| Manufacturer: | Namco |
| Genre: | Racing |
| Board: | Dedicated Z80-based hardware |
| Year: | 1982 |
Released in 1982, Namco's Pole Position put players in control of a Formula 1 car, racing around Japan's Fuji Speedway. Players had to complete a qualifying lap before taking part in a championship race. Like Sega's Turbo before it, Pole Position used a rear view of the F1 car and sprite scaling to create a sense of 3D - a technique that game developers on all platforms would continue to use in racing games until polygonal graphics took over in the mid-1990s.
There had been racing games in the arcade before, but Namco's Pole Position was the first to give a real sense of speed. As such, it went on to become one of the most popular games of the early to mid-1980s and entered the public consciousness thanks to its plentiful ports to home systems. It was even featured in a few movies, including The Goonies, Cloak and Dagger and most significantly the 1985 sci-fi adventure D.A.R.Y.L. when the robot child of the title reveals he's no normal boy by beating the Atari 800 version of the game on his first try (and somehow making the game run at about 200 FPS).
The video below shows a complete run through Pole Position, which only actually takes 4 minutes:
MTW
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