Let's Play - Pole Position (Atari 8 bit)

[@AndREDraut]

A game that I played on the Arcade in the 80's, one small contact and the car explodes :)

[@electricadventures]

We had it at our local bowling alley and I usually had a go at it of if I was there and I had a spare coin. It was brutal with the car collision detection as does this version.

[@Harmik2]

Played this a fair bit on my 800XL and 5200 back in the day. Was amazed at the 7800 version when it came out, the 5200 and 7800 were both imported pretty sure I was the first person in Australia to have a 7800 as I brought it back from the USA when we were over there. The 7800 is the first batch with the expansion port.

[@electricadventures]

I keep on forgetting that the 7800 has a version of Pole Position (and I even have a copy), I will have to play some more 7800 games at some stage. Still some issues with the 2600+ firmware and Pal titles, so might play some more after the next update. The 7800 is quite a capable console, just a pity that they ended up taking out the Antic sound chip and not a lot of software was released for them. Both the 8-bits and the 7800 are systems I would like to have a go at releasing some games for at some stage.

[@gullpayne]

Very impressive for the time

[@electricadventures]

A very solid port of the arcade game but with some sensible changes to make it have a bit more replay-ability for home use.

[@jjermar1]

I am genuinely surprised by this game. Racing games are not my thing, but this one looks pretty good, considering this is Atari 8-bit.

[@electricadventures]

Even though it was one of the older titles I think it was done rather well and shows off the Atari 8-bit systems capabilities quite well, plus it’s quite a fun racing game :)

[@techsaverscomputerrepairca2127]

I thought that the track, sounds and gameplay were great. Could never figure out why your car looked like it was made from leftover LEGO pieces. Also i wanted the arcade font for the scoring, not the system default. So basically, what they spent rime on was excellent, but the car and the fonts seem like placeholders to me.

[@electricadventures]

They got the gameplay nice and close, and unlike some other titles the colours are nice and vibrant. The fonts and even the car shape perhaps came down to final ROM size limitations, but agreed they seem to be shortcomings for this one.

[@kraftwerk974]

Around 1983 I went to a software shop with a classmate and the idiot stole the Pole Position cartridge for his Atari 800 😑. Fortunately enough nobody noticed not even I. We could have got caught 🤨. So this game in particular brings very bad memories to me 😒

[@electricadventures]

I can totally understand that I had a similar situation in a department store, the classmate did indeed get caught and I just walked away, couldn’t believe he had done it. I can’t even remember what he stole though. This is a particularly good game though, well worth playing.