"Hang-On" was the second game to be developed by Yu Suzuki, the first being 1984's "Champion Boxing." Development of "Hang-On" began with a project brought to him by a colleague who asked him to implement a torsion bar into an arcade game design—although the bar proved too difficult to implement in the final game design and springs were used instead. Suzuki was given the freedom to decide what kind of game to design, and as a fan of cars and motorcycles, he chose to design a game where the arcade cabinet simulated an actual motorcycle and players would have to move side to side on the motorcycle in order to turn. He also had a desire to make his game better than "Pole Position", a Namco game which had beaten out Sega's "Turbo" in popularity. In developing the game, Suzuki wanted to make his new motorcycle racing game a realistic experience. His initial desire was to create a 3D game, though the technology of the time made full 3D environments impossible. Instead, he specified the design of Sega's new Super Scaler arcade system board—initially known as Sega Hang-On hardware—enhanced from the existing VCO Object system board that would utilize multiple CPUs and back end DSP compatibility to create 3D effects, while utilizing 16-bit graphics. The game achieves its 3D effects using a sprite-scaling technique.