In September 1985 Computer Gamer’s arcade columnists described a new Sega machine that you did not so much play as ride. “The screen and controls are mounted on a huge representation of a racing bike. You have to sit on this bike and control it by leaning the bike from side to side.” That was Hang-On, Yu Suzuki’s motorbike racer, and it started a run of Sega cabinets built to move the player’s body as well as their thumbs: Space Harrier, Out Run, After Burner. The bike was the spectacle, but the screen mattered as much. Its road, riders and scenery were flat pictures scaled up smoothly as they came towards you, a way of drawing speed that home machines could not match.
Fast facts
- Developer: Sega, directed by Yu Suzuki, whose team later became Sega AM2.
- Released: July 1985 in the arcades.
- Cabinets: a ride-on replica motorbike and an upright with handlebars.
- Hardware: two Motorola 68000 processors, custom sprite-scaling and road chips, a Z80 with a Yamaha YM2203 and Sega’s PCM chip for sound.
- Home version: Sega’s own, on a card for the Mark III in Japan and the Master System elsewhere; built into the console in Britain from 1987.
- Sequel: Super Hang-On (1987).
Riding the bike
Hang-On is a road race against the clock. The view sits just above and behind the rider, “a sort of super-pole position type display”, as Computer Gamer put it, comparing it with Namco’s Pole Position. The rider starts on a grid among other bikes and has to reach the end of each stage before the timer runs out, overtaking the slower riders and staying on the tarmac: crash, and the bike goes up in a cloud of smoke while the seconds tick away. Sega Retro, which documents the game in detail, describes five stages.
The ride-on cabinet is what people remembered. Computer Gamer described a throttle on the right-hand grip and a brake lever on the same side, with the screen set “just underneath the place that you would expect the front windshield to be”, and “a couple of dummy instruments” on the fairing “to give the whole thing the right feel”. MAME’s emulation of the board reads three analogue inputs: steering, which is the angle of the bike, throttle and brake. Sega also sold an upright cabinet with handlebars.
The name came from riding technique. According to Sega Retro, Suzuki took it from a Japanese motorcycle magazine’s term for the way a rider hangs off the bike through a bend, and he rode the prototype for hours every day during development.
Money in the arcade
Hang-On was expensive, and it earned. Computer Gamer reported that the units “cost around £5200 each to buy, and have been known to take up to £200 a day”, and that it had done so well in America that its coin mechanisms had been changed to take larger coins. In Britain it looked like being the first game fitted to take £1 coins, and the rate was 30p a go or two for 50p. That December the magazine shortlisted it for Best Coin-op Machine of the year, alongside Marble Madness, Paperboy and Commando. Sega Retro, citing the Japanese trade paper Game Machine, reports that Sega sold some 20,000 cabinets by early 1991, making it the company’s best-selling coin-op.
Inside the board
The Hang-On board was built for this one kind of game. MAME’s driver runs its two 68000 processors at 6.29 MHz, a quarter of a 25.17 MHz crystal. The sprite hardware scales each sprite by a single 6-bit zoom factor, looked up in a zoom ROM that decides which rows of the stored picture to draw twice or skip, and a separate road chip draws the curving track. A Z80 at 4 MHz plays the music on a Yamaha YM2203 and samples on Sega’s PCM chip. Space Harrier, later in 1985, used a faster version of the same design with separate horizontal and vertical zoom (see sprite scaling and pseudo-3D roads).
The name “Super Scaler” became attached to this family of boards, but accounts differ on where it began. Suzuki told Edge in 1994 that Out Run “was the first game to use the Super Scaler technology”, while Wireframe and Bitmap Books’ history of the Master System count Hang-On as the first. His own calculations, he later said, had always been three-dimensional: “All the calculations in the system were 3D, even from Hang-On.”
Hang-On was also the first of what Sega called taikan, or “body sensation”, games. In a 1986 interview Suzuki said that after Hang-On he had wanted to make “a 3D adventure or role-playing-style game”, but that it “would have taken too long to develop”. He came back to the idea a decade later with Shenmue.
