Sega Hang-On hardware

Sega Hang-On hardware
Manufacturer: Sega
Release Date RRP Code

Sega Hang-On hardware is an arcade system produced by Sega in 1985. It has no official name, but debuted with Hang-On (from which the name comes from) and went on to power several bike racing games of the mid-to-late 1980s. It is alternatively known as the Sega Space Harrier hardware, named after Space Harrier which released later in 1985.

The system specifications are similar to those of the Sega System 16, but has a stronger focus on graphics, adding a second 68000 processor and a separate video board. Sega Hang-On hardware acts primarily as an advancement over the VCO Object board - it was designed to scale a large number of sprites/textures in real-time, allowing for the creation of "pseudo-3D" graphics, in which a game can simulate a player moving towards the screen. At the time of release, this technology was considered groundbreaking, and would go on to fuel the Sega OutRun hardware specification as well as X Board and Y Board systems.

As this board was designed to serve one purpose, only five games were produced to make use of this system, all of which opt for the third-person perspective.

Hardware

Designed by Sega AM2's Yu Suzuki, this was the first in Sega's Super Scaler series of pseudo-3D arcade hardware. At the time of its release, this was the most powerful game system. The pseudo-3D sprite-scaling was handled in a similar manner to textures in later texture-mapped polygonal 3D games of the 1990s. In an interview to 1UP.com Yu Suzuki said: ^[1]

“	My designs were always 3D from the beginning. All the calculations in the system were 3D, even from Hang-On. I calculated the position, scale, and zoom rate in 3D and converted it backwards to 2D. So I was always thinking in 3D.	„
— Yu Suzuki

Hang-On was controlled using a video game arcade cabinet resembling a motorbike, which the player moved with their body. This began the "Taikan" trend, the use of motion-controlled arcade cabinets in many arcade games of the late 1980s, two decades before motion controls became popular on game consoles. ^[2]

Technical Specifications

Sega Hang-On

• Board composition: CPU Motherboard, Video Board, Sound Board
• Main CPU: Motorola MC68000 & Hitachi FD1094 (Motorola 68000) @ 10 MHz (16-bit & 32-bit instructions @ 3.5 MIPS)
• MCU: Intel i8751 @ 8 MHz (Space Harrier) (8-bit instructions @ 8 MIPS)
• Sound CPU: Z80 @ 4 MHz (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.58 MIPS)
• Sound board: Sega 834-5670
• Sound chips:
  • FM sound chip: Yamaha YM2203 @ 4 MHz (3 FM synthesis channels)
  • PCM sound chip: SegaPCM (315-5218) @ 4 MHz (stereo output, 16 PCM channels, 12-bit audio, 31.25 kHz sampling rate)
• GPU: Sega Super Scaler chipset
  • Graphics chips: 315-5011 sprite line comparator, 315-5012 sprite generator, 2× 315-5049 tilemap chips, 2x 315-5107 horizontal timing control, 315-5108 vertical timing control, 315-5122 timing chip
  • Clock rates: 12.5874 MHz sprite line buffer render clock, 6.2937 MHz sprite line buffer scan/erase & pixel clock
• Memory: 940.25 KB
  • RAM: 84.25 KB
    • Main: 48 KB (16 KB work RAM, 32 KB sub-RAM)
    • Video: 18 KB (4 KB text, 2 KB sprites, 4 KB colors, 8 KB roads)
    • Sound: 2.25 KB
  • ROM: 856 KB EPROM (192 KB program memory, 584 KB video memory, 80 KB sound memory)
  • Video memory: 602 KB (18 KB RAM, 584 KB EPROM)
• Video resolution: 320×224 (display), 400×262 (overscan), progressive scan (non-interlaced)
• Frame rate: 60 frames per second
• Color palette: 32,768 (15-bit RGB high color depth)
• Colors on screen: 6144
• Graphical planes:
  • 2 tilemap layers: Row & column scrolling
  • Text layer
  • Sprite layer: Hardware sprite-scaling
  • Road layer: 512×256 resolution
• Sprite/texture capabilities: Hardware sprite-scaling, 128 sprites on screen per frame, 7680 sprites/textures scaled per second, dual line buffers, double buffering
  • Sprite/texture sizes: 8 to 256 pixels width, 8 to 256 pixels height
  • Fillrate per scanline: 800 sprite pixels/texels (800.75 sprite processing ticks) per scanline, 100 sprites/textures per scanline

Sega Space Harrier

The Sega Space Harrier hardware added the following upgrades in late 1985:

• FM sound chip: Yamaha YM2151 @ 4 MHz (8 FM synthesis channels)
• Memory: 2108.25 KB to 2196.25 KB
  • RAM: 308.25 KB, including 192 KB high-speed SRAM (Static RAM)
    • Main RAM: 64 KB (16 KB work RAM, 48 KB sub-RAM)
    • Video RAM: 242 KB
      • CPU Motherboard: 50 KB (32 KB tiles, 4 KB text, 2 KB sprites, 4 KB colors, 8 KB roads)
      • Video Board: 192 KB SRAM
    • Sound RAM: 2.25 KB
  • ROM: 1800-1888 KB EPROM
    • Standard: 1800 KB (448 KB main, 1160 KB video, 192 KB sound)
    • Maximum: 1888 KB (512 KB main, 1184 KB video, 192 KB sound)
  • Video memory: 1402-1426 KB (242 KB SRAM, 1160-1184 KB EPROM)
• Color palette: 98,304
  • 16-bit color palette: 15-bit RGB high color depth (32,768 colors) and 1-bit shadow & highlight that triples up to 98,304 colors.
• Graphical capabilities: Translucent shadows

Gallery

• 

  Motherboard

• 

  Sound Board

List of Games

• Hang-On (1985)
• Space Harrier (1985)
• Enduro Racer (1986)
• Super Hang-On (1987)
• Limited Edition Hang-On (1991)

Sega arcade boards
Originating in arcades
77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 VIC Dual G80 Zaxxon VCO Object System 1 LaserDisc Appoooh Hang-On System 2 System 16 OutRun Gigas X Board Y Board System 24 System 18 System 32 Model 1 Model 2 H1 Board Model 3
Console-based hardware
84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 SG-1000 System E System C Mega-Tech System Mega Play Sega Titan Video NAOMI Hikaru NAOMI 2 Atomiswave System SP Chihiro Triforce
PC-based hardware
05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Lindbergh Europa-R RingEdge RingWide RingEdge 2 Nu Nu 1.1 Nu 2 ALLS