Pole Position

The player assumes the role of a Formula One race car driver who is attempting to compete in a race at the Fuji Speedway, with the track as laid out at the time of the game's release. The first objective is to complete a one-lap time trial within a specified time limit in order to qualify for the race. A successful qualification awards bonus points and sets the player's starting position among seven computer-controlled cars, based on the lap time. The actual race consists of a set number of laps, with a set amount of time given at the start and more granted after each lap.

During both the time trial and the race, the player can briefly lose control of the car by running through puddles on the track, colliding with other cars, or driving around curves too quickly. Running off the track and into the grass will slow the car down. Billboards placed next to the track will destroy the car if it collides with one of them, resulting in a brief delay as a new car is put into play.

Pole Position was created by both Shinichiro Okamoto and Galaxian designer Kazunori Sawano. Namco electro-mechanical game engineer Sho Osugi also assisted with development. Based on Namco's experience with producing coin-operated electro-mechanical driving games in the 1970s, notably F-1 (1976) designed by Sho Osugi, Sawano showed Okamoto rough sketches of his idea, who liked it enough to begin production of a video racing game. Okamoto wanted the game to be a true driving simulation game that used a 3D perspective and allowed the player to execute real-world techniques.

He also chose to add the Fuji Speedway into the game to make newer players recognize it when they first played. Music was jointly composed by Nobuyuki Ohnogi and Yuriko Keino.

In Japan, Game Machine magazine listed Pole Position as the highest-grossing arcade game of 1982, and later listed it as the second top-grossing upright arcade unit of May 1983, before it returned to being the top-grossing game of October 1983. Internationally, Pole Position was the most popular game of 1983. In Europe, it was a top-grossing arcade game in 1983.

In the United States, it sold over 21,000 arcade cabinets for an estimated $61 million ($204 million adjusted for inflation) by 1983. 5 million ($32 million adjusted for inflation) per week ($450 weekly per machine). On the US RePlay arcade charts, it topped the upright cabinet charts for seven months in 1983, from March through August and again in December. It also topped the US Play Meter arcade charts for six consecutive months from March through August 1983, and then topped the street locations chart in November 1983.

Pole Position is regarded as one of the most influential video games of all time, and was the most successful racing game of the golden age of arcade video games. Bill Loguce and Matt Barton listed it as one of the 25 most influential games of all time, calling it "arguably the most important racing game ever made". In 1984, Electronic Games stated that, for "the first time in the amusement parlors, a first-person racing game gives a higher reward for passing cars and finishing among the leaders rather than just for keeping all four wheels on the road, thus making driving an art". In 1995, Flux magazine ranked the game 32nd on their "Top 100 Video Games".

In 2015, Pole Position topped IGN's list of The Top 10 Most Influential Racing Games Ever. They stated it had "a drastically better-looking" third-person "chase cam view" than Turbo, was "the first racing game based on a real-world racing circuit (Fuji Speedway in Japan)", "introduced checkpoints, and was the first to require a qualifying lap", and that its success, as "the highest-grossing arcade game in North America in 1983, cemented the genre in place for decades to come and inspired a horde of other racing games".