The Adventures of Major Havoc

Overview

Major Havoc is an upright cabinet vector-based arcade game made by Atari in 1983. The player controlled the titular character, Major Rex Havoc, first in the "shoot-'em-up" style game, in which the player operated Major Havoc's spaceship, the Catastrofighter, against the numerous robot ships who defend the enemy reactors. The ships are encased in a sort of "buckyball" force-field shield which must be shot first before the ship can be killed. In the next phase, the player would land on the robot space-station by centering the Catastrofighter in between the moving white line and Major Havoc would exit his ship and enter the space-station. The roller-knob controlled left and right character movement and a "jump" button permitted the player's character to leap over obstacles. Thus, a minor amount of "gravity" interacted with the player. The object was to get to the core of the space-station unmolested and sabotage the reactor. Once the charge was set, the player had to get out, back into the space-ship and MSD (minimum safe distance) before the space-station went critical and exploded. Red arrows lead the players direction in and the word out, also in red, points the direction out. The "mazes" get gradually more complicated to navigate in difficulty as the player progresses. Upon a successful mission, the next space-station became more difficult and the time allotted (both in and out) was accelerated.