Game:

Pole Position (1982)

Duration: 10:54

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4

A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Change Lanes [changela], played with WolfMAME 0.261. Score, 1,966,147. It's not every game that crowns you SUPREME KING OF THE WORLD...but here I am 🤴.

I used keyboard controls, and my preferred MAME analog settings were:
- P1 pedal 1 increment/decrement 1
- P1 pedal 1 auto-centering 1
- P1 pedal 1 reverse Off
- P1 pedal 1 sensitivity 5
- Dial increment/decrement speed 14
- Dial reverse Off
- Dial sensitivity 50

This is a tough game to get the hang of, but here are some notes on clearing the first loop:
- The blimp drops 5,000 point pickups if you're driving on water. In the first leg you can just coast on water (no acceleration), after that you need to be moving forward a bit quicker. Getting lots of point pickups - especially in the easy first two legs of the race - means you get more extra lives (fuel refills).
- Later in the race, the plane drops seeker-missiles. You'll want to turn as fast as you can to avoid them. Crashing into a wall can help "confuse" the missile. Getting hit immediately loses a life, so it's better to lose some speed - or crash into a wall or mine - instead of getting bombed. If your timing is lucky, the plane will fly by around the time you're making a big turn, or doing the reached-the-checkpoint sequence.
- You move fastest on brown lanes: Floor it, watch for cars to appear in the distance, and swerve if they're on your part of the road. Ideally you want to switch between driving on water (for points) and brown lanes (for speed).
- Reaching a checkpoint with nearly-fuel full is no better than reaching it with almost-full fuel, so you should spend extra "budget" of fuel scoring lots of points on water.