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Why Pole Position II


Joey Kay

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Hey hey!

 

Aside from the fact I think Pole Position II was a crappy pack-in (clearly Atari didn't learn a thing from the Super Breakout vs. Donkey Kong saga) I am now left to wonder...

 

If Atari packed Pole Position II with every NTSC 7800 sold, then why did they release a boxed version of the game?

 

And what about PAL Asteroids... was that game released seperately in Europe?

 

 

Cheers!

 

Joey

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I'm not totally sure that PP2 was always a pack-in, later models may not have come with it or any game...

But, I LOVED PP2 as a pack-in personally, but then I have always like racing games (especially PP back then), and while Super Breakout was a bad choice on the 5200, I didn't personally care for Donkey Kong as the pack-in on the CV. If they had only kept analog controllers for the 7800 (self-centering of course)...at least the pack-in wasn't Asteroids (built in to Euro 7800's IIRC)

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I don't believe PAL Asteroids was ever released on cart.

 

Which is a shame because I can't play it when the DevOS ROM is installed on my machine... I wonder if it would be difficult to hack the code out of the BIOS? Presumably the Asteroids BIOS version maps to a different address range as a cart (and thus would need relocating)? or is there hardware trickery that makes it appear in normal cart space?

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Now that's REALLY strange, it's not like Robotron wouldn't sell or something. It's not like how Atari Age magazine explained why Gravitar was being released to Atari Age club members only, since they did some research on the game and found it was only liked by top players since it was so difficult, thereby it wasn't originally released to the general public.

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I could never figure out why the game was release in a box, either. Perhaps that's why there are so many at OSheas LTD.

 

As for the Pack-In issue, Atari never seemed to grab that concept well.

 

The 2600 was packed with Combat ... not the best title.

 

The 5200 was packed with Super Breakout while the Colecovision came with Donkey Kong Jr. Game over.

 

The 7800 was packed with Pole Position while the NES came with Super Mario Brotherts. Game over. Perhaps Ball Blazer might have been a better choice, given the times.

 

The Lynx came with California Games. Not a bad choice, but Blue Lightning or Gauntlet might have been better.

 

Then there was the Jaguar with Cybermorph. Alien Vs. Predator would have made much, MUCH more of an impact.

 

Oi!

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Okay...you guys need to remember how Atari marketed these items. For the 7800, Atari mainly focused on how much it was like bringing home your Arcade favorites in the home with its superior graphics etc...

 

When you think of that, Pole Position 2 makes a perfect choice. It was an arcade quality game and really did show off the colors and graphics that the 7800 could pull off at the time. Also, while the 7800 wasn't really released in large numbers until 86, Pole Position 2 was always scheduled to be the pack-in since 84 when the 7800 was ready. In 84 PP2 would have been impressive in every way. I actually loved PP2 and was thankful to have it. Personally another Pac-man or Combat type game would have made the 7800 less attractive to buy.

 

You also mentioned about the Lynx and Jaguar pack ins. Well again, when the Lynx was new, California games offered players everything the lynx was capable of. Basically excellent graphics and sound for the time...plus, the ability to network it to other lynxes. Blue Lightning came out afterwards anyway. Gauntlet would have been good too, but then perhaps Atari felt that title would only appeal to a few select people.

 

As for the Jaguar, I don't have one...but I do know that Cybermorph started out more or less as a graphics demo for the Jaguar and they made a game outta it later. Alien vs Predator would have been an awesome pack in...but you have to remember that AVP was released after the Jaguar was initially released. Atari didn't change the pack in games all that often. Even with the 2600 they packed in Combat until the Vader units when they stuck Pac-Man in them instead.

 

Course over seas they packed in different games...and it is interesting to note that Atari's consoles had longer lifespans over seas.

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Guys - you make good points, but I still stand by mine: Atari didn't ADAPT well. Nor did they release really strong games as packins.

 

When Sega released the Genesis, the sales were "ho hum" at first. ALTERED BEAST was the packin. They changed it to Sonic The Hedgehog and the Genesis buried the Turbografx alive. And the SNES, which was expected to blow the Genesis away, was always in a neck and neck fight for marketshare. Shrewd move. Nintendo staved off the Jaguar and the 3DO by offering DONKEY KONG COUNTRY as a packin for the SNES.

 

Atari didn't react when packin games were ho-hum. The 7800 was released with Pole Position II as a packing in 1986, even though the NES was packed with Super Mario Brothers at the time. Ballblazer was done at that point ... why not release that instead? Or, why not change the packing in 1987 with something else?

 

What about the Jaguar? Why not replace the packin with AVP? Or the Lynx ... BLUE LIGHTNING was awesome ... why didn't they pack it in during the GULF WAR? Atari's BAT-MAN bundle was a great idea ... it's too bad they didn't try something sooner.

 

Even the quality of games. Pole Position II was a mediocre game, at best. Ditto for Cybermorph. How many people bought N64s because SUPER MARIO WORLD got such good reviews?

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Interesting thoughts...

 

I guess a lot of it comes down to personal taste. But by 87, Atari should have had their heads examined for including PPII. In my Atari dreamworld, Atari would have licensed Pacland for the 7800 and had it ready to go packed with the machine for Christmas of '87.

 

Mind you, Christmas of 1988 Atari had their promotion where if you bought a 2600 or 7800, you got two free games...

 

and if you bought two games, you got the third for free. Anyone remember those tv ads?

 

Lurking somewhere in the basement at my folk's house is the VCR tape that inadvertently captured those Atari ads on WDIV Detroit (both aired right before ALF on Monday nights) ...god I loved that show...

