It was certainly a NamCompendium First as a game that required 16-bit microprocessors to function. It was such a departure, in fact, that it required what may have been the first 16-bit arcade game ever made. Working alongside hardware designer and programmer Kouichi Tashiro (credited on Galaxian and the Rally-X series) and sound engineer Ohnogi Nobuyuki ( Galaga and New Rally-X), Iwatani designed a game that represented a huge departure from his previous works. While I cannot speak to his actual pay stubs in the early 1980s, I can work with dates and establish that Nakayama Masaya saw fit to give Iwatani two years to develop his next work. Iwatani has gone on the record stating that Pac-Man did not enrich him personally, and that his role within Namco as a games designer barely changed in light of the success of his seminal creation. It also marks the return, and arguably the last huzzah, of Toru Iwatani to the game planning role. Behold, the best possible way to experience Pole Position. Pole Position may thus be positioned (ahem) as a spiritual successor to these titles. Disallowing Rally-X and its sequel as they were more like aneurysm dispensers than racers, Namco had produced two electromechanical games that explored this space: 1970’s Racer, and 1976’s F-1 (with Atari). Pole Position was not even Namco’s first attempt to replicate the experience of driving a car.
#Namco museum 50th anniversary ps2 controller issues update#
I will update this at some point with actual arcade impressions, but for now please accept this caveat emptor. I have yet to do this, and actively hunting for this (as will be discussed) complicated three decade old arcade cabinet has proved fruitless so far. It isn’t just a matter of the CRT glow or the the tactile feel of sitting in a deluxe version of the cabinet: the game demands a mode of analog input that all but requires the original steering wheel to “get” what this game was doing. I mention this up top because Pole Position is a game that is absolutely dependent on experiencing the pure arcade version. I have in fact played games like Galaga, Pac-Man, and Dig Dug in their original arcade format, worn out joysticks and all, but up to this point we have been strictly dealing with games that relied on the sort of inputs that a face button or two and a halfway decent directional pad could replicate. Confession time: Up to this point, I’ve been content to consider the later reissued versions of the games considered in the NamCompendium to be sufficient for review purposes.