Like any metabolizing mammal, I enjoy looking at car auction sites and pretending like I actually had the money to spend on some of these things. Like this little orange Ford Courier truck that sold for $5,100; that would make a really charming and useful daily. Wouldn’t it? I think so. Or even this remarkable Pontiac Aztek that’s being auctioned for charity by what seem to be some really charming and sexy people who don’t smell bad at all, despite what that guy on the elevator said. Recently, I noticed something on Bring A Trailer that caught my attention because it’s a very familiar and enjoyable driving experience, despite the fact that it’s not a car, and isn’t even self-propelled at all. In fact, it’s very stationary, and yet it has a steering wheel, throttle, brake, and gearshift.
It’s a Pole Position machine! Yes, what looks like a fantastic example of Atari’s iconic first-person driving game is currently being auctioned, with about 20 hours left, and it’s already bid up to $3,400, which actually isn’t too bad, really. Most decent-condition stand-up arcade games tend to sell for around $1,500 or so, and this one is one of the much larger sit-down/cockpit-style cabinets, which tend to go for more.
Pole Position was an incredibly important game in the history of first-person driving video games, which, incidentally, I have traced the history of back to a Volkswagen driving simulator from 1972. I wrote about it on the Old Site, and here’s a little timeline, so you can see where Pole Position fits:
Pole Position was a milestone in a number of ways; it was the first driving video game to feature an actual track, Japan’s Fuji Speedway:
The game was also the first to include a qualifying lap to start, and used some advanced-for-the-time sprite scaling techniques (It had two Zilog Z8002 16-bit co-processors just to help with this stuff) to give a pretty good 3D illusion, and the graphics were very colorful and detailed, including billboards with real ads for Atari and Namco games and car parts like Champion spark plugs, and Mount Fuju itself looming on the horizon.
This was the highest-grossing arcade game of 1982 and 1983! Pole Position was a big deal! Here’s a good video of the gameplay to help get you nice and nostalgic:
The cockpit-style cabinet is what really makes this, though, and the one up for auction seems in fantastic shape.
It has some expected wear and tear around the base and rear panel art, but that’s to be expected. These things were made of particle board with formica or similar veneers and generally didn’t age all that well. But the artwork looks bright and intact, and there’s even new plexiglass for the rear window there.
There’s a replaced CRT monitor in there, and the control panel looks in great shape as well:
I’m really curious how high this will go; it’s at $3,400 now, and just for perspective, that’s still less than a Porsche 356 toolkit sold for a couple days ago, at $3,700.
It’s also already going for more than this 1993 Toyota Celica GT convertible went for, at $3,000, and that Toyota is significantly faster, though if you drive that one drunk, you’ve got problems, which is not the case with the Pole Position machine.
The Pole Position machine is also significantly more expensive than this charming Trojan bubble car project at $2,600, and may be almost as fast:
This arcade machine may end up being significantly more valuable than many real cars on Bring a Trailer! But can it beat an old Porsche toolkit? I’m eager to find out.
Also, just because it’s not mobile or drivable now doesn’t mean it has to stay that way; my friend Garnet Hertz once converted an Outrun cockpit-style cabinet into a drivable vehicle. so I don’t see why that can’t happen again:
I’m glad Bring a Trailer is allowing car-adjacent lots like this one to be on the site; arcade driving games are part of automotive culture, after all, and people need to be able to fantasize about buying those with money they don’t have, just like we do with cars.
It ended at $3700 if I remember correctly. I was watching it, friends were egging me on to buy it. I have two friends that are into vintage pinball machines, this was cheaper than some of their machines.
If it wasn’t out in CO I would likely have won it.
Sorry to be a pedant, but Pole Position is a third person perspective racing game, not first person.
If you pretend you’re driving the car while parasailing behind it, it’s first person.
Video looks like the driver is in “low” the whole time. WTF?
Better way to drive is to shift to high when you can (speed/rpm need to be above a minimum), downshift before curves. Get up to 180 or so on the straights.
Why, yes, I’ve played this when it was brand new. Why u ask?
I used to basically just keep it floored and use the low gear as a brake. I don’t know if that’s a valid strategy but it seemed like it as a kid. I also spent WAY more time pretending to play on the Game Over screen than I did actually playing.
I would put this thing on a Renault Twizy and go nuts with it.
I remember this game when it first came out. I got pretty good at it. Spent a lot of quarters, that’s right kids video games used to only cost a quarter
I looked at that cabinet and my brain played the music.
Good memories of quarters for games being a priority.
Watching the attached video is maddening. Dude, there’s a high gear there. It’ll allow you to break 200 mph on Fuji on the straights. Use it, please.
That same Porsche 356A toolkit sold on BaT in 2022 for $10,600, so somebody lost almost $7k on that…ummm investment?
the 356A market is notoriously mercurial.
Nostalgia.
