Marble Blast Platinum is an ascended Game Mod of Marble Blast Gold (2003), developed by Matan Weissman and the Platinum Team. It was released for PC and Mac on 23 December 2007.
As with Gold, the gameplay consists of platforming a marble from a start to a finish pad on every level, with some levels having mandatory gem collectibles. The marble can use directional inputs and jump to pass the challenges blocking its way, as well as a variety of single-use powerups scattered across the levels.
Platinum takes Gold's already hard difficulty up to truly Nintendo Hard levels, in addition to adding a Expert difficulty category.
Marble Blast Platinum contains examples of:
- 100% Completion: There are 120 Ultimate Times and 96 Easter Eggs to obtain. The Ultimate Times either require near-flawless play or highly advanced movement techniques, and some Easter Eggs are barely possible to find without the Level Editor, which shows the locations of all objects.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Checkpoints save your gem progress and current powerup when collected. However, they can't be reactivated until another checkpoint becomes active.
- Ascended Glitch:
- Wallhits: If you have enough speed and forward spin and jump into a wall, you gain extra height as a natural consequence of the physics engine. Platinum teaches this in the Beginner difficulty and requires it in many of its levels to continue along the intended path.
- Diagonal movement: Holding two perpendicular directional inputs (i.e. Forward + Left) and turning the camera 45˚ lets the marble move about 1.2 to 1.4 times faster than normal, depending on the friction and several other factors. It's again taught in the Beginner difficulty and required for certain challenges, as well as most if not all Ultimate times.
- Edge-hits: If the marble hits an edge with enough spin and speed, it changes directions while maintaining most of that speed. While much harder to pull off than wallhits, it is also taught in the Beginner difficulty.
- Loop exits: Exiting partway through a loop was a speedrun strategy used to go faster in Gold's Advanced level Dive!. It was properly tutorialised in this game's Intermediate difficulty.
- Traplaunches: If the marble is stuck between a moving platform and either a static or another moving platform, it gains extra speed every frame until it breaks free. While giving absurd height, this is unfortunately impossible to fully control for human players. It's formally taught in the Director's Cut level Getting Squeezed and required to beat Despair's Ultimate Time.
- Brutal Bonus Level: Several Director's Cut levels. Getting Squeezed is widely considered the hardest level in all of Platinum, and many Ultimate Times rank among the hardest in the game.
- Challenge Run:
- The Platinum and Ultimate Times aren't required for anything, and are just an optional challenge to tease masochistic players. Then again, anyone who beats the game could reasonably be considered one.
- As for purely external challenges, it is somehow possible to beat 111 out of 120 levels in Platinum without jumping, the game's only permanent mechanic. Most strategies involved here are using edge-hits instead of jumps to gain height.
- Cheat Code: Press the middle of the 'P' in the MBP logo to unlock all levels.
- Darker and Edgier: The game is much darker than Marble Blast Ultra, which is itself darker than Gold. This darkness becomes a hindrance in some altered-gravity sections of Expert levels, where the tiles are darkened due to facing away from the sun.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Dying takes you back to the last checkpoint you reached, which are plentiful in most levels. However, some Expert levels have long stretches without checkpoints or no checkpoints at all, subverting this trope.
- Diagonal Speed Boost: One of the most integral mechanics in Platinum and a remnant from its predecessor.
- Double Jump: Jumping before using a Super Jump.
- Game Mod: Platinum itself is a mod of Gold.
- Goomba Stomp: Landing on a bumper gives you large amounts of height, allowing you to bypass some obstacles.
- Gravity Screw: Gravity Modifiers do this until a normal one is picked up. Good luck trying to find your bearing on Space Station.
- Guide Dang It!: Many intended solutions for levels' Ultimate Times require advanced techniques taught after the level has finished or alternate routings intended by the developers. The most egregious example is Jump Tutorial, the game's second level, which requires jumping off the slope of the start pad into hitting a vertex to barely reach the finish platform in order to achieve the Ultimate Time. The first mechanic isn't taught, and the second is taught at a much less advanced level later. Oh, and this is considered one of the most difficult Ultimates across the first half of the game.
- Lift of Doom:
- Platform Race: In every challenge, you have 15 seconds to get a gem and get back to the moving platform in the centre, or else be forced to restart the level. Platform Race 2 features harder challenges and only a 10 second time limit, but is mercifully shorter.
- The Tale of the Tall Skyscraper features this at the start of a challenge, with you having to angle the camera upwards to detect and avoid the Spikes of Doom. While not explicitly killing you, the physics engine's quirks means that they always push you off the platform.
- Marathon Level:
- Platinum introduced checkpoints in order to accommodate the much larger levels it brings compared to Gold. However, due to performance issues, Morph's checkpoints were removed entirely. This makes it considered the hardest pre-Expert level, with some considering it the hardest in the game.
- Most of the Expert difficulty is this. Dizzying Heights is the first vertically large level the player encounters, and generally takes new players over 10 minutes to beat. However, jumping on a nuke and then landing on another one is an intended Sequence Break which can be performed to beat the level in under 40 seconds. Naturally, this is required for the Ultimate Time.
- Immediately after are Gyrocopter Monster Course, Recoil Ultra Course, Bouncing Fun and Speed Attack, which respectively test all possible uses of the gyrocopter, shock absorber/super bounce=, bounce pads and Super-Speed. These levels are both long and highly difficult, taking up to 20 minutes each to complete casually. Even worse, gems are scattered throughout the challenges so players are no longer able to abuse mechanics as they did with Dizzying Heights.
- Platform Mayhem appears several levels later. Not only is this the largest level seen with 68 gems, but it also has a strict time limit of 5 minutes. Unlike other Expert levels, the difficulty here mainly comes from finding and executing a route, a skillset not tested to great extent in the game.
- The last 5 levels of Platinum are colloquially referred to as the 'Big 5' for good reason. Each of these tests a unique skill at its highest difficulty, taking as many opportunities as possible to challenge the player. The Ultimate Friction Challenge! tests ice control on a long and winding map, The Tale of the Tall Skyscraper tests stamina and is several times larger than Dizzying Heights, Mastering the Marble tests the player's ability to solve hard platforming puzzles, Space Station tests the player's control of gravity and advanced movement techniques. Finally, Battlecube Finale escalates the previous three Battlecubes further, taking the spot as the longest level in the game with an absurd 96 gems. Even worse, it has a strict time limit of 15 minutes, almost all of which is required to beat as a casual player. Even even worse, there are only checkpoints on the starting face of the 12-sided cube, almost requiring a restart if a player falls as the starting face is almost always cleared of gems first. Luckily, the difficulty has been nerfed compared to other Expert levels, but nerves and inconsistency make this by far the most stressful level in the game for a casual player.
- No-Damage Run: Required for most Ultimate Times. Subverted in some levels, as hitting a checkpoint with high speed and immediately respawning resets the marble's speed, allowing the player to turn quickly.
- Offscreen Start Bonus: Turning the camera around in Divergence reveals a Super Jump hidden behind the start pad.
- Post-End Game Content: Collecting all Platinum Times and eventually Ultimate Times, and finding all the Easter Eggs.
- Remixed Level: Platform Race and Platform Race 2, or Nukesweeper and Nukesweeper Revisited.
- Sequence Breaking: Required to collect all Ultimate Times; there are too many examples to list.
- Super-Speed: Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
- Temporary Platform: Trapdoors, given a new skin in the upgrade from Gold to Platinum.
- Timed Mission: Every level with a Par Time becomes one. Notable examples include Nukesweeper, Platform Mayhem, The Time Travel Race and Battlecube Finale.
