Most likely the best racing game at the time of its release. It took all of the individual concepts that had been put out and copied dozens of times, and polished all of them into one compact little package. A proper race track, qualifying lap, F1 cars that actually looked like F1 cars, a good sense of speed, and even a race queen waving the checkered flag. Given all of this attention to detail, it's lazy for the game to just drop cars on to the track when the race starts in an attempt to constantly give you someone to be racing against. The absolutely nails-on-chalkboard tire screech when you turn hard is another literal pain point.

Absolutely the best racing game on the Atari 2600 (at least in my personal experience). It's absolutely insane how good the graphics stayed even when moving from arcade to the Atari. I didn't grow up when games having graphics like this were impressive, hell Metal Gear Solid 1 came out around the time I shot out the womb, but I did grow up in a home that only had an Atari as video game entertainment for a bit, so comparing Pole Position to something like Stampede when I was growing up made it really stick out to me. I genuinely look back at Pole Position and continue to be shocked by how much they could get on that little wooden box of a console with this thing. Obviously, if I want to play a racing game right here right now, Pole Position probably wouldn't be my first choice, but for what it was in 1982, it's fucking crazy.

The arcade is really great too to my understanding, though I've personally never played it. I imagine it being really important in racing games as it's probably one of the earlier arcade racing games to have the player angle follow in a 3rd-person sort of view rather than top down like the majority of the (very few) racing games of the 1970s. This 3rd-person view is the format that racing games still follow to this very day. I dunno, my pre-arcade Pole Position knowledge is honestly just from me going down a rabbit-hole of watching old racing arcade games on YouTube, so I might be missing some obvious 3rd-person view racing game but all I can currently think of is Turbo (1981) and I'm just going to say that while that game is also impressive, it's ugly as fuck, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

This and Enduro are great racing games if you have any interest in seeing what some of the best of the best were for the Atari 2600.

4.5/5

(atari-produced usdm cabinet)
the realest of racing roots.

one track, one pedal, 2 gears, infinity degrees of movement on the steering wheel (really?!?!) it does everything it needs to do: be a damn good open wheel (as in formula [number]) racing game for the arcade market of 1982. letting off the gas or a quick shift into low is the most controllable way to lose speed for the tighter corners, but exploding into fellow vehicles on the track will lose you The Most Speed. The biggest flaw with this game is the use of an endless encoder for steering, akin to tempest's knob, might even be the same part but with a deep dish wheel attached. a spartan, landmark "pretend car" experience, served one checkpoint at a time. a response to sega's Turbo, but it would quickly be usurped by sega's response to it. might have felt better if the cabinet had any sort of lock or return-to-center on the steering, as i tended to overcorrect when coming out of turns, but the wheel rim itself was about the same diameter as what's in my civic, around 330mm!!! most arcade cabs have like 280mm-ish wheels.

(additionally, while the sit-down cabinet is most ideal, if you play the standiup cabinet with stool you end up with a driving position not unlike a truck/lorry)