Hi I'm Dranzerstorm
You may remember me as a regular contestant on the caption battle contest.
Welcome to Retro Retrospective, my world dedicated to the old guard of the Otaku world; expect some reviews of the old & obscure, and in-depth geeky knowledge with the occasional top ten and I now have a logo.

Little info about me
Well I'm British and I'm in to all things animated and nostalgia.
I've grown up with every cartoon going and have watched hundreds of anime.
Oh and to answer a question I was asked once, no I don't wear glasses in real life, I would wear Loke's sunglasses though.

Cartoon Vault: Pole Position

Post 28 and a good reason why you shouldn't lend your video game franchise to a cartoon maker in the 80s.

Pole Position is often regarded as the pioneer of the racing game, not the first racing game by any stretch but certainly the title was the one that started the ball rolling proper, but around the 80s, cartoon makers seemingly out of ideas turned to video games in order to see if their impact on computers can work as tv shows, however there was so little to go on in narrative that most of them were dreadful, and had to dredge up older already well used tropes at the time such as Scooby Doo style mysteries and 50s style in what was modern day setting, think Happy Days.
Pole Position didn't fair any better by becoming a spy show but at least in their favor it felt current to the time period as the cars borrowed elements from Knight Rider, so what's the story?
Tess and Dan Darrett have inherited the job of crime fighters from their deceased parents and must use their super machines Wheels and Roadie to stop all evil in the world, where the title comes in, Pole Position is the name of their cover as Stuntmen, so yeah no relation to the games other than the car colors matching the main cars in the games but other than that it's surprising Namco let this slide or Knight Rider for that matter as the talking computers in the cars are ripped off from that.
As far as stories go, it's a generous mix of fairly decent, cheesy, ludacrous and seen it all before, so yeah it's not exactly ground breaking but it's at least better than a good portion of the 80s Video Games cartoons everyone had to sit through, but it's still so ridiculously 80s that it hasn't aged particularly well so if your watching it now, take it with a pinch of salt. Awesome theme song though.

End