How to play Pole Position online
- Steer: left and right arrow keys
- Shift gears: up arrow for low gear, down arrow for high gear
- Brake: Space bar
- Start the Qualifying Lap: F12 (the console’s Reset switch) or Space. F12 during a race takes you back to qualifying.
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
There is only one game on the cartridge: the Select and difficulty switches have no function.
Gameplay
Every game has two parts. The Qualifying Lap gives you 90 seconds, but you must finish the lap in 73 seconds or less to earn a place in the Grand Prix. The faster your lap, the better your starting position and the bigger your bonus. Miss the 73-second mark and you can keep driving until the timer reaches zero, then the game is over.
The Grand Prix is four laps long. Your car starts in low gear, with a top speed of 100 mph. Shift into high gear, which goes up to 200 mph, when the speed line at the top of the screen is about halfway across. Each completed lap adds time to the race timer. If the timer runs out before you finish a lap, your car stops and the game ends. Crashes into other cars or roadside signs are not fatal, but they cost you speed and time. Running onto the red-and-white kerb slows you down too, but it can be the only way to avoid a crash.
You score 10,000 points per lap and 50 points for every car you pass. After the last lap, each second left on the race timer is worth 200 points. The qualifying bonus depends on your lap time:
| Grid position | Qualifying time | Bonus points |
|---|---|---|
| Pole position | 58.50 seconds | 4,000 |
| 2nd | 60 seconds | 2,000 |
| 3rd | 62 seconds | 1,400 |
| 4th | 64 seconds | 1,000 |
| 5th | 66 seconds | 800 |
| 6th | 68 seconds | 600 |
| 7th | 70 seconds | 400 |
| 8th | 73 seconds | 200 |
Tips for a faster lap
- Drop to low gear after a crash. The car gets back up to speed faster in low gear. Shift to high once you are rolling again.
- Use the straights. That is where you gain time. Stay in the middle of the road so you can pass on either side.
- Take the inside line in corners. Passing from the inside lane to the outside is easier than the other way round.
- Keep the car straight. Skids slow you down.
The story behind Pole Position
Namco’s arcade game was designed by Kazunori Sawano and Shinichiro Okamoto. It was the first racing game with a track based on a real circuit, the Fuji Speedway in Japan, and the first to make players set a qualifying time before the race.
The 2600 version can’t match the arcade’s scaling graphics and scenery, but it keeps the view from behind the car, the qualifying lap and the time extensions. The British magazine Computer and Video Games called it the best driving game on the VCS, and Entertainment Weekly listed it among the ten best Atari 2600 games in 2013. It kept selling long after the video game crash: between 1986 and 1990 Atari sold more than 570,000 copies of the cartridge in the USA. Pole Position also appeared on the Atari 5200, the Atari 8-bit computers, the Vectrex, the Commodore 64 and other systems, and Namco followed it with Pole Position II in 1983.
Similar games to play next
- Enduro – Activision’s endurance race through day, night, fog and snow
- Grand Prix – a side-scrolling Formula One race from Activision
- Night Driver – Atari’s earlier first-person race along a dark road
- Indy 500 – top-down racing for two players