Marble Madness is tough, probably to make up for it also being kinda short, so you're going to be running out of time frequently, until you've mastered the game... which might take some time.

In the meantime you could start up a two-player game (even though you're only going to be playing single player)

Then race normally, letting Player 2 just sit there for a little bit

As you race to the finish line, the second player will be scrolled off the screen, and brought back closer to where you are, incurring a 5 second penalty each time. But if you can get it across the finish line before its time runs out (which should be totally doable on the first race), whichever marble crossed the line first will get a five-second bonus at the beginning of the next race

Which doesn't sound like much, but trust me, you're going to need all the help you can get.

At the beginning of your round of Marble Madness, you have two choices for control, 90° and 45°.

But what do the choices mean?

Turns out they're referring to the orientation of your controller. 90° is the standard way you'd hold it, with the cross pad looking like a plus sign.

45° means that you rotate the controller slightly so that the cross pad looks more like an X. The idea is that since you'll be making lots of diagonal movements in the game, it'd be easier to hit one arrow than two.

But I never could make the 45° control work very well, so I stick with 90°.

If you've ever played Marble Madness, then you've probably seen this screen.

You'll notice also that there are these numbers on the ground kind of outside the regular field of play.

If you use the conveniently-placed ramps to get your little marble over there, then you get a nice bonus.

1,000 points times the number you landed on. Pretty awesome for pretty much no effort.

Oh, and this works on the NES port, too.