Pole Position was an evolution of Namco's earlier arcade racing electro-mechanical games, notably F-1 , whose designer Sho Osugi worked on the development of Pole Position. The game was a major commercial success in arcades. After becoming the highest-grossing arcade game of 1982 in Japan, it went on...
Pole Position was an evolution of Namco's earlier arcade racing electro-mechanical games, notably F-1 , whose designer Sho Osugi worked on the development of Pole Position. The game was a major commercial success in arcades. After becoming the highest-grossing arcade game of 1982 in Japan, it went on to become the most popular coin-operated arcade game internationally in 1983. In North America, it was the highest-grossing arcade game for two years in 1983 and 1984 and still one of the top five arcade video games of 1985. It was the most successful racing game of the classic era, spawning ports, sequels, and a Saturday morning cartoon, although the cartoon had very little in common with the game. Pole Position is regarded as one of the most influential video games of all time, and it is considered to be the most influential racing game in particular. Play continues until either time runs out in any lap and/or complete four laps of the race, which ends the game. Pole Position was the first racing video game to feature a track based on a real racing circuit. It was also the first game to feature a qualifying lap, requiring the player to complete a time trial before they can compete in Grand Prix races. Once the player has qualified, they must complete the race in the time allowed, avoiding collisions with CPU-controlled opponents and billboards along the sides of the track. Okamoto wanted the game to be a true driving simulation game that used a 3D perspective and allowed the player to execute real-world techniques. Okamoto recalls the most challenging part of development being to produce the hardware needed to run it, as the game was too "ambitious" to run on older hardware. The development team used two 16-bit processors to power the game, which Okamoto says was an unheard-of concept for arcade games at the time — for a while, it was the only video game to use a Z8000 CPU.Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani chose the name Pole Position as he thought it sounded "cool" and appealing, and he shortly after filed a trademark for it.
Video game information for Pole Position, including publisher, developer, localizers, and more. Information is maintained by the community and may be incomplete, but you can help complete this video game information for Pole Position by filling it out or improving it. You'll earn WAD to promote yourself on GameSense.co as well as experience to increase your effect on changing video game scores with your post reactions and video game ratings.
GameSense.co is a video game database, review, news, video, and social website for managing your video games and filtering video game information. Manage your video games with your GameSense.co video game backlog.
