Major Havoc

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This page details one or more prototype versions of Major Havoc.

This is a prototype of Major Havoc, under a working title of "Alpha One". So far as the specific role this ROMset served, lead developer Owen Rubin believes it may have been a location test.

Intro#

The introductory text is worded differently, and the enemy descriptions are not present.

Prototype	Final
EONS AGO, THE EVIL VAXIAN EMPIRE OVERRAN THE ANDROMEDA GALAXY AND PUSHED HUMANITY ONTO THE TINY PLANET STAKK. HERE, THE VAXIANS LOCKED OUR ANCESTORS IN WITH A STOPALL FIELD WHICH STILL RINGS THE PLANET. THE VAXIAN EMPIRE DECAYED, AND ALL BUT A SMALL CLUSTER OF VAXIANS DIED. YET, VAXIAN SPACE STATIONS, CONTROLLED AND DEFENDED BY ROBOTS, STILL PATROL THE GALAXY AND TRACK DOWN INTRUDERS. OUR SCIENTISTS HAVE JUST CREATED A TEMPORARY WORMHOLE THROUGH THE STOPALL FIELD. YOU HAVE BEEN PICKED TO FLY ALPHA ONE AN EXPERIMENTAL ASTRO-FIGHTER, TO THE VAXIAN HOMEWORLD. THERE YOU MUST DESTROY THE SHIELD GENERATOR TO FREE THE HUMAN RACE. BUT BEWARE

Aesthetic Differences#

• No music is present in Alpha One, and most of the sound effects are radically different.
• The font is more jittery in Alpha One.
• Many graphical effects are different in this prototype, including the explosion at the end of each space station stage.

Diagnostics Differences#

Prototype	Final
(In order) Tally of one player games, Time Tally of two player games, time The rest are unknown currently.	(In order) Adaptive difficulty settings Coinage settings Attract sounds Various dip switches Roller position Difficulty Sound Test Live Settings Readout Score Settings Readout

• There seems to be a small status display consisting of various Xs at the bottom right of the screen. It is currently unknown what these represent, and the lead developer has no memory of their presence.

• The maintenance mode mode dipswitch behaves differently, creating a screen overlay that displays a statistics screen. This screen attempts to display various statistics (eg. playtime, though not all are currently known), but fails. Owen has suggested this may be tied to MAME not emulating certain PRAM functions.

Gameplay Differences#

• The single-use shield is seemingly not present, though it appears to have been planned by this point in development as the stage 3 hint text refers to it.

• This might be an emulation bug, but the maze stage opener's vectors either are absent or blink in and out of existence. This makes the stages substantially more difficult.