Pole Position [Gamecube/Arcade] - ALL Clear 59850 pts (Namco Museum)

Played on Namco Museum with default difficulty/time settings using the Dolphin emulator.

Pole Position is among the most influential racing games of all time. Without this, there would probably be no Outrun, no Super Hang On, no Ridge Racer, no Daytona USA, or any other famous arcade racing games that would come after it. I used to play it all the time as a kid as a kid on different Namco Museum collections, but I was horrible at it back then.

This port is overall pretty faithful to the original arcade version considering it's part of a console compilation versus a sitdown cabinet. The developer did make an interesting design choice for this port by adding some tiny amounts of auto-steering on the slightest of corners, probably to compensate for the lack of a proper wheel. That still doesn't help you to get through the harder turns or dodge the other cars, but it works out quite well because it does not have analog turning even if you use an analog stick. Maybe this was based on the PS1 Namco Museum port, which I have not played?

This was my first time making pole position on a complete run, and I'm pretty happy with this run considering that I played on D-pad. I only had one crash. There is some RNG in terms of where the other cars will be, which is not unusual for arcade racers as Super Hang On would do this later on as well for example. Of course, the handling is primitive and slippery compared to later arcade racers.