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Part shooter, part platformer, all good old Atari vector gaming.
Anyone played Major Havoc? Unfortunately, this game has yet to ever see a re-release in a classics compilation.
http://www.gamearchive.com/video/man...s/havoc_ur.gif
http://www.gamespy.com/legacy/top10/trackball/havoc.gif
I never heard of, played, or seen this game before. But all I can say is that is a very unique looking Arcade cabinet. It looks like the graphics on the side are printed on. Plus the graphics is very cool looking, very Tron-esque. And I love the style in Tron.
I liked Major Havoc back in the day. It was novel to have the Break Out game to play while the shooter stage came into view when you missed. Then landing on the buildings, working down to set off a bomb, then making it back to the ship before it detonates was a cool game design back then.
The original cabinet controller was a specialized horizontal <left to right> moving track ball like device. It was kind of like a shopping cart wheel which molded out of white hard plastic. Though it was later replaced with a Tempest dial controller. I believe many Major Havoc's were converted from Tempest cabinets.
Major Havoc was a definite step up from Gravatar <-I owned the coin-op at one time) before it. But I think the arcades were running on empty, and many people never saw/ heard of it.
This was a great game, probably my favorite vector graphics title after Star Wars...and maybe Tempest.
I generally love games where you have to escape from buildings before they explode. Alien Syndrome, Crackdown, the ending sequences from Metroid and Bionic Commando...it boosts my adrenaline.
The tricky thing about Major Havoc was dealing with the floaty gravity physics. That, and that silly Tempest-style knob controller. In fact, it seems like MH was designed to run in Tempest cabinets, doesn't it?
Damn, I just played this game on mame the other day after reading about it on Classicgaming.com.
As a game, it's pretty average, but I have to admit, I just love the game's use of vector graphics.
I love watching the little intro when one of your lives runs from the bottom corner of the screen and jumps into the ship, and the way the camera zooms in when land is really cool as well.