mhavoc and it's clones

Discussion about MARP's regulation play

Moderator: BBH

Should warping(entering warp codes) be allowed for Major Havoc and all it's clones?

Poll ended at Fri Aug 08, 2003 11:42 pm

Yes, allowing warping.
8
62%
No, ban warping and play the game from level 1.
5
38%
 
Total votes: 13

LN2
MARPaholic
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Posts: 1669
Joined: Wed Jul 24, 2002 4:46 pm

Post by LN2 »

I'm guessing to really max out the men you play levels 1-8 and hopefully top 200k in that time period then use the green warp to go from 8 to 9 and the aqua warp for 9 to 13.

I was thinking though you might be able by not using 1 of the other middle warps get an additional extra man in there.

That's an awlful lot to do just for 1 or 2 more men....although that could allow you to pig out another few thousand points to get the top score. hehe...or increases odds of perhaps getting through 15.
jerky
Button Slapper
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Posts: 16
Joined: Sat Apr 12, 2014 4:22 pm

Re: mhavoc and it's clones

Post by jerky »

I seem to have picked up the Major Havoc torch here many years after this thread, but I wanted to chime in on a few points.

You get way more points using the Aqua warp to get to Level 13 than playing 1-12+. I think you end up with a hundred thousand points less or more playing the early levels so most good players skip them once they have "earned" their warp codes up to Aqua that way. Even if you skip as much oxygen as possible before getting the early reactors, you just cannot match the Aqua warp bonus. If you want to see who the best is without warps I recently made a new track just for that on Twin Galaxies. I agree that watching just a level or two past the Aqua warp is pretty boring. I hope my recent submissions fix that :)

You cannot get the blue key on Level 13 that is "outside". There's no way to trigger the clock on this level, but from Level 17 forward the key is inside the level and you need it to slow down the Fryoids and Perkoids to be able to get out of this level with much less oxygen available (you could do it without if you want tho). Levels 17-20 is the last repeating level cycle, not 13-16 even though they are very similar, in fact only the first two levels have any real differences. Level 15 and 16 stay the same other than color changes later. Level 13 changes with just an additional key to the clock for Level 17 forward. The lower hallway gun shoots faster with more bullets 17+, but does not turn around like it does on 13. Level 18 is the same layout as Level 14 but there is a razorblade obstacle stuck in the middle of the lower gun hallway below the reactor that makes things interesting. There are also three keys (RGB) that when combined together open the white door before the reactor. Levels 17-20 repeat from 21-24 forward, but the colors change randomly every time you start a section, when you die, and after any teleport jumps.

I agree that the current TG world records all appear to have been done using the Level 13 finger trick on Rev 2 romsets. A former TG referee even confirmed that the lower two scores were witnessed using this trick and the top score obviously used it. With extra lives only every 100k, no reset of the breakout game free life, having to give up 1 life to the repeating level 16 per cycle and the randomness of the outer-space fishoids, fighters and angry red lines it just does not seem possible. You would have to play a near perfect game up to around Level 40-50 to get that top score and nobody has even come close without using the finger bug.

Just for fun I used the finger bug trick on the Rev 2 romset here to show how "easy" those TG scores could have been set. That way this can act as a separate "track" here to see who can beat the "legendary" Ettore Ciaffe 1,940,078 score from the 80's. It's still pretty tough to do because those fishoids love to throw random curveballs at you.

I am glad Atari added the shield to this game because without it those early prototype roms aren't even worth playing (Alphaone). For some reason it never draws all the enemies and walls on the Maze level either so you have to play blind to get through it (at least on all the wolfMAME versions I tried anyway). The "final" protptype (mhavocp) seems to have a pretty serious bug on Level 15 : it won't let you float along the bottom of the level before the reactor unless you are within a pixel or two of the electrical fields that kill you. There is more than enough room visually to clear under the walls and float back and forth, but the game code seems to be messed up here and won't allow you to go left or right unless you are almost touching the fry your feet field below. It is a different maze at this point too. This must have been before Mark Cerny came in on the project to work on Levels 13-20+.

I hope people start playing some MH again. It's one of my favorite Atari titles of all time. Here's a decent Rev 3 romset run from Levels 13-21 using the Aqua Warp (1,239,978 points) :
http://replay.marpirc.net/r/mhavoc
http://replay.marpirc.net/inp/3/3/e/jky ... olf152.zip

ps. Get a Groovy Game Gear TurboTwist 2 if you want to really enjoy MH (speed=80, sensitivity=45)
Happy Gaming!
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