 

Cheers!

 

Joey

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Lurking somewhere in the basement at my folk's house is the VCR tape that inadvertently captured those Atari ads on WDIV Detroit (both aired right before ALF on Monday nights) ...god I loved that show...

 

What?! YOU liked ALF?! ;)

 

That's cool to have stuff like that on tape. I have a commercial on tape from the radio from a heavy metal band that I went to see in concert in '86, and then, listening to it years later when I got into death metal, during the commercial they announced three other legendary bands that I later got a bit into, which was cool to look back on that, just like it's cool nowadays that a lot of websites have old Nintendo, Atari, etc. ads preserved on the net, god bless 'em (and make fun of kids' hairdos, clothes, etc. from back then, ha ha).

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Atari was going to have AvP and Doom as pack-ins, they even made some box mock-ups this way, they would have come out for Christmas '95 or in early '96, had Atari done better, but as you know, by X-mas '95 Atari was done for...if the PSX hadn't come out then, they may have done better and released these pack-in versions as well as survived longer, having only the 3DO and Saturn as competition (both of which didn't fair any better in the face of SONY). All three had roughly the same life-span, but Saturn came out later, therefore it's life-span ended later...

The industry would certainly be a MUCH different place today if Sony hadn't gotten into the console business...

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I always thought Pole Position II was a rather good pack-in game for the 7800. The 7800 version of the game was very well done, and was one of the best racing games back in late 1986. It was also exclusive to the system and showed off the system's capabilities well.

 

DracIsBack, I agree with you that Atari didn't adapt well, but that wasn't made clear in your earlier post in this thread. :) I thought Combat was a good pack-in game for the 2600, except that it had one flaw: It was only a two-player game. Despite that, it still turned out to be one of the best head-to-head games, and one that got a lot of play whenever friends came over.

 

I think most of Atari's pack-in game decisions were pretty good, with the exception of Super Breakout for the 5200. Super Breakout was a fun game, but not one that showed off the system well, and the graphics and sounds were antiquated next to ColecoVision's Donkey Kong. Atari did realize this error pretty quickly, and changed over to Pac-Man a few months later.

 

I do agree with DracIsBack in that Atari should've "adapted" to changes in the market (kind of like they did with the 5200). The 7800 pack-in should've been changed around 1988 or 1989 to a newer, more impressive game. The Jaguar would've done well with Tempest 2000 or Alien vs. Predator in the box after the first year, but on the other hand the trend in the market was shifting towards offering "core" systems (without any pack-in games), and this is what Atari chose to do. That allowed them to save some money, and at the same time enabled them to pass this savings onto customers by dropping the price--a good move, especially since someone buying a new system shouldn't be forced to pay for a pack-in game that he might not necessarily like. They also did this with the Lynx as well.

 

Now, the "core" system is the rule rather than the exception, and rightly so. Not everyone likes the same games, and no game appeals to 100% of the population; it's better to allow the consumer to choose his own first game, rather than have the manufacturer choose it and force the consumer to pay extra for it.

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  • 19 years later...

Apologies for a 19-year-old necrobump.

 

Regarding "Why Pole Position II" as the pack-in, I've read over the years in several reliable media reports from the day that Nintendo was originally planning to use F1-Race as its pack-in.  Maybe it even was for a while - somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.  Not sure if that was in reaction to Atari Inc packing in PPII on the 7800, or if Atari Inc was packing in PPII in reaction to Nintendo. Or maybe it's just a gigantic coincidence.  

 

But here's something interesting, and apologies if this has been pointed out before...

 

It appears that in 1988, Atari was planning on switching its North American pack-in to Asteroids, and switch to joypads as standard issue, according to this promotional pack from the 1988 summer CES:

http://www.atarimania.com/documents/atari-the-winning-package-1988.pdf

 

This helps explain the production run of PPII carts.  Though it then makes you wonder if a switch to pack-in Asteroids was due to a mistaken run of unsellable PPII carts?  Still a lot of questions, but certainly some clarification.

 

The more you know...!

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On 12/13/2021 at 1:15 AM, Joey Kay said:

It appears that in 1988, Atari was planning on switching its North American pack-in to Asteroids, and switch to joypads as standard issue, according to this promotional pack from the 1988 summer CES:

http://www.atarimania.com/documents/atari-the-winning-package-1988.pdf

Was Pole Position II an actual cart or built into the NTSC 7800s like Asteroid into the PAL consoles? It's interesting they call it a "pack-in" when making it "built-in" would seem to be more economical/practical.

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2 minutes ago, slx said:

Was Pole Position II an actual cart or built into the NTSC 7800s like Asteroid into the PAL consoles? It's interesting they call it a "pack-in" when making it "built-in" would seem to be more economical/practical.

I believe it was an actual cart. I think it was only PAL units that had the pack in on internal ROM (Asteroids).

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  • 2 weeks later...

I don’t remember when we actually got the 7800 as I was too young. But I was old enough to remember it when it was being actively supported, and of our initial games I thought Pole Position II looked amazing. 
Im thinking that it may of been the most graphically impressive and full colored game of the release line up, especially to say, a new owner of Atari who isn’t that interested in video games. So it was probably decided that it would be the best showcase of the systems leap forward beyond the 2600 graphically.  
I know this isn’t a popular opinion but as a young child I really liked pole position II and was really impressed with it.  I thought it was a fine pack in game at the time, although looking back now I feel that Ms. Pac Man or maybe even Food Fight would’ve been better choices. 

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