Pole Position II | |
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North American arcade flyer
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Developer(s) | Namco |
Publisher(s) |
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Designer(s) | Tōru Iwatani |
Platform(s) | Arcade, Atari 7800, Commodore 64, Epoch Super Cassette Vision, MS-DOS, Mobile Phone |
Release date(s) | |
Genre(s) | Racing |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Cabinet | Upright and environmental |
Arcade system | Namco Pole Position |
CPU | 1x ZiLOG Z80 @ 3.072 MHz, 2x Z8002 @ 3.072 MHz, 1x MB8844 @ 256 kHz |
Sound | 1x Namco WSG @ 48 kHz, 1x Namco 52XX @ 1.536 MHz |
Display | Horizontal orientation, Raster, 256 x 224 resolution |
Pole Position II (Japanese: ポールポジションII Hepburn: Pōru Pojishon Tsū?) 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.
The gameplay is the same as in original Pole Position, plus slightly improved graphics, a new opening theme song, and new tracks. In addition to the original Fuji racetrack in 1974 configuration, there are three others to choose from: Test (resembling Indianapolis Motor Speedway), Seaside (resembling the 1982 United States Grand Prix West circuit in Long Beach), and Suzuka. The cars have a different color scheme, the explosions now show debris, and there are several new billboards. 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.
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) 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