gems appear elsewhere on the board. Players race to these gems and use power-ups to navigate across the level quicker and interfere with other players. There are three types of gems: red, yellow, and blue. Red gems are worth one point, while yellows are worth two and blues are worth five. Most likely, blue and yellow gems are much harder to get than the red ones. The player at the end of the time limit with the most points wins. Players can change their marble's appearance by choosing from a variety of patterns and pictures in the main menu, such as a globe marble or a tiger marble as well as adding several different effects to use online. Ranked matches and player matches are supported along with an overall multiplayer leaderboard for ranked and player matches. Users can create a game or join one and filter parameters such as level, players, and gamer zone. Private games are also supported. Development and marketing On December 5, 2007, Marble Blast Ultra was made an Xbox Live Arcade Hit and had its price lowered. In 2008, three new achievements totaling 50 gamerscore were added to Marble Blast Ultra on Xbox.com. On Wednesday the 29th of October 2008 a new downloadable content pack was made available which contained a new multiplayer level "Marble It Up". On December 3, 2008 the Marble-Fu map pack was released, and on December 23, 2008 the Agoraphobia pack was released. Each pack contained five maps and was available on InstantAction prior to their Xbox 360 release. On February 12, 2011 Marble Blast Ultra was delisted from the Xbox Live Arcade service. Despite this, a Microsoft Windows version was released later that year. GarageGames, now a subsidiary of Graham Software Development, retained the rights to the Torque Engine which powers Marble Blast Ultra, but not the rights to the game. Game rights are property of InstantAction Holdings. GarageGames CEO Eric Preisz said that it was "unlikely" that the studio would reacquire the rights to its games. The members of the development team later worked on a spiritual successor, Marble It Up!, which released for the Nintendo Switch in September 2018 and subsequently for Windows and Apple Arcade. See also Marble Madness Switchball Super Monkey Ball (series) Neverball References External links Official Web site for the September 2019 freeware Windows port Marble Blast Ultra on the Xbox Live Marketplace (Archive link)