Monday MAME Club [3/14/06] - Major Havoc

[Flack]

http://members.cox.net/flack/mameclub1.jpg

Ze_ro has selected Major Havoc (Atari, 1983). Download (http://www.robohara.com/mameclub/mhavocrv.zip), play, and discuss! (KLOV Info (http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=&game_id=8601))

http://images.webmagic.com/klov.com/screens/M/zMajor_Havoc.png

Club Rules

01. You do not need to sign up for the club. If you want to participate, simply download the game of the week and post about it!

02. At the end of the week, I will randomly select someone who participated this week to select next week's game.

03. The current MAME Club Pick of the Week can be found Mondays stickied at the top of the main forum, and after that stickied at the top of the Arcade Alley forum.

Previously Picked Games: Black Widow, Blood Bros, Boogie Wings, Bubbles, Donkey Kong 3, Great 1000 Mile Rally, Gunforce 2, Haunted Castle, Liquid Kids, Mad Planets, Ninja Clowns, Rescue, Top Hunter, Yie-Ar Kung-Fu, 19xx: The War Against Destiny, Alligator Hunt, APB - All Points Bulletin, Armed Police Batrider, Ataxx, Battle Bakraid, Battle Bakraid, Battle Circuit, Berzerk, Biomechanical Toy, Blazing Star, Block Out, Bomb Jack, Bronze Adventure, Burgertime, Caliber 50, Chuka Taisen/Cloud Master, City Bomber, Combatribes, Crossbow, D&D: Shadow Over Mystara, Daisu-Kiss, Darius Gaiden, Dr. Micro, Dynasty Wars, Elevator Action, Elevator Action Returns, Escape From The Planet Of The Robot Monsters, ESP Ra.De., Fairyland Story (The), G.I. Joe, Go! Go! Mile Smile, Gunbarich, Gyruss, I'm Sorry, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Lady Bug, League Bowling, Mega Twins, Metal Slug 2, Mighty! Pang, Mr. Do!'s Wild Ride, Mysterious Stones, NARC, Pandora's Palace, Pang, Penguin-Kun Wars, Portman, Prehistoric Isle in 1930, Pu-Li-Ru-La, Raiden II, Rainbow Islands, Rampart!, Rastan, Rollergames, Satan's Hollow, Shinobi, Skull & Crossbones, Solomon's Key, Splatterhouse, Strike Force, Super Burgertime, Tempest, The Punisher, The Simpsons, Vs. Excitebike, Vendetta, Waku Waku 7, Withdrew, WWF Superstars.

Now, MAME ON!

** Note -- want to be notified when a new Monday Morning MAME Club pick is posted? Send an e-mail to flack@cox.net asking me to add me to the mailing list, and when a new game is posted I'll e-mail you the URL! You can get removed from the list by e-mailing me and asking to be removed. **

[NeoZeedeater]

Awesome game. I always loved its seamless mix of genres.

[Arcade Antics]

To call this game anything less than a masterpiece is a crime. Everything about it is well thought out and perfectly fantastic.

[Ze_ro]

I never had a chance to play this one in the arcade, but ever since I tried this game in MAME, I've absolutely loved it. I still think it's a huge shame that this game was never ported to any home consoles... hopefully someone will program a clone of it for the Vectrex one of these days.

This game has a lot of neat things in it that were very well done in my opinion, such as the explosions, and the animation of your guy turning into a skeleton if you're killed inside the base... A lot of the old vector games seemed kinda shallow to me, but Major Havoc has a ton of depth to it.

--Zero

[NE146]

This is one of the most coveted arcade games around.. great gameplay & design, and nice and rare for that matter. Expect to fork out a couple grand even for Tempest machine conversion.

That being said, I friggin LOVE this game, but am probably confined to playing it via Mame and other emu compilations.. which is kind of a shame since the game was meant to be played with a left/right roller controller which gave nice control over the characters running speed (which could get pretty fast).
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v48/b2stoys/spinner.jpg
Using a mouse or analog controller just quite isn't the same :(

But hey, barring having a hard to find arcade original, I guess I'll have to take it. :)

[Ze_ro]

Oh man, I had no idea this was a spinner game... all these years I've been playing it in MAME with a regular joystick in complete ignorance.

I feel like such a n00b... :(

--Zero

[Cryomancer]

Holy shit, this is a cool game. I know i've either played or seen this played before somewhere but I can't begin to be sure where or when. Great variety and as usual vectors are an always interesting and cool form of art.

I'd be very interested in how this is supposed to be controlled overall, I'm sure my setup was making it harder than it should have been to control. Despite that it was quite fun.

[Arcade Antics]

I'd be very interested in how this is supposed to be controlled overall, I'm sure my setup was making it harder than it should have been to control. Despite that it was quite fun.
It's a spinner / roller spinner game. The spinner controls all the left/right movement and the jump button... jumps. :D There were a few dedicated units produced, but most of the games played in arcades were Tempest conversions. So picture the Tempest control panel, and you're good.

The dedicated machines used the spinner that NE1 posted above. There was a machine with that spinner at CGE a couple of years ago.

[Ed Oscuro]

Oh man, I had no idea this was a spinner game... all these years I've been playing it in MAME with a regular joystick in complete ignorance.

I feel like such a n00b... :(

--Zero
Agreed LOL I imagine that'd help the game a lot.

[diskoboy]

I actually lived near an arcade that actually had a dedicated Major Havoc machine (It also had the super rare dedicated I, Robot). Funny how rare this game is nowadays, because I played it all the time, throughout my youth.

[Pantechnicon]

Oh man, I had no idea this was a spinner game... all these years I've been playing it in MAME with a regular joystick in complete ignorance.

I feel like such a n00b... :(

--Zero
Agreed LOL I imagine that'd help the game a lot.

This was me, too. I first discovered it on my MAME cab. And although I generally love all vector games, the slow speed of the Major made this game very unrewarding to play...

...and then I laid hands on a real Major Havoc cab at CGE2K4 and realized what the problem had been. Never occurred to me this was a spinner game x_x . I said my mea culpas, and when I got home from the show I tweaked with the analog settings in MAME a bit and got Major Havoc to a passable, but not perfect, configuration suitable for much better play.

So here we have a great vertical shmup and a nice platformer rolled into one. Rendered in vectors, no less, which I imagine from a programming point is a very ambitious thing to do. Brought to us by legendary Atari. What's not to love about Major Havoc?

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, the Shmupping part is pretty unspectacular (at least the first stage's) - just a nice diversion until the real level begins.

There's no shooting, just the shield, which is a remarkable twist on what was even in '82 already becoming a gaming cliche, and helps this avoid being just another "destroy the evil computer deep in its metallic lair" shooter (not that I dislike those, of course). I can't really play it well with my setup, though.