Ride Without A Crisis
As the first super scaler game, Hang-On turned some heads with both its sense of speed and z-axis perspective. A year later, Sega gave us Outrun, a game with just as much of a sense of speed, but with a decidedly more leisurely approach. Yu Suzuki has often referred to Outrun as more of a driving game than a racing one, and once this is pointed out, it’s easy to appreciate the game as more of an enjoyable drive than a race against the clock. It’s a shame that Sega never really revisited this approach to games. At least not intentionally.
When I booted it up for the first time, it was clear that Hang-On for MSX is not a challenging game. The timer ticked down from the moment the light turned green, but there was a distinct lack of urgency. In fact, once I passed the first checkpoint, I realized that you’d almost be hard pressed to run out of time without doing so on purpose. The stages of the course are remarkably short and pass by quickly, with each checkpoint, it almost feels as if you can’t spend time fast enough. My game wrapped up quickly, and within a few minutes, I was encouraged to try the next course, which is just the same course with slightly higher difficulty.
The first time I looped the game, I felt little sense of accomplishment. But who knows, maybe the second loop had more of a challenge, so I gave the course another go around. Same stages: Circuit, Seaside, Monument Valley, City Night, and back to Circuit. The game seemed almost identical, and I still played through the game with little trouble. However, I thought something seemed different. “Did the city have a moon before?”. So I played through again to see if it would repeat. The moon appears again, this time now in a more defined crescent. Intrigued, I began another loop of the circuit. This time the moon was half full, and had half of a face on it. How novel!
So I continued playing, challenge largely absent. Each time I’d drive through the city, more of the moon would reveal itself, and each time I moved on to the next stage, I felt more at home with the course as a whole. I wanted to see how many phases this smiling moon had. Did it stop once it became a complete face, a smiling satellite illuminating my 8 bit course? Perhaps a small rocket would impact its surface, a la the classic silent film. All the while, the game became oddly relaxing. Learning the limits of my bike and the way the turns of the course paired with my opponent’s movement resulted in a state of flow that was aided by the similarly repetitive yet oddly enjoyable background music.
Intended or not, Hang-On had become a driving game, not a racing game. Much like the Testarossa of Outrun fame, I was no longer racing against a line of opponents, but weaving between other vehicles as I enjoyed the course. I played through the course over and over, first to see the moon smile at me, and then to see if I could break a million points. Over time I began to appreciate the simplicity of the early graphics, and I found myself imagining what the world was like in the somewhat abstract landscape I was seeing.
Eventually I hit a million points. When I finished that loop, I allowed the fanfare to play and for my bonus points to be counted. I opted not to continue, and instead just let my timer run out so I could see my final score. I leaned back in my chair, took my hands off the keyboard and felt something unexpected: relaxation. Hang-On for MSX hadn’t been challenging, and maybe it didn’t have to be. It was enjoyable, and for a few minutes I lived in a world far simpler than my own. It’s a world I recommend spending a little bit of time in. Play the game, ignore the competition, and enjoy the moon for a while.
