20 replies to this topic

[Duke 4ever]

Best. Coin op. Ever.

Whats your thoughts?

[Bryan]

Duke 4ever said:

Best. Coin op. Ever.

Whats your thoughts?

What's funny is Midway turned it down in favor of Mappy.

-Bry

[Duke 4ever]

bryede said:

Duke 4ever said:

Best. Coin op. Ever.

Whats your thoughts?

What's funny is Midway turned it down in favor of Mappy.

-Bry

Not the only dumb mistake in video game history. Atari turned down the chance to manufacture the NES in America. If they said yes, the Atari as we know it may still be alive today.

[NE146]

Duke 4ever said:

Best. Coin op. Ever.

Whats your thoughts?

I disagree.. But I like the game very much however

[Bryan]

PP has a big 2 board set that required 2 power supplies and a big fan. Combine that with edge connector meltdown problems and corroding Namco custom IC's and it's a messy thing to repair. Good game, tho.

-Bry

[NovaXpress]

Quote

What's funny is Midway turned it down in favor of Mappy.

Not a dumb mistake, just worng in retrospect. Midway's marketers probably figured that a cute character game would sell more than a racing game because that is exactly what was happening in the marketplace. Unfortunately for them, Pole Position wasn't the usual driving game.

[Curt Vendel]

Duke 4ever said:

bryede said:

Duke 4ever said:

Best. Coin op. Ever.

Whats your thoughts?

What's funny is Midway turned it down in favor of Mappy.

-Bry

Not the only dumb mistake in video game history. Atari turned down the chance to manufacture the NES in America. If they said yes, the Atari as we know it may still be alive today.

Actually Atari never turned down the chance at all, what happened was Nintendo was very impatient with getting Atari to ink a deal with them and then during Ray Kassar's outster in the summer of 83' due to his stock swindling (geeezzzz Martha stewart did the same thing and she's going to jail, all Ray had to do was pay back the $82K and resign as CEO of Atari) I digress... during the changeover of upper management the deal had fallen through the cracks and Nintendo's impatience had them step back and decide to do the FCS/NES themselves, here is a reprint of an internal memo from within Atari regarding the Nintendo deal and also you'll see mention of the "Maria" or Atari 7800 project:


http://www.atarimuse...ntendo-deal.htm



Curt

[Balloon Fight]

Awesome game. I used to play the sit-down one at a local arcade until they auctioned it off. Went for $1000.

[DanBoris]

Duke 4ever said:

Not the only dumb mistake in video game history. Atari turned down the chance to manufacture the NES in America. If they said yes, the Atari as we know it may still be alive today.

Since Atari's major problems where with marketing and management, and not so much with products, I think they still would have died, the NES deal may have just prolonged the death.

Dan

[DanBoris]

NovaXpress said:

Quote

What's funny is Midway turned it down in favor of Mappy.

Not a dumb mistake, just worng in retrospect. Midway's marketers probably figured that a cute character game would sell more than a racing game because that is exactly what was happening in the marketplace. Unfortunately for them, Pole Position wasn't the usual driving game.

I have to agree. Without the benefit of hind sight I think I would have picked Mappy as a more sure fire success then Pole Position.

Dan

[tyranthraxus]

Curt, you always seem to have some great nugget to drop into a
topic. That memo was a fascinating read, thanks!

[jeepnut24]

Second best coin op ever. The best would be Super Off Road. Or TMNT or asteroids or ....

[LarcenTyler]

I would kill to own a Pole Position machine! Ever since kindergarten I loved that game!

[Cootster]

I'm just guessing that Mappy was far cheaper to produce. I mean, it was a much simpler game, using I think the same setup as a lot of Namco games that already existed, and didn't require a special cabinet.

There is no such thing as standup Pole Position, right? I've never seen it as anything other than a cockpit cabinet.

And it basically created a genre. Every racing game since is just a PP remake, from Super Monaco GP to NASCAR Arcade and everything in between.

Not to mention, it's gotten far better console conversions than a lot of them. But what's the deal with the awful INTV version? Why was it even allowed to exist?

[tyranthraxus]

I've only ever seen the standup version! I'd love to play a sit down
one.

[Saikyo]

Pole Position 2 was way better also im glad that midway chose Mappy instead
theres just too many racing games around something different like Mappy was a change!

[NovaXpress]

We were going to get both games either way, so no one did us a favor.

Pole Position was more common as a stand-up than a cockpit but of course the cockpit was the way to go. I doubt that Mappy was appreciably cheaper to produce. Any extra cost could be made up from the operator.

Midway simply made the best choice according to waht was popular at the time. Cute character games were the big thing, while driving games were a minor genre (only Turbo and Monaco GP made any kind of splash). Atari might have pciked Mappy themselves if they had a choice. That's the poblem with marketing, it can only tell you what has happened before. It can't predict explosions. Midway threw a lot of ad dollars at mappy, but it just didn't catch on.. Mappy never got much play at the arcades I visited. But I remember seeing Pole Position debut. There was a line stretching out the door, just waiting to play. The only other games I saw draw a crowd like that were Dragon's Lair and Star Wars.

[Cootster]

Here in the Southeast, they were all cockpit machines, but those cabinets seem to be really popular here for a lot of games . I assume there are stand-up Spy Hunter and Turbo machines as well, but I've never seen or touched one.

Someone I know actually claims to have seen/played a cockpit Galaga in Tennessee. No way that exists.

[Cassidy Nolen]

Quote

Someone I know actually claims to have seen/played a cockpit Galaga in Tennessee. No way that exists.

Not from the factory, Midway only released a cocktail, mini (cabaret with a 13 inch monitor) and a full size upright.

Its sad, but people will convert the cabinets to other things. There was a laserdisc flight game (cant think of the name) that I saw once running Street Fighter..ugh.

All of the games mentioned here came in both stand up and sit downs (Turbo, PP, PP2 and Spy Hunter). Turbo even came as a mini cabinet!

Cassidy

[Cootster]

On the topic of odd cabinet choices:

Cocktail Mortal Kombat.

Once spotted somewhere in the Nebraska/Wyoming area in a C-store/bus depot. It still had Frogger art on the side. But I looked at it and it was MK instead. So I decided to try to play upside down (AFAIK, the screen didn't flip and so P2 would always be upside down even in a one-player game.) I got owned on a game I beat with one continue the day it arrived at our local arcade.

[Atariboy]

Is there a way to play Pole Position with a steering wheel outside of owning the arcade game itself?

I can't get used to a normal game controller in things such as Namco Musuem for the Game Cube. I need a steering wheel to enjoy it.