Sega Mega Drive: Super Hang-On

Year: 1989
Genre: Racing
Players: 1
Our Rating: 8/10

Mini Review

Super Hang-On for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. Oh my, now we’re taking a trip down memory lane. This is a game that makes it in to the Sega Hall of Fame. It was in an era where Sega literally owned the arcade gaming industry. For those of you that are a little young to remember let me describe the scene if you walked in to an arcade in the early 90’s. To your left was Golden Axe (next to the Outrun machine), to your right was a 4 player Gauntlet machine with teenagers shouting “Green Elf shot the food!” whilst simultaneously drnking blue Slush Puppy, in front of you were people marveling at Space Harrier 2 and Afterburner. Then, you hadn’t quite seen it at first as it was behind the air hockey table, there in the corner would be a full sized Super Hang-On machine.

This was it, for 20p (as was the price back in the good old days) you could sit on your very own motorbike and travel at high speed all in the comfort of knowing that you weren’t causing any exhaust fume damaged to the ozone layer or causing global cooling (yes these really were the two issues that scientists told us that were going to die from back then). In terms of game play what is there to say about Super Hang-On? It’s exactly what you would expect. It’s fast and challenging. Whilst the arcade version is insanely difficulty even on the easy setting the game was tamed down slightly for the Mega Dive release. Having said that it is still very challenging. The game retained its high speed feel even in the home version and things get even faster once you hit 280Km/h. At this speed you can hold down the nitro if you’re brave enough and power all the way up to 324km/h. Chances are that you can do this for a few seconds only. The feeling of controlling the bike at this speed is breathtaking and possibly one of the great feelings that only video gaming can give you (without being a dare devil motor cyclist in real life).

The soundtrack is also fairly reasonable for an older game, you can choose between four tunes at the start of each race. I favor the “Winning Run” track, it’s just screams Motorolla 6800 chip to me. So the glory days of Sega ended, the arcades closed, the Gauntlet machines fell to the Dance Dance Revolution, Outrun got remade but it was never the same. The thing is though is that the “arcade” isn’t just a noun, it’s not just a place that used to exist, it evolved in to both a genre and a feeling. Fire up Super Hang-On for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and your right back in there in that time when Sega ruled the arcade.