There's an evolution of racing games that spawned some revolutionary milestones. However, realistic simulations to me weren't a thing until Formula 1 or TOCA on the PlayStation. Until then, I had enjoyed playing titles like Super Cars 2 on the Amiga, RC Pro Am on the Gameboy and finally almost perfect fun racers Super Mario Kart and Rock'n'Roll Racing on the SNES.

There had been attempts on simulating before of course on almost any machine and Pole Position for the Atari VCS 2600 was my first contact, that I actually had to stick with for plenty of years. It feels like an old man, reporting of how hard times were back in the day, but this joke of a game really is all we had.

I had the chance to play the Pole Position arcade cockpit as well and even though it is simple and comparable to technical limitations of a Master System or NES game, maybe, except for offering more realistic steering peripherals, it is definitely something for early 80s. It's probably enjoyable for a quarter or two even today, if you're into checking out history and Virtua Racing is occupied.

On VCS, like almost any arcade port since Pac-Man, it suffers heavily from technical possibilities. There's really just a lump of pixels representing your car, though at least the tires have different colour than the body. The opponents don't. Those are just a yellow mess. The Sound is a good equivalent to the fart app I once downloaded to my cell phone.

My nostalgia for Pole Position relies mostly on how we used to play with it. Whilst it hardly does any more than those backlit Tomy racing playsets some of us owned in the 80s, it also works quite similar incorporating your imagination. Just like we've role played being fighter pilots playing Top Gun or being Luke Skywalker while playing Solaris, Pole Position was our chance being Niki Lauda or any other preferred driver.

That on one hand is something magical I miss in most recent games, on the other a game like Pole Position has so many blanks to fill in, that I really don't know how to sell it to anyone today. It is one thing if there's nothing else available, but if there's so much more on offer, why would you pick a game that doesn't at least have some kick ass mechanics to draw you in?

Let's face it, what we spend (well earned?) pocket money on ages ago probably wasn't even a bang for a buck back in the day. We just had to make the best of it speeding up, steering left and right like an idiot and turn the volume down to a minimum. And concerning imagination, once we had access to Hang-On for Master System or Test Drive for Amiga, Pole Position was swiftly forgotten.

There are good games on Atari's VCS 2600, but it just wasn't the time for racing in home environment. For instance, I played more hours of Pac-Kong, which is a horrible platformer, than I ever did of Pole Position.
I like the artwork of my copy though and with the memories of how we played as kids, often with the box and manual as the only blueprint to what those blocks could possibly represent, it might stay in the collection forever.

Reviewed on Dec 26, 2021


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