14

POLE POSITION (1982): WHERE THE RASTER MEETS THE ROAD

“Prepare to qualify!” What gamer of the 1980s could forget these words? Certainly none of those whose souls still carry some trace of rubber, some hint of those skid marks left there by Namco's Pole Position.¹

Screenshot from the Japanese version of Pole Position. Note the billboard advertising a brand of cigarettes. When the game made it to the United States, the billboards were changed to advertisements of other games.

Introduced to the United States by Atari in 1982, Pole Position is arguably the most important racing game ever made. Although it wasn't the first, it was far more successful than its predecessors and established the conventions of a genre that has flourished ever since. Of particular note are its audiovisuals and physics, which steered mightily toward realism. Whereas most previous arcade hits had been abstract or fictitious, Pole Position seemed to follow Pong in simulating a recognizably human activity. The game became a key title for Atari's 2600 VCS console, but was eventually ported to almost every viable platform of the era.

Pole Position was widely imitated, and naturally other developers were eager to launch their own racing games and franchises. As we'll see, these efforts eventually splintered into several sub-genres of racing, with different vehicles, objectives, perspectives, and gameplay. First, though, let's talk about the racing games that came before.

Modern gamers might be surprised to learn that the first arcade racing games were introduced as early as the 1940s.² Games like Drive Mobile, made by International Mutoscope Reel Company in 1941, operated purely on “electromechanics.” Although not technically “videogames” (there was no video display!), these games used electrical and mechanical components like relays, resisters, belts, and bells to simulate the driving experience. The basic idea was that players controlled a small metal car by moving a steering wheel. The car hovered above a road or map printed on a cylinder that rotated and moved from side to side as the game progressed. It was the player's job to keep the car positioned above the road while avoiding any obstacles. Though woefully primitive by today's standards, these games still earned tidy profits for their owners—even though players inserted pennies rather than quarters!

Auto Test, a driving simulation released in 1959, was—as the name implies—intended more to help student drivers than entertain children. Nevertheless, it offered a nice innovation—the road was shown in a film projected onto a screen located directly in front of the player. There were plenty of similar machines produced throughout the 1960s and 1970s, gradually introducing innovations and refining techniques. Perhaps the pinnacle of this genre is Namco's F-1, manufactured in the United States in 1977 by Atari. The “deluxe” model offered a cabinet that resembled an actual race car and was quite popular with gamers. Unfortunately for modern collectors and anyone who'd like to try these machines, their fine, complex assemblies of moving parts made them anything but durable—particularly after years of abuse by overenthusiastic children.

The first true racing videogame to show up in arcades was Atari's Gran Trak 10, which debuted in 1974. The cabinet featured a steering wheel, accelerator and brake pedals, and even a gear shift. However, the graphics consisted of a fixed screen, with the player's car shown from a top-down perspective. Since there were no other cars besides the player's, the game was really only a race against time. Unfortunately, an accounting error caused Atari to lose quite a bit of money manufacturing the machine. Atari offered a scaled-down version in 1974 called Trak 10. A more ambitious project was Gran Trak 20, which allowed two players to simultaneously race about the track. Perhaps the most ambitious of all such games was Atari's Indy 800, a 1975 game that allowed eight simultaneous players. The players’ wheels surrounded a screen located in a pit in the center. It was also the first videogame to use full color, boasting a 25” display. There were even mirrors that let bystanders watch the race! Atari's much later release, the popular Super Sprint (1986), is somewhat of a spiritual successor to this game.

Screenshot from Atari's Super Sprint.

The Japanese got into the top-down racing craze at this time as well. A great example is Taito's Speed Race, which made its way in 1974 to U.S. arcades via Midway, who rebranded it as Racer. Its key claims to fame were vertical scrolling and great collision detection. This model would prove quite influential. We can definitely see its influence in Atari's 1975 game Highway, the first racing videogame to feature a sit-in cabinet like the old electromechanicals. In passing, we should mention Exidy's Death Race (1976), a top-down game that aroused some controversy for its gameplay that consisted of running over people (later called “gremlins”) to earn points. An otherwise utterly forgettable game, Death Race attracted the attention of the mass media, and the resulting controversy marred the image of the neophyte arcade industry. Such hysteria is still with us today, as any fan of Grand Theft Auto (see Chapter 9, “Grand Theft Auto III (2001): The Consolejacking Life”) can easily attest.

Screenshot from Atari's Night Driver with simulated plastic overlay.

