What do motorcycles and spaceships have in common? In Sega of America's case, they bundled two games into one package. Hang-On, a racing title previously released as a Japanese Sega Card at a budget price, and Astro Warrior, a space shoot 'em up, have been paired to create The Combo Cartridge. While this does come off as a weird duo, compilation releases are always a pleasant thing to see, not to mention this is ultimately a sound decision by Sega.
Originally a best-selling arcade racing title with rapid scaling visuals and a unique bike cabinet, this Hang-On port places you on a motorcycle named FEARLESS 4. In a race against opponents? No, you battle the timer here. Taking place in a third-person, pseudo-3D perspective, you must drive on a road that goes forever into the horizon, crossing several checkpoints in order to reach the end of a course. And though you're not racing for a first place position, you still must carefully drive around other motorcycles while manually switching between gears. If you think a little innocent knock with another bike won't cause much of a commotion, you'd be wrong, as a basic bump will make FEARLESS 4 explode in a ball of fire. Considering you simply get pushed away in the original for colliding, it's an "interesting" design change here.
Credit: SEGA
Credit: SEGASince the game is all about outrunning a timer, making any sort of crash will be a huge deal. Of course, dodging on a straight road requires minimal effort, but the real difficulty comes when you have to take corners, especially steep ones. When you're going 250 km/h during a turn, you lose all form of handling while the bike starts skidding off the road. Granted, the answer is to slow down and most would think to do so with the brake button, but the latter is not always the correct solution. You must find the right balance between hitting the brakes or simply letting go of the acceleration, especially since a crash loses precious seconds, seconds which could be carried over to a new countdown per checkpoint. You'll need them, because the game is asking you to complete eight courses, each with five checkpoints, in a single session.
At the opposite end of the spectrum you have Astro Warrior, a vertical shoot 'em up made exclusively for the Master System. Here, you commandeer the Astro Raider and, in typical shoot 'em up fashion, you're tasked with single-handedly combating the Devil Star Imperial Forces before they conquer the galaxy. You begin with a ship that's barely combat-capable, defending itself with a measly laser projectile and slow movement speed; you won't last long in this state. You will need to perform "bombardments" whenever passing over a space fortress, destroying as many blocks as possible with your laser in order to get power-ups that strengthen and make your ship faster. While enemies in the starting Galaxy Zone aren't necessarily huge threats, reinforcing your Astro Raider here is more for what's to come.
Astro Warrior is a competently-constructed title, but one that doesn't particularly stick out if you've played similar space shooters released around the same time. That's not to say it won't give you a semblance of challenge. While the first stage is more of a warm-up than anything, the second stage, Asteroid Zone, is when Astro Warrior doesn't let up. Within the span of a minute, three waves of asteroids are flung on screen, a gang of twin "icicles" litter the field and accelerate when shot at, saucer ships quickly spew six-way spreadshots, a formation of blue ships veer towards your ship when close, and a horizontal row of spiked-orbs drop down to your position. With a properly powered ship, this is a workout, so imagine the horror when you lose a life and respawn at a checkpoint with all your powers removed. The game makes sure you earn a victory here.
Credit: SEGA
Credit: SEGAIf the impression you got from both Hang-On and Astro Warrior is that they're overall okay games, then that would be correct. There's something else these two have in common: both titles are very meager when it comes to variety and content. While Hang-On does have eight courses with five locations each, every course shares the exact same locations in the exact same order, so the only thing to look forward to is making those corners, each one indistinguishable from one another. The overall limited feeling and monotony are glaring setbacks for this racing title. With Astro Warrior, the greatest fault is that there's only three stages and they're very short, each lasting approximately three minutes in length. Even with a few lives lost, you can beat all these stages in just under ten minutes once you know the patterns.
That's why Sega was smart for placing them together in The Combo Cartridge; these games are... debatable as single releases. Together, however, they can at least provide a decent time waster. You think this would be the definitive version going forward, but reality can be strange sometimes. Astro Warrior, for instance, received a solo cartridge release months after the duo cart with no additional content. It's still just those three stages on loop. Hang-On received even odder releases depending on the territory. Instead of going for the combo option, some regions opted for a Sega Card and a 1990 cartridge release, the latter likely the result of the Master System II variant launching without a card slot. It's confounding... yet consistent with the fact that, no matter the era, Sega follows up a good idea with a series of bad ones.
