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Pole Position from Atarisoft for the BBC Micro is a faithful rendition of the same Arcade classic, where you are put in the driving seat of a Formula One racing car, rubbing shoulders with Niki Lauda and Keke Rosberg and other great lights in the Formula One racing world.

The game is packaged brightly with a cassette and a leaflet describing the object of the game, which is basically to drive as fast as possible without colliding with any objects which may obstruct your path to fame and glory to the world championships.

Pole Position starts off with the same music as the arcade version as well as a bright display, the cars are quite chunky to look at, as are your opponents which can make manoeuvering between the cars at high speed quite tricky as collisions are possibly the most likely occurence when overtaking.

There are two settings for gear changes, low and high, low gear is best for starting up and for slowing down when encountering bends, when the roads are clear, it is best to go into high gear and race along as far as possible. Slowing down can be a real problem as the car is likely to stall from such high speeds and can sometimes result in the car stopping for good, putting pay to all your dreams of the world championship.

If you are successful in completing one lap in the specified time and you're at least eighth in line, you are eligible to take place in the world championship. If you are unlucky enough to crash, or to go