Some of the leftover cabinets from Highway were used for Atari's Night Driver, released in 1976. Night Driver was a different kind of racing game. Superficially, it resembled the older electromechanical games, which offered a scrolling road rather than a fixed view. Atari's game was black and white, and the car was merely a plastic overlay glued to the bottom of the screen. The “night driving” aspect of the game was a brilliant design decision, as it justified the sparse graphics, which consisted of rectangular reflectors that demarcated the road. The challenge came from taking sharp turns at high speeds; there were no other cars. Despite all these limitations, the game deserves some respect for offering some semblance of the first-person perspective that would become such an integral part of later racing games.

Screenshot from Sega's popular Turbo. Coleco would bundle a home conversion of Turbo for their ColecoVision with Expansion Module #2, which consisted of a steering wheel and pedal.

Perhaps the next big step came in 1981 with Sega's Turbo. Like Night Driver, Turbo offered a first-person perspective of the road. Besides the obvious addition of color and other cars to compete against, the game also offered a third-person (“above and behind”) view of the player's vehicle on the screen. The objects alongside the road (buildings, trees, and so on) also scaled and whizzed by as the race progressed. However, the game isn't won by reaching a finish line, but only by staying on the road and passing 30 other cars before a time limit runs out.

As this brief history shows, by the time Pole Position appeared on the scene in 1982, gamers had come to expect some sort of racing game at every major arcade. However, it would blaze past the competition like a Formula One against a Model T, establishing itself as the future of the genre. But what was so great about Pole Position?

For one thing, its graphics made other racing games—even those released months earlier—antiquated by comparison. The animation was much smoother and more realistic, and the sound effects were varied and clear. It also offered an actual racetrack (the Fuji Speedway) that had a definite start and finish line. Another novel feature was a “qualifying lap” that determined the player's “pole position” for the actual race. Players who couldn't complete the lap in 73 seconds were disqualified and had to pony up another quarter to try again.

Atari really lucked out by securing the rights to what became the best-selling arcade game of its year. Namco had given Bally/Midway first dibs on which of two new games it would license for manufacture in the United States. The company lucklessly chose Mappy, a cutesy jump-and-run game that achieved nowhere near the success of Pole Position. Atari later licensed Pole Position for its own platforms and several of its competitors. There was even a version for the Intellivision, whose eager owners could at last put the arcade pedal to the Mattel.

Namco released Pole Position II the following year, which offered two new racetracks and improved graphics, and of course there was no shortage of derivatives and clones for arcade, computer, and console markets. One of the most innovative of these is Epyx's Pitstop, a 1983 game for the Atari 8-bit, Coleco ColecoVision, and Commodore 64. The big innovation here is the titular “pitstops,” where players took control of a pitcrew to refuel their racecar and change its tires. A sequel released in 1984 offered split-screen modes so that two players could compete simultaneously. Perhaps the ultimate customizable racing game of the era was Rick Koening's Racing Destruction Set (1985), for the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64, a popular but often-overlooked computer racing game that let players design their own tracks, then race on them (alone or with a friend) using a selection of modifiable types of vehicles (see bonus chapter, “Pinball Construction Set (1982): Launching Millions of Creative Possibilities” for more).

1986 saw the release of Sega's Out Run, an influential arcade game itself with much in common with Pole Position. However, here the player controls a Ferrari Testarossa convertible, and the game seemed to take itself much less seriously than many of its rivals. Players could select from among three different songs to listen to while driving, and could choose which route they took through the course. One version of the cabinet introduced a hydraulic system that would become influential in later arcade racing games; it moved along with the car on the screen, greatly heightening the feeling of immersion.

Another great innovation came in 1988 with Atari's Hard Drivin’, which the company billed as “the world's first authentic driving simulation game.” It offered a racing environment composed entirely of 3D polygons, a highly realistic gear shift, and a steering wheel with “force feedback,” which made it bump and vibrate in a manner that corresponded to the car's situation in the game.

Pitstop added a crucial new feature to the Pole Position model: the pit stop (below), where players had to move quickly to refuel their vehicle and replace worn tires. Commodore 64 version shown.

The game's most impressive feature was its accurate simulation of actual driving, but also boasted a fun stunt track. The “above and behind” perspective of Pole Position and Out Run was replaced with a first-person or “windshield” view.

