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Pole Position
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Name:
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Pole Position
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| Company: |
Atari |
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Model #:
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RX-8034 |
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Programmers:
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Mike Horowitz & Betty
Ryan Tylko (GCC)
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| Year: |
1983 |
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Released?
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Yes
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Notes:
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Port of the 1982
Namco arcade game
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While it may not look like much by today's standards, Pole
Position was the one of the pioneers of the modern racing
game. Featuring amazing scaling effects and fast action,
Pole Position was a technological marvel featuring realistic
(for the time) sounds and graphics. In fact Pole Position
was so advanced that the hardware used in the arcade cabinet had
a bad tendency to develop faults making keeping a machine in
working order a challenge. Pole Position was one of the choices
presented to Bally/Midway from Namco for sub-licensing.
Bally/Midway chose Mappy while Atari was left with Pole
Position which then went on to become the biggest game of
1983. Even today Pole Position remains one of the most
popular racing games of all time.
Pole Position really isn't all that different from
modern day racing games. Sure it may be single player and the
graphics may fairly primitive in comparison, but the basic concept
of weaving your race car in-between other cars still hasn't
changed. Pressing up on the joystick will put your car into
'HI' gear while pushing down will put it in 'LO'. You'll
need to start in low gear until you get up to about 70 MPH and
then shift into high gear to keep accelerating. Although the
gear shift seems somewhat pointless in the home version, the
arcade game featured no brakes so downshifting into LO was a quick
way to reduce speed (don't try this on a real car kids) .
Pole Position was one of the first games to feature advertisements
for other games inside the game itself. If you look closely
in the arcade version you'll see advertisements for Centipede, Dig
Dug, and other Namco/Atari games on the road signs on the sides of
the road. Unfortunately these ads couldn't be carried over
into the home version due to system limitations.
Even though the Atari 8-Bit computers were fairly advanced
for the time, they had no chance of reproducing the scaling found
in the arcade game. However the programmers at GCC managed
to make a very good attempt at bringing the arcade game
home. Almost everything found in the arcade game is in this
version and the action is as fast and furious. About the
only thing missing other than the advertisements is the voice
sample at the beginning of the game which says "Prepare to
Qualify". Although it's not as nice for racing games as the
5200's analog joystick, the digital joystick found on the 8-Bit
computers works remarkably well. In addition to the change
from analog to digital controls, the Atari 8-Bit computer port
makes one other small change. Due to only having one button
instead of two, the button is now only for braking and the car
will auto accelerate. This can make the game harder or
easier depending on your skill and familiarity with the arcade
version.
Although it was ported to just about every system
under the sun, the Atari 8-Bit version of Pole Position is
considered one of the best. This is proof that GCC knew
their stuff and that the Atari 8-Bit line of computers were
capable of bringing the arcade fun home.
| Version |
Cart Text |
Description |
| ?/??/83 |
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Missing copy protection
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Return
to 8-Bit Software
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