Pole Position ?-??-83

This is a late beta for the Atari 400/800 version of Pole Position.  This beta was made during the conversion process from the Atari 5200 version which normally involved changing some code relating to the location of the OS and converting the controls to work with the different joystick, however there are two interesting differences.  First there is a bug in the code that displays the checkered flags on the final lap which causes the game to display graphical garbage instead.  This bug is not in the 5200 version so it must have accidentally been introduced during the conversion process. 

Second, the copy protection code has not yet implemented.  This code writes garbage data to the game ROM which has no effect if the game is being run from a cartridge (ROM is Read Only Memory), but will crash the game if it's being run out of RAM which would be the case if it was pirated to a disk file.  Ironically Pole Position was widely pirated back in the day and almost all copies can be traced back to this unprotected beta due to the checkered flag display glitch.

Prototype Differences

The copy protection code is missing

There is a bug when displaying the checkered flags

 

 

That ain't right	You'll have to do the voice yourself
Jerry was a race car driver...	7th?  Better practice some more!

 

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