The graphics were created using a development system called the "Picture Processing System". This system took up a small room, cost $100,000, and featured a huge tablet with a 12 button digitizing "puck". Despite all of this, this system could only draw horizontal and vertical lines automatically. Diagonal lines had to rendered by hand.
The arcade version of Marble Madness appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
In the Atari ST, C64, Apple ][, Apple //GS, and PC versions, there is a secret level accessible from the first level (involving being in the right place at the right time) which contains various difficult challenges (rivers, moving platforms and the like). This secret level does not exist in the original arcade game. It can only be finished in two player mode as several parts of the level require the cooperation of both players to get by.
Marble Madness was the first arcade game written in the C programming language, which at the time was mainly used for writing UNIX software that ran on high-end computers like mainframes.
Marble Madness was Atari's first arcade game to use stereo sound.