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. 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 game on DOS runs fast and smooth. In fact it runs too fast when played on an Intel 286 or equivalent. Technically the game cannot compare to the Amiga and Atari ST ports. Most of the original visual details is missing on this version which is rather normal for a 1988 DOS game that runs only on EGA or CGA graphics mode. The motorbikes are nicely designed with some impressive animation touches taken from the original (i.e. when crashing, the bike rolls in the air). Other objects such as road signs, lights, trees etc are also nicely drawn and keep (along with the static backdrops) the presentation in good standards. Soundwise, the PC (MS DOS) version supports AdLib sound hardware with non-sampled in-game sound effects and no music at all.