Super Hang On Review - Arcade Review

Super Hang On Review - Arcade Review

Back in the late Eighties, when OutRun was still wowing audiences in Arcades, Sega released the sequel to the very successful motor bike racing game Hang On.

Super Hang On featured OutRun's undulating hills and also introduced a turbo boost that could only be activated once the top speed had been reached.

I didn't very often get the chance to play the arcade version of Super Hang On and the chances are you are more likely to have played the Megadrive (or Genesis in the US) home console version.

This review however is based on the arcade version available today via the MAME arcade emulator.

When playing the arcade version for the first time (either ever or for several years) there are two things that immediately hit you.

The first thing is how awesome the games soundtrack is.

Now I realize nostalgia plays a part here, but great video game soundtracks should not be taken for granted. With Super Hang On you get not one, but FOUR soundtracks to choose from before you start.

Admittedly, one of the tracks is a bit rubbish, but the other three are great and two in particular Outride A Crisis and Winning Run are outstanding.

The second thing you will notice is how bloody hard this game is!

You really do need to 'Hang On' as the pace is fast and furious with extremely tight time limits.

This really is old school gameplay, most of your games literally last 90 seconds each as you try to reach the third or fourth stage!

As with most successful arcades of the era though, Super Hang On certainly has addictive qualities (they had to be good enough to convince you to spend more money!) and you can find yourself playing ten games in a row even if progress seems to be almost non-existent.

I was playing with a 360 joypad and found that the analogue controls were too sensitive and try as I might to adjust the settings in MAME's tab menu it didn't seem to make any difference.

In fact, even changing the difficulty setting to 'easy' also didn't seem to make much difference. You can, if you really want to switch the timer off in the cheat menu.

But without cheating, I think the best I managed was like stage 5 on any of the 4 selectable continents!

The game does benefit from enhancing the video display, again in MAME's tab menu settings. Also, if you are using a widescreen monitor, don't forget to shrink the horizontal size of the screen just to make it that little bit more authentic!

It is also worth noting the differences to the Megadrive version and the Arcade.

Back in those days the term 'Arcade perfect' was over-used, only because before 16-bit consoles were launched we just hadn't seen such colourful graphics in the home before.

However, the Megadrive version is by no means arcade perfect.  It does not have the silky smooth 60fps of the arcade, and while the music is pretty much spot-on, the in-game special effects are very inferior.

So, Super Hang On is one of my favourite arcade games but it is brutally hard and also demonstrates how addictive good quality racing gameplay can be!


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