I have OutRun on my phone on Delta, and I get bored pretty quick, so there is no way in hell I would pay this much to play Pole Position.
However, a cabinet like this, with fried electronics, for maybe $500 or less, could be an interesting starting point for a sim racing cockpit. Probably pretty uncomfortable with bad ergonomics though.
I made my own Porsche 356 tool kit, based on the original specs, so I guess I saved 3700$
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cka5VOWIuBA
No mention of Hard Drivin’, the driving game that required you to start the car with a key, and use an H shift transmission with clutch?
Wasn’t the cabinet for that a fibreglass MR2 shell? Great game, that was.
Hard Drivin’ was outstanding. My friends and I sought those out, and we dumped a lot of money into them and the sequel Race Drivin’.
It’s been years and some of the memory has faded but I ran an arcade route and in addition to the OG Pole Position, I bought two Hard Drivin’s – one upright and one cockpit like you mention. That cockpit one was a MONSTER, the one I bought had the accessory 25″ monitor that mounted over the unit so that bystanders could watch the player.
That damn accessory probably weighed a good 200 pounds. I couldnt afford new ones – I think I paid a little over 10K for the cockpit one. The only real trouble I ever had with them was having to replace the steering feedback motors a couple times over the years. When Race Drivin’ came out, Atari offered a conversion kit for updating Hard Drivin – I bought one and converted the upright but it never was the moneymaker that the OG was.
IIRC using the manual transmission was optional. But yeah I thought this article was going to be about Hard Drivin’. I spent lots of quarters on that one and the 3D textured graphics were cutting edge at the time.
Didn’t that also have a steering wheel that loaded fairly accurately as you went around corners? That was a great game! I never came across a better coin-op driving game.
I’m going to pretend I didn’t see a Celica convertible sell for $3k. I’ve already got a Solara convertible and the the wife will strangle me if I start a collection of Toyota convertibles.
And I’m already slowly wearing her down on the concept of owning a Century….
That Trojan was quite the bargain. Hard to believe that their other cars had 700-horsepower aluminum big-block Chevy engines and won Can-Am races
Holy shit that Outrun car is beautifully unhinged
I am the wrong generation for the video game, do not buy that Trojan,they were built upside down.
Oh, wow, Night Driver, rather a blast from the past. A classmate & I were 12 when it came out. My classmate had remarkably quick reflexes (he could actually catch a falling dollar bill with his fingers https://gizmodo.com/the-mathematical-explanation-for-why-you-cant-catch-a-f-1776551693) but was something of a pipsqueak and had difficulty maintaining steady pressure on the accelerator pedal so I would just stand on the accelerator pedal and keep it floored the entire time while he did all the steering. His reflexes were such that he didn’t need to slow down, lol, so we would routinely achieve the highest scores on the machine.
IIRC, Pole Position cost two quarters and was frequently busy so I rarely played it since I would just blow through all my few quarters (yeah, my reflexes ain’t good, lol) before a spot opened up for Pole Position. Maybe that’s why the bidding is so high, there might be more than one person wanting to be able to play Pole Position at home without having to cough up so many quarters (never mind that the winning bid will indeed be *many* quarters…)
I had forgotten about Namco’s inclusion of Marlboro and Martini billboards in a product supposedly targeted at the yoots.
Man, the stuff we got away with back in those days…
Can’t imagine why I’ve had a relationship with alcohol and tobacco for the last 40 years…
Eh that CRT looks like it has some burn-in. If it was replaced it wasn’t recently.
Some burn-in?
Any more and you’ll be able to play it without power.
It looks to be plugged in..
I don’t think I saw any photos of the dark screenOh never mind, I see it now.. Yikes
Makes me wonder how much an Out Run motion simulator cockpit arcade machine would go for…
… and more than 1950s/60s Bally Ride The Champion Children’s Ride and less than a 602cc-Powered Citroen 2CV … and more than a (etc. etc.)
“PREPARE TO QUALIFY”
*boop*
*boop*
*boop*
*BEEEEEEEEEEEP*
That Pole Position cabinet is in decent condition. Needs a lot of love though.
However THE driving game worth buying is, unquestionably, Namco’s Lucky & Wild.
I played a lot of Pole Position, but on a regular stand up cabinet. I think it still had pedals, but no seat. I think most of the Pole Position machines I’ve seen have been the stand-up variety. Maybe this is more expensive because it was a less-popular configuration.
Yeah, the foot pedals were kind of awkward to use standing. Was it just a throttle and it would decelerate quickly when fully lifted? I might even be thinking of a different game, now that I think of it.
I always enjoyed how the track depicted in the game is so monstrously large that you’ll never see another part of it as you race.
Limitations of the software and hardware, I imagine. The GPL versions of Fuji were far more detailed.
Holy shit! I was literally just looking at that listing on BaT! Much nostalgia!
Calm down, sir, we don’t want you to burst an artery, it could be fatal!
Too late!