Super Hang On - different preview screenshots

Renegade

While doing a research on Sinclair User magazine (relating to another topic of the forum) I stumbled on these screenshots from SHO:







So, there was an alternative version of the game actually produced (and scrapped?), or maybe a playable beta version used for previews? This was never released, I suppose?
I wonder if the code still exists somewhere?

RobeeeJay

Or the preview screen was a mockup and they just wrote what the publishers told them the game would be like... because that happened a lot. They would often do anything to plaster "Exclusive" on the page!

joefish

Magazine 'previews' meant they'd just been sent some screenshots by the developer. It doesn't mean anyone from the magazine had seen the game running or played it.

The screens may have been from early development work, faked, or pasted together from sprites and designs done but not yet functioning, or from another game engine (perhaps something like Enduro Racer) with the new graphics stuck in instead.

Anyway, apart from the fact that the bike is coloured in, and maybe they were trying to use BRIGHT on/off banding in the road and gave up on it, I don't see much radical difference between the preview and the end result. Though it's a bit lame that SU included one of the preview images in its review page - that casts doubt on whether they actually had the final game to go on or just a few more screenshots!