6 Ages of Hang-On (Sega) in 60 fps
24I love Super Hang-On, its fantastic 2D sprite scaling graphics still convey an amazing sense of speed even to this day. Also, I just love the noise the supercharger makes when you open it up fully. Weaving between the CPU bikes at full speed as the supercharger gets louder and louder makes you feel like a fucking boss! It's also got amazingly good music that's right up there with Outrun and Afterburner in terms of my all time favourite Sega game Soundtracks.
The games featured here, going clockwise from the top left, are:
Super Hang-On for the Sega Megadrive
Super Hang-On for the arcade (played on MAME)
Hang-On II (ハングオンII) for the SG-1000
Hang-On for the Sega Master System
Hang-On for the arcade (played on MAME)
Hang-On Jnr for the arcade (played on MAME)
I've previously made a video where I did a 4 way comparison of a few different versions of Hang-On and Super Hang-On, but I felt I could do better, particularly now that I'm using better video editing software, have a better understanding of how to re-size videos and aspect ratios and, crucially, am now able to render and upload videos in 60 fps. I also felt I could do better gameplay-wise as well, as I didn't manage to finish the arcade version of Super Hang-On's Beginner course in my previous 4 Ages of Hang-On video.
Super Hang-On was the first arcade racing game I bought for my, at the time, still fairly new Sega Megadrive. I'd never actually played the arcade original at the time, although I had played the arcade version of the original Hang-On a few times. As someone who'd previously owned a Sega Master System and before that a ZX Spectrum 128k, Super Hang-On just blew me away. It genuinely felt like I was almost playing a real arcade machine in my bedroom, such was the quality of the graphics, the sense of speed and the excellent music. For that reason Super Hang-On has always been one of those games that I remember very fondly.
Prior to that, the original Hang-On was the game that came free built-in to my Sega Master System. Again, going from the monochrome graphics of the Spectrum, this was another game that felt like a huge step-up from what I'd previously been used to and felt fairly faithful to the arcade version, which I'd only ever played a few times before. Although it is very simple to look at now, I think it's actually aged pretty well and it manages to convey a decent sense of speed (I think it's a lot smoother than the SMS version of Outrun, although it lacks the hills and dips of that game, which probably account for it's slightly choppier appearance ). In terms of it's arcade daddy, for a 30 year old arcade title I think the original Hang-On has also aged very well. Whilst it too lacks any undulation in the track surface, it still goes like the clappers and handles very responsively.
Hang-On 2 and Hang-On Junior are both slight oddities and games I only became aware of in the last couple of years. Hang-On 2 is a sequel to the SG-1000 (the precursor to the Master System) version of Hang-On. This used to confuse me because of the fact that the Master System was the successor to the SG-1000 but had Hang-On 1, but yet the earlier console had Hang-On 2....
Hang-On Jr. is a stripped down version of Hang-On made to run for Sega System E hardware, which is basically an arcade system based on Sega Master System hardware, but with slightly fancier graphics.
And, oh yeah, for some reason I couldn't enter my name on the high score screen on Super Hang-On in MAME. The game just kept constantly cycling (no pun intended) through the letters and wouldn't let me stop on any of them. Must be something to do with the way I've configured the axes for the brake and the throttle.
There was an updated Hang-On game for the Saturn called Hang-On GP I could've included here, but by all accounts from what I hear it isn't very good. From the YouTube videos I've seen of it doesn't look that impressive, so I gave it a miss. There was also a sort of unofficial follow up to Super Hang-On called Racing Hero, but as it's not really an official Hang-On game I didn't include it.