Maybe you weren’t around while Pole Position was originally in the arcades. Perhaps you weren’t around to experience how it felt to endlessly throw ten pees into the arcade machine with your sights set on the high-score set in the swanky unhygienic arcades you sheltered in. Mayhap you aren’t even so old as to remember that pumping ten pees into a machine rewarded you with any considerable amount of gameplay time. That’s because you’re too young.
But don’t panic! There is a solution.
Pole Position Arcade is a slice of gaming-gone-by, a piece of history that gives you a fair idea of the past you were cruelly denied. The simpler times, when ten pees were king and winning in the arcades guaranteed you legendary status in the playground. So, even if you were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall, all is not lost. You young people just have to learn how to listen.
Pole Position was a seminal racing game. At the time, the view behind the car was something new. Gamers of the early eighties were used to seeing the action from above, watching tiny oblongs slowly circle a fully-visible track. In Pole Position, the innocent and unsuspecting gamer was planted behind the controlled car, the scenery
whooshing towards them and every corner a surprise.
And what was most surprising was the sheer speed of the thing. When viewing races from above, the game could only run so fast before the game became unplayable. But from behind, your F1 car could really shift. And shift it did. That gameplay is still exhilarating today, and the sense of speed really makes you feel like you’re hurtling along at 155mph and beyond.
Don’t think that your opponents will be slow, just because they’re old. Your track-mates will whip past you if you give them even half a chance, and only following the perfect racing line will steer you to victory. People are often surprised by how hard old-school games were, but you really had to concentrate to even think of glory.
All you really need to know is this – you should know where videogames came from, and Pole Position is an easy way in. Retro games are often criticized for being graphically poor, or lacking the pull-power of their modern equivalents. Pole Position is not one of those. Give it a try – it’ll blow your socks off. Guaranteed.
