Pole Position II

Pole Position II[lower-alpha 1] is the sequel to racing arcade game Pole Position, released by Namco in 1983. As with its predecessor, Namco licensed this game to Atari, Inc. for US manufacture and distribution, who also released a port of it as the pack-in game for their Atari 7800 ProSystem console. Pole Position arcade machines can be converted to Pole Position II by swapping several chips.[1]

Pole Position II
North American arcade flyer
Developer(s)Namco
Publisher(s)
Designer(s)Tōru Iwatani
Platform(s)Arcade, Atari 7800, Commodore 64, Epoch Super Cassette Vision, MS-DOS
Release
  • USA: November 1983
  • JP: December 1983
Genre(s)Racing
Mode(s)Single-player
CabinetUpright and environmental
Arcade systemNamco Pole Position
CPU1 × Z80 @ 3.072 MHz,
2x Z8002 @ 3.072 MHz,
1x MB8844 @ 256 kHz
Sound1x Namco WSG @ 48 kHz,
1x Namco 52XX @ 1.536 MHz
DisplayHorizontal orientation, Raster, 256 x 224 resolution

The gameplay is the same as in the original Pole Position with three additional tracks to choose from: Test (resembling Indianapolis Motor Speedway), Seaside (resembling the 1982 United States Grand Prix West circuit in Long Beach), and Suzuka.

Minor differences from the original
Arcade gameplay

The cars have a different color scheme, the explosions now show debris, there are several new billboards, and there is a new opening theme song. The timer is displayed as "TIME" in the Japanese version (as it was in the original game), and it is displayed as "UNIT" in the American release.

Reception

In Japan, Game Machine listed Pole Position II on their November 15, 1983 issue as being the most-successful upright arcade unit of the year.[2]

Legacy

Pole Position II has been re-released as part of various Namco Museum compilations, but the two active permanent circuits were removed (because of licensing issues with both Fuji and Suzuka), and similar looking circuits, Namco Circuit and Wonder Circuit (after Namco's Wonder series of Japanese theme parks) were added respectively. In Namco Museum Virtual Arcade, they were renamed to Blue and Orange respectively, even though neither track features the colors. The layouts were similar.

In 2006, Namco Networks released Pole Position II for mobile phones.[3]

Notes
  1. Japanese: ポールポジションII Hepburn: Pōru Pojishon Tsū

References
  1. Pole Position II at the Killer List of Videogames
  2. "Game Machine's Best Hit Games 25 - アップライト, コックピット型TVゲーム機 (Upright/Cockpit Videos)". Game Machine (in Japanese). No. 224. Amusement Press, Inc. 15 November 1983. p. 29.
  3. IGN review of Pole Position II cell phone game Archived 2006-03-16 at the Wayback Machine
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