Marble Blast Gold (Windows, Mac OS, Xbox)

Marble Blast Gold is a game where you roll around a marble in large levels, collect power-ups to progress, and maybe collect some gems along the way. It was once quite popular in the mid-2000s, even being pre-installed on some iMac computers. Unfortunately, the game was pulled off all storefronts in 2011, thus making it harder to acquire each passing day. The game was also on the Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox and had better graphics. This particular version also added Easter eggs and online leaderboards. Unfortunately for this version, it is unplayable now because of the Xbox Live shutdown, and can only be played with Insignia or downloading the ISO to a softmodded Xbox.

Test Cheats#

Open up the in-game command prompt with the tilde (~) key, then input this statement:

$testcheats=1;

Now, F10 makes a GUI editor appear, while F11 shows the level editor. This will also unlock every level in the game until you close it.

Unused Textures#

Alternative texture for the Super Bounce power-up. It can be seen on a few level preview images in the final game.

Alternative Low Friction (Ice) and No Friction (Space) textures. In the final game, low friction is represented with mud at all times.

There would have been beach textures in the game, but they remain unused.

An alternate variant of the oil slicks.

An alternate texture for the marble. This was previously used as the default marble texture during development.

Deleted Platform Textures#

In a file, presumably for setting the settings for platform textures/surfaces and such, there are five lines of text:

// old textures (to be removed?)
addMaterialMapping( "grid1" , RubberFloorMaterial);
addMaterialMapping( "grid2" , RubberFloorMaterial);
addMaterialMapping( "grid3" , RubberFloorMaterial);
addMaterialMapping( "grid4" , RubberFloorMaterial);

This hints at textures that used to be in the game, and then got deleted (it is nowhere in the game's files).

Unused Sounds#

gotpowerup.wav Considering the name, it would have appeared to play whenever they get a powerup. In the final game, there is a simple whoosh for grabbing a powerup, along with the announcer's voice.

marble_fall.wav An unused falling sound when the marble falls off a level. In the final game, it's a simple whoosh sound.

movingblockloop.wav This would have played when the player moved any object with the ball.

platformlowering.wav Platforms make no sounds when moving up or down in the final game.

Unused Interiors#

Hidden inside marble/data/interiors/beginner and marble/data/interiors/intermediate is an interior named training3.dif and tornado_jump.dif respectively. Since these are interior files and not mission files, they need to be placed into the mission using the debug level editor.

Deleted Sounds#

soundsprofiles.cs lists a couple sounds that were removed from the game.

datablock AudioProfile(PenaltyVoiceSfx)
{
   filename    = "~/data/sound/penalty.wav";
   description = AudioDefault3d;
   preload = true;
};

datablock AudioProfile(DestroyedVoiceSfx)
{
   filename    = "~/data/sound/destroyedVoice.wav";
   description = AudioDefault3d;
   preload = true;
};