you get an annoying glitch where the platform moves down and you don't and then you die.
- I could never get both marbles down the final elevator safely, but it's actually better to have one stay up above since then you only have to worry about controlling one; also, if you and the black marbles both die, you still beat the level in this case (although you only get the message if both survive).
- In the arena with the black marbles, don't try to knock them around, since they're stronger; just avoid them and let them run themselves out of the ring.
Big thanks to 4am for all their amazing work in preserving classic Apple II games like this one (https://archive.org/details/MarbleMadness4amCrack) and video-fenky for their very helpful C64 guide to this level (http://web.archive.org/web/20060522222950/http://www.video-fenky.com/archives/000227.html), and of course AppleWin and the original creators, Mark Cerny and Will Harvey.
