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.