The trend toward increasingly realistic driving games continued in 1989 with Papyrus’ Indianapolis 500: The Simulation, a game released for Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, and PC computers. Like Hard Drivin’, it offered a first-person view and focused on realistic physics and detailed graphics. However, what really set it apart was its “car setup” options, which allowed players to make all sorts of adjustments to their car, such as gear ratios and tire pressure. It also offered a replay mode that let players study a race from six different perspectives. Sega's Virtua Racing (1992) took things a step further by offering fully rendered 3D cars as well as environments and the ability to switch perspectives during the race. It was left behind a year later when Namco's Ridge Racer rolled into arcades.

Screenshot from Atari's Hard Drivin’.

If games like Hard Drivin’ and Indianapolis 500: The Simulation were racing toward realism, other games of the era strove to incorporate elements from other genres. We certainly see this in Bally Midway's 1983 arcade hit Spy Hunter, which combined a vertical-scrolling racing game with elements from shoot ’em ups. We can also find alternatives to realism in Rare's R.C. Pro-Am for the Nintendo Entertainment System, a 1987 game that put players behind remote controls instead of steering wheels. As with Spy Hunter before it, the gameplay was focused not just on racing but on collecting powerups for battling one's opponents. This trend would continue in later games like Nintendo's Super Mario Kart (1992), for the Super Nintendo, which would inspire a whole series of clones itself, and Silicon & Synapse's Rock N’ Roll Racing (1993; Nintendo Game Boy Advance, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo).

None of these games would likely appeal to someone wishing to simulate an authentic racing experience, though they are certainly fun and many are influential. We might be better off thinking of them as “simulations of driving simulations” rather than driving simulations in their own right. Indeed, some games get so far off track, so to speak, that they defy classification. This is certainly the case with Sega's Crazy Taxi (1999), an innovative action arcade game whose similarity to Pole Position is superficial at best. Crazy Taxi is one of many vehicle-based games that focus more on stunts and destruction than realistic racing; other examples include Reflection's Destruction Derby (1995; Sony PlayStation) and Angel Studios’ Midtown Madness (1999; PC).

Indianapolis 500: The Simulation, Commodore Amiga version shown, allowed players to fine-tune their cars, then instantly try out the results on the track. It was a definite move toward more realistic, simulation-style racing games.

Unlike some of the genres we've discussed in this book, the racing sim's best days seem to be ahead of it rather than behind. Modern fans have a number of superb franchises to choose from, such as Atari's Test Drive (first Accolade release, 1987; Atari ST, Commodore 64 and others), Electronic Arts’ The Need for Speed (starting in 1994 for the 3DO), and Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo (1998; Sony PlayStation), to name just three. Big budget racing games are still able to command the attention of the gaming media, and the genre shows no signs of slowing down. Indeed, if anything, it is rapidly expanding, with high-profile games available for nearly every type of vehicle—real or imagined.

Box back for Mario Kart: Super Circuit (2001) for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance, one of several entries in the popular and influential franchise.

But what is it about games like Pole Position that made and continue to make them so fun for so many people? Some obvious explanations are that they offer a viable alternative to the many violent games on the market. Although some of the games we've discussed in this chapter do contain violence, most racing sims punish players who intentionally or accidentally crash into other vehicles. Another appealing aspect of the genre is its emphasis on cinematic realism; the best of these games look almost identical to a race one might see on television. There is also some pleasure to be found in competing, either against the clock or against other cars, particularly when those other cars are controlled by one's friends.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, driving games seem more familiar to many gamers than other genres. After all, most of us will at some point drive a car or at least ride in a motorized vehicle. Americans, in particular, seem obsessed with their vehicles, and many (if not most) of us have fantasized about driving as recklessly (yet skillfully) as the many action heroes we see in the movies or on the NASCAR track. Of course, trying to do so in reality will likely get one killed, or at least handed a nasty ticket. These games give us a safe opportunity to explore these fantasies, performing the delicate maneuvers that we would love to initiate each time we're stuck in traffic. Thus, racing and driving sims offer, on one hand, an intimately familiar experience. On the other hand, they offer the exotic—the chance to qualify as a true speed racer.

Box back for the original 3D0 version of The Need for Speed.

¹Just in case you don't recognize the allusion here, watch Atari's infamous television commercial for the home version of Pole Position at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om84Zc4-KcQ.

²The material for this section comes mostly from Lance Carter's excellent History of Racing Games, which features lots of photos and scans of vintage hardware and advertisements. This highly recommended book is available for free at http://historyofracinggames.wordpress.com.