Major Havoc

The Arcade Video Game by Atari, Inc.

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[Coin-Op] Arcade Video Game

Major Havoc © 1983 Atari.

You are Major Havoc, leader of a brave band of clones. All from one, one from all, fighting for humanity...

Eons ago the evil Vaxxian Empire overran the galaxy Most of your ancestors were enslaved and taken to the Vaxxian homeworld. Only a few scientists escaped.
The small band of scientists cloned you, Major Havoc, to fly your Catastrofighter through a wormhole in space, leading your clone army against the dreaded Vaxxian robots to free your people by destroying the enemy reactor.

PICTURE :

Click to enlarge (members only)

Game ID : 136025

Main CPU : MOS Technology M6502 (@ 2.5 Mhz), MOS Technology 6502 (@ 1.25 Mhz)
Sound Chips : (4x) POKEY (@ 1.25 Mhz)

Screen orientation : Horizontal
Vector display (1024x768)

Players : 2
Control : dial
Buttons : 2
=> [A] FIRE/JUMP, [B] SHIELD

Major Havoc was released in November 1983.

New Features :

High-Tech Game Cabinet : A new video arcade game cabinet design delivers high visibility and increased player attraction.

Roller Control : The backlit roller control provides left-to-right and right-to-left directional movement.

Multi-Layer Printed-Circuit Board : This state-of-the art design printed-circuit board (PCB) provides low system noise with high system reliability.

Game Within a Game : Action occurs in the lower right corner of the TACTICAL SCAN. Breakout can be played for a few seconds before the actual Major Havoc game play starts. Earn a bonus life here!

Dual FIRE/JUMP Button : This dual-action button allows Major Havoc to jump in the maze sequence and to fire at enemy robots in the space wave.

Add-A-Coin : This feature permits you to start a new Major Havoc game at the level where you last saw the TACTICAL SCAN in your previous game play.

Secret Warp Code : The code feature rewards you for short game times as it advances to deep levels in game play. Use the roller control to dial in secret code numbers during the TACTICAL-SCAN wave.

Gameplay innovation at its finest. A game that would have done greater numbers had anyone cared in 1984. Only 300 dedicated machines were manufactured. Original price was $2,095. If Owen had done Major Havoc in a raster version, which was suggested, it would have sold 10 times as many. But unfortunately... the operators were getting very angry at vector games for failing all the time.

Mark Cerny came in the middle of the design, adding one of the space waves (the flying fish) and the last four base ship mazes. He also added some objects to the mazes (such as the gun and floating boots) and helped clean up old items that never got shipped.

The original name for the game was "Tollian Web", from the Star Trek episode The Tholian Web - an episode that also provided the inspiration for the unreleased "Ms. Gorf". Later titles included "Alpha One" and "Major Rex Havoc" (which was dropped when Atari discovered an underground comic with a similar name).

Ettore Ciaffi holds the official record for this game with 1,940,078 points.

A hack of this game is called "Major Havoc Return to Vax".

A Major Havoc unit appears in the 1983 movie 'WarGames'.

Rev. 3 : Eliminates the finger bug in Rev. 2.

Space Enemies :
Fishoids : 100 points when blue (turns them red), 1,000 points for destroying when red.
Flyboids : 500 points
Mazoids : 500 points
Space Maze Lines : 2,500 points

Maze Enemies :
Pyroids : 1,000 points
Perkoids : 1,000 points

Other :
Reactoid : 5,000 points
Oxoid (Purple) : 100 points
Oxoid (Yellow) : 1,000 points for first, 1,200 points for second, 1,400 points for third, etc.
Key : 1,000 points

Oxygen bonus for exiting maze is 100 points times the number of oxygen counts left.

In space, faster completion of each wave awards more bonus points at end of wave.

Breakout bricks :
Blue : 1 point
Green : 4 points
Red : 8 points

Clearing all of the bricks in the breakout game awards an extra life.

Warp Codes : It's possible to warp to higher levels in Major Havoc from the start of the game by using certain codes. This is useful to not only be able to get through the game more quickly, but each warp also gives a fairly hefty bonus for carrying it out. This is done by playing the mini-Breakout game at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen when the game starts. The game will have a phrase such as, 'Enter Red Warp 00' at the bottom of the screen. What you do is use the controls to 'dial in' the first digit of the appropriate code given below, then press the Fire button to serve the ball and repeat as necessary. The codes are :
Red code - 23, 250,000 points, Level 4.
Yellow code - 46, 600,000 points, Level 9.
Green code - 824, 700,000 points, Level 10.
Aqua code - 315, 950,000 points, Level 13.

Note that you can only enter the codes in the order they're given - it's not possible to enter, say, the red warp code followed directly by the aqua warp code.