Pole Position

Pole Position is the game that invented the racing genre's modern grammar. The attract screen shows a real racetrack - Fuji Speedway, licensed - and the first phase is literally a qualifying lap: beat the time and you start the race from pole position, fail and you start further back. No game before it had treated a race as a two-act structure.

Then comes the race itself: a set number of laps around Fuji, dodging rival cars that behave like obstacles rather than racers, with the famous instruction 'Try to keep grand prix style' scrolling past as your reward for qualifying. Technically it was years ahead - pseudo-3D perspective road, billboards that later became the branding habit of the whole genre (it carried real Atrai/Namco ads in-race), and a steering wheel with a low/high gear shift that genuinely changed your lap strategy. It was the best-selling arcade game of 1983 in North America, spawned Pole Position II with four extra tracks, and its qualifying-lap structure is still used in racing games today.

• ▸The original qualifying lap + race two-act structure
• ▸Licensed Fuji Speedway recreated as the track
• ▸Steering wheel, accelerator/brake pedals and a real low/high gear shift
• ▸In-race billboards - the origin of the genre's advertising tradition