Developed/Published by: Sega
Released: April 1987
Completed: 17th August, 2015
Completion: Finished all the courses, including the world tour. And without any saving or anything like that.
Trophies / Achievements: n/a
Super Hang-On, guys. I know what you’re thinking, because it’s what I was thinking too. “Ugh, isn’t this the earliest of the Super Scaler games? I mean it’s really boring, right? Just racing on a two lane highway for ages. Barely any more evolved than Pole Position.”
What an idiot I was and what an idiot you are. This is the wrongest wrong, and I guess it took those wizards at M2 with their 3D Super Hang-On release for 3DS in 2013 to show me my wrong wrongieness for the wrongitudinal wrong it wring wrong wubba wran
(Sorry readers. Let’s take a little intermission here to listen to Super Hang-On’s super cool chilltimes music. Ahh, that’s better.)
Super Hang-On is fantastic. I don’t know why I believed we’d all decided it wasn’t very interesting. Maybe it looks a bit boring in stills, and likely, Outrun, with its wide roads, loads of cars and set dressing, just seems like it’s better. But here’s the deal with Super Hang-On: it’s an incredibly clever and subtle example of pseudo-3D racing. The game is about two things: 1) avoiding the many, many other racers on the narrow-ass road by carefully weaving through them, even as they attempt to murder you because they hate you 2) using “turbo” (which boosts your max speed by like 50km/h) carefully when you know you won’t fly off the aforementioned narrow-ass road or right into another racer who, also aforementioned, wants to murder you.
This is but two very simple mechanics. Together, they are perfect. Playing Super Hang-On on 3DS is almost painful, because you more or less death grip your 3DS with a brutal intensity as you try and edge through the field at the maximum speed you can manage. And you have to, because the time limits are absurdly strict.
Which is one of the reasons the M2 version is so great. There are a variety of settings which—and this is maybe the one real negative I have to give—are a bit obscure (I’m still not 100% sure what they all do) but with some fiddling you can get the game to “challenging” rather than “you will never finish this, puny humans.”
And the other settings are all great. Playing it using the gyro is actually really fun, the screen tilting is great (if you want to use it) and the 3D is fantastic even if it still doesn’t agree with me at all (I wonder if the New 3DS1 would fix that) so I sadly had to not really use it. It’s the perfect release, although if I was super greedy I’d want them to include the track from Hang-On too?
Super Hang-On is not optional. It’s an amazing example of a clear, simple game design that’s absolutely thrilling to play. I played this for hours and hours and hours and I’ll go back to it, to finish the “sit down” version of the courses probably (even if they’re only mildly different? I haven’t tried them yet.) It’s great.
Will I ever play it again? Yes.
Final Thought: And I must say: Super Hang-On looks great, too. It’s maybe hard to see that when everything is flying past at 324km/h, but if you sit and watch the credits you can see how intricate the level furniture and backgrounds and colour choices are. Super Hang-On might actually be one of those perfect things, you know? A flawless pearl for people who like a specific kind of pearl (I’m not saying everyone is going to love this pearl. It’s just as good at being a pearl as a pearl can be.) [“Stop saying pearl!”—Ed.]
- Update 17/09/26: You know, it did. ↩︎
