Super Hang-On

STORY / GAMEPLAY
You race riding a motorbike through four continents of the world: Africa, Asia, America and Europe. Each continental race is divided into timed stages and failing to complete a stage within the required time, the game is over. Each stage gives you 32 seconds to complete and any seconds left from the previous stage are added to the new ones. The standard acceleration control can be held down for most of the race, but towards really tricky bends you will have to resort to the brakes. The change in speed affects the radius of your turns, which may easily crash you onto road signs or road lights...! What is really exciting on this game is that when you gain enough speed your speedometer will turn red signifying that you can activate your turbo boost (which is not limited at all)! As long as you hold the turbo down you will keep boosting which gives a real rush as your engine screams out higher and higher pitches, the longer you boost! Ok, the computer and console versions are not the same mainly because there were different versions on the arcades. Even the Macintosh version is different than the ones released for the Amiga, Atari ST and DOS, e.g. you can choose the (pre-selected) background of the tracks (!). Those differences though, rely only on the position and the type of the (original) bends of each track. Super Hang-On is a tried and true formula like any other great arcade bike (and car) racer released at this period of time. Especially the original (the arcade) version, in which the player plays riding a full-scaled motorbike model, is an enormous experience!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The graphics on the Macintosh conversion are quite smooth though not fast enough as the original and the Amiga, ST conversions. It runs either on monochrome or color Macs (with up to 16 colors on screen of course). It doesn't really give the impression of a fast motorbike race. The motorbikes are nicely animated and designed too. The other objects such as the road signaling, the lights, the trees etc are also nicely done and keep (along with the static backdrops) the overall presentation in good standards. At some point, the Mac here uses its own track details and backdrops compared to the Amiga, ST and DOS which are based on the original (arcade), but still looks quite good with no flickering or slow-downs in the process (e.g. in tight corners the hardware can handle the horizontal pixel scroll the game needs at this point). The Macintosh sounds just adequate though here. Sound effects are again the standard engine noises and that is it.