Contestants partnered with celebrities to answer trivia questions and gain control of an oversized pinball machine.

The program premiered on NBC on July 7, 1975 at 12:00 pm ET, replacing the short-lived game show Blank Check.

[1] Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley packaged the program, with Robert Noah as executive producer.

The players were shown blanks on the display's bottom line denoting the number of words and letters in the answer.

If no team buzzed in once the clue was revealed, letters of the answer then filled in at random as time progressed.

Five points won the game, and the winning team played "The Magnificent Marble Machine" in the bonus round.

The contestant achieving the top point score over a two-week period was awarded a money ball round.

With the move, Marble was reduced in length to 25 minutes as a national newscast anchored by Edwin Newman aired at 12:55.

A brief clip from The Magnificent Marble Machine is seen in the 1979 film The China Syndrome, as the "regularly scheduled programming" that the TV station interrupts to show the main character's report from inside the power plant.

The clip shows celebrity guest Joan Rivers playing a normal ball on the machine, though the original audio is dubbed over with music[note 1] composed for the film.