At home
No home machine could offer the bike, or the scaling. Sega converted the game itself to its Mark III console in Japan in October 1985, on a credit-card-sized Sega Card. At the American Consumer Electronics Show in 1986, Computer Gamer saw it running on the machine that became the Master System: “one of the better arcade games of last year”, and “very good, if a little easier than the original”. The Master System could not scale sprites smoothly, so, in the words of Bitmap Books’ history, Sega concentrated on “speed and responsiveness” instead.
In Britain, where Mastertronic began distributing the console in 1987, Hang-On came in the box. The Master System cost £99.95 “complete with a copy of Hang-On”, CRASH reported in September 1987, and its reviewer, who had played the coin-op, found it “a fairly faithful copy”. Computer and Video Games scored it 8 for sound, 8 for graphics and 9 for playability. Its version has eight courses on each of three levels, each course four kilometres long and split into five stages; the bike has three gears, and each stage has to be finished inside 60 seconds. In America it came on a cartridge with the light-gun game Safari Hunt and was later built into some consoles.
Home computers got it only unofficially at first. Epyx’s Super Cycle (1986) for the Commodore 64 was, in Your Computer’s words, “an excellent copy of the arcade sensation, Hang-On”, and Commodore User‘s chart that November called it “Epyx’ Hang On clone”. Sega Retro records Japanese versions for the MSX and the NEC PC-8801 mkII SR.
Super Hang-On and after
Super Hang-On (1987) was, in Edge’s words, a follow-up that “proved even more popular”. It ran on the Out Run board, whose CPU board MAME describes as identical, and came to home computers through Electric Dreams in 1988; Sinclair User gave the Spectrum version 10 out of 10. Sega also converted it to the Mega Drive. Hang-On itself turned up as a playable game inside Suzuki’s Shenmue and Shenmue II on the Dreamcast.
Sources
- Mike Roberts and Steve Phipps, “Coin-Op Connection”, Computer Gamer issue 6, September 1985, pp. 18–19: the ride-on cabinet, its controls and dummy instruments, the view of the track, prices and takings, the American coin mechanisms and £1 coins.
- Computer Gamer issue 9, December 1985, p. 32: Best Coin-op Machine shortlist. Issue 17, August 1986, p. 26: Hang On on show for Sega’s console at the American Consumer Electronics Show.
- Edge issue 9, June 1994, pp. 45–49: “Yu Suzuki: Sega’s driving force” (Hang On, July 1985; Super Hang On; Suzuki on Out Run and the Super Scaler).
- Wireframe issue 43, September 2020, pp. 84–89: “Developer Profile: Yu Suzuki” (Hang-On’s processors; the 1986 Beep! interview). Issue 50, April 2021, p. 40: Hang-On as Sega’s first “super scaler title”.
- Steve Jarratt and Damien McFerran, SEGA Master System: a visual compendium (Bitmap Books, 2019), pp. 88–90: taikan games, Super Scaler technology, the Master System’s lack of sprite scaling, and the Hang-On/Safari Hunt cartridge.
- CRASH issue 44, September 1987, pp. 78–79: the Master System in Britain (Mastertronic, £99.95 with Hang-On) and the review of Hang-On.
- Computer and Video Games issue 71, September 1987, p. 77: Master System review (free on a card with the console; courses, stages, gears and time limit; scores).
- Your Computer, September 1986, p. 18, and October 1986, p. 44: Epyx’s Super Cycle. Commodore User, November 1986, p. 15: chart commentary.
- Sinclair User issue 70, January 1988, pp. 12–13: Super Hang-On (see Out Run).
- Zero issue 11, September 1990: a password for the Mega Drive Super Hang-On (see password systems).
- MAME,
src/mame/sega/segahang.cppandsegaorun.cpp(source code): the Hang On board’s CPUs and clocks, sound board, analogue inputs and cabinet variants; the Out Run/Super Hang-On CPU board. - Sega Retro, “Hang-On” and “Sega Hang-On hardware” (web, secondary): the Japanese release date (citing Game Machine, 1 August 1985), five stages, the origin of the name and Suzuki riding the prototype, sales of 20,000 cabinets (citing Game Machine, 1 March 1991), the Mark III card of October 1985, the MSX and PC-8801 versions, and the Shenmue cabinet; Suzuki’s remark on 3D calculations, from an interview with 1UP. https://segaretro.org/Hang-On and https://segaretro.org/Sega_Hang-On_hardware