30 for 30 // Day 2 -- Super Hang-On

Day 2 -- Hang-On

 By no means do I intend to deliver these 30 days of memories in a chronological fashion, but as fingers came to keys for what I could write about before packing for an early train tomorrow the Hang-On theme came into my head.

So what's Hang-On? and why is it special?

 

Hang-on is a racing game released by Sega in 1985 in arcades.  It was developed by Yu Suzuki, a man who would the very next year release one of my favourite arcade games of all time; Outrun.  He'd later go on to make After Burner, Virtua Fighter, Shenmue, amongst others.

 When I was born my dad raced motorcycles professionally.  Thanks to this my parents and I would travel A LOT to his races.  At pretty much every racetrack there would be bars, convention halls, and ripe open spaces to install arcade cabinets which were all the rage from the 80s deep into the 90s.

Hang-On was the quintessential merging of 2 things I was constantly around, video games and motorcycles, and not only that... the arcade cabinet was an "experience".  You would sit on a replica of a motorcycle and steer the game via tilting to steer to emulate the motorsport itself.

Super Hang-On 'sit on' Arcade Cabinet

 A side note is that the arcade cabinet colours totally reminded me of racer "Mick Doohan" and his Rothmans Honda.  One of the best riders in the world during these years for me.

Mick Doohan - Rothmans Honda

Some games I'd see in the arcades back in the day that I liked playing I'd either have, or look to get games similar to them for my NES, but for a long time Hang-On was an arcade exclusive for me.  The best motorcycle game I had at home was my beloved "Excitebike", and I was too young to know that the Sega Master System was a thing and that it had a pretty decent home conversion for it's time.

 

Eventually when I got my Sega Megadrive I'd go on to own Super Hang-On like I'm sure a lot of people did with it being packages on Mega Game I (alongside "Columns" and "World Cup Italia '90").

I hadn't actually been prompted to play Hang-On for a while until it showed on XBOX Live Arcade a few years back in a Sega pack.  Me and my housemate at the time actually found ourselves playing against each others high scores for a short while which was fun.  After this a couple more years passed and for the first time in nearly 2 decades I saw a Super Hang-On arcade cabinet at a gaming expo I was at (PLAY EXPO 2014).  Picture below of me (cosplaying as Captain Toad) sat on said arcade cabinet.

Most recently I picked up Sega Classics 3D Super Hang-On on the Nintendo 3DS.  Simply writing this article is urging me to play that version, but I'll hold off until I'm on the train to London tomorrow.  I highly recommend that game (or better yet the Sega 3D classics retail bundle) to 3DS owners.  It's not only a great conversion, but the 3D options provide some surreal new life into your races.  Furthermore, turn off the 3D and turn on the gyro sensor controls and you have yourself a tilt based emulation of the arcade controls, the "arcade cabinet" speakers come into view as you lean which is such a neat little touch of nostalgic immersion.

Throughout writing this article I've had various Hang-On and Super Hang-On soundtrack songs playing via YouTube.  Check out the classic "Hang-On main theme" below, it's a simple pleasure.

30 for 30 // Day 1 -- My Nintendo and Sega roots

"So what's this link I clicked?" - You

 Well firstly "hi", and let me cut the medium sized story, to a size 's'...

I'm 30 years old on the 30th of this month.  All my life until now one constant hobby of mine has been video games, no breaks, super consistent!
Another hobby of passion that I used to be all about was writing, blogs, articles, whatever formulated from mind to webpage.

I'm also one of those people that often write ideas or to-do lists on little pieces of paper or in my phone.  I figured I'd earn a tick against "write blogs again", so I figured at least for myself I'd write 30 days of video game memories to count down to me hitting what others deem to be something of a milestone age.  

The ESPN 30 for 30 documentary series popped into mind whilst brainstorming what to do for this 30 day endeavour, thus the parody logo idea.

-------

Day 1 -- My Nintendo and Sega

As a kid I had it pretty good in regards to games systems.  My parents were mid to young 20's and because of that they already had a Nintendo Entertainment System (a.k.a the "NES") in the house before I could even fathom the idea of controlling something on a television screen.

As I progressed into my toddler era and beyond I came to own the NES.  Both my parents seemed to of passed on the system as a  fad, yet to me the NES was almost an every day go-to "toy".  

Whilst I have 2 NES's in my collection at present, I still own my original NES I've had since childhood. 
Still works too.

Not long after I had become competent on using the NES my dad brought me a Game Boy back from one of his race travels.  I had Tetris, Super Mario Land, and eventually some import pirate cart called "58 in 1".  I recall absolutely loving my Game Boy.  It felt so cutting edge to be able to play games on the go, considering the only thing close to "portable gaming" I'd played at the times were those super primitive Tiger electronics LCD games that not even the most bored of children could remain interested in.

Come 1991/ 1992, aside from a few great arcade games I'd played the only name in my mind when it came to gaming was Nintendo.  I was obsessed, I loved the Mario Bros Super Show and the follow on Mario 3 and Mario World based series (and even the Zelda cartoon albeit hadn't bought those games due to them seeming too advanced).  I don't think I had the basis at this point to imagine a future for what video games would be.  Even though arcade games of the time looked more impressive, I just assumed that was why they had to be so big, so just sort of counted them as a separate thing and not something for the home.

92 though was quite the important year for me as it turned out.  I had a few issues of Nintendo Power magazine (presumably through mail order) and this eventually tipped me off on the Super Nintendo, alongside seeing some kiosks for it in Woolworths and other shops that sold console stuff.
  I was absolutely blown away by the visual improvements on screen (it's hard to teach how important those console leaps were too people who weren't alive for it).  Parallel to this I  was learning about Sega.  I was friends with the girl next door around this year (I even remember her name being "Lorna"), no crush though, I was too young for that, we just hung out.  I remember one time either her or her brother had a birthday party or something as a bunch of us kids were in the house and I played the original Sonic on Megadrive for the first time.

  

From that first play on Sonic it became a MUST.  I should perhaps grill my parents on if they can recall me obsessing over it and no doubt circling the catalogs to let them know what games I'd want for it and such...

I know I got the Super Nintendo first, so I assume that came for my birthday in 1992, but before year end I became a king amongst kids as my dad brought home a Sega Megadrive from one of his races in which I didn't travel with on.  Owning both a SNES and a Megadrive meant I was somewhat impartial to the "console wars", but that's a different memory for a different day.

I eventually got a Game Gear in either 93 or 94.  I cherished a few games for it, but the battery issues that console had made me almost completely rule off taking it anywhere except for times I'd be sat near the cigarette lighter in a car/ truck to power the thing.  So the Game Boy was always #1 for portable fun, plus I'd amassed a bunch of Game Boy games in the time till I got a Game Gear too.  The Game Gear/ Game Boy saga was probably the first time I learned that gameplay wins over graphics.

Many passions came and went throughout my early 90's years.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Thunderbirds, Power Rangers, but nothing reigned dominance like my Nintendo's and my Sega's.