Manx TT Super Bike

Manx TT Super Bike is a motorcycle counterpart to Sega's arcade racers, inspired by the legendary road races on the Isle of Man. Unlike circuit-based games, the player doesn't race in a loop but along long, winding roads running through the countryside, where there's a risk of collision with oncoming traffic, terrain obstacles, and demanding corners with limited visibility. This concept made the game an exception within the Saturn's lineup and brought a different kind of tension than classic circuit titles, because a mistake on a long track meant a much more painful loss than on a familiar circuit that a player can easily memorize after a few laps.

The game was based on the Sega AM3 arcade cabinet and was ported to the Saturn with graphics that were respectable for the time — motorcycles lean convincingly into corners, the scenery around the track scrolls by at a decent speed, and the game managed to convey a sense of real motorcycle riding pace, albeit at the cost of simpler textures and a more limited draw distance compared to the platform's newest titles. The controls were adapted for a standard joypad, letting the player handle steering, braking, and shifting without needing the complex, motorbike-shaped controller offered by the arcade cabinet, and the game thereby retained its accessibility on the home console without requiring the purchase of special peripherals.

Motorcycle racing wasn't very common on consoles in the nineties, and Manx TT thus filled a gap that hardly any other title on the Saturn offered. Its selection of tracks based on the real topography of the Isle of Man gave the game a mark of authenticity that arcade circuit racers usually lacked, and it represented a welcome alternative to four-wheeled vehicles for motorsport fans. Today it's an interesting example of the platform's genre diversity and a pleasant change of pace for anyone who's grown tired of classic circuit racing and is looking for something different on the Saturn, something more demanding on concentration and track memorization.

Why play: For motorsport fans looking for something on the Saturn other than four-wheeled racing, Manx TT offers authentic tracks based on the real topography of the Isle of Man and a pleasant change of pace.