Originally Posted by paul.mastriano

Sorry to resurrect such an old thread, but 11 years later nobody still seems to know what triggers the magic wand in Marble Madness.

It sounded like Snapp at least had some ideas- im willing to test theories! I know nothing this old has true randomness,

-Paul

Thanks for necro bumping it!

Snapp sent me a pm, and I'm trying to remember what he said. My inbox has had all of it's messages deleted. Not sure if it was the new forums or they get "archived" after a while.

PS: I just realized in my original post I never stated what I saw. I gave this info to Marc, and then Marc responded with his CAX proposition.

Greg Gibson used to go to Mission Control arcade in Garden Grove California back in the 80s. His initials he would use on pinball machines (he and I used to go back and forth at the highest scores) was GGG.

I was working one night at Mission Control, Greg came in and played Marble Madness. He played 3 or 4 games, and EVERY single game he made the wand appear quite a few times. It was way more than coincidence. The only thing that I noticed that was strange, was that he always did it with a 2 player game.

I asked Greg how he did it, and he refused to tell me and left. When I was speaking with Marc about it, I tried to reach out to Greg on this site and he never responded.

It is very possible (not likely) that it was just a random occurrence, but when he played 2 players, and made it happen so many times each game, it just looked like way more than coincidence.

Snapp stated (is it Marc Alpiger?) that Marc would know about this. From memory, Marc stated the rom code had been looked over, and no one has been able to figure out how to do this. He then stated that if Greg Gibson (the guy I watched do it when I worked at Mission Control back in the late 80's) would go to CAX that year, do it in from of him, Marc would give him $100 I think?

So, Marc doesn't believe it's possible, but I swear up and down, and can remember it as plain as day Greg doing it. So the mystery continues I guess. Sorry I didn't have a more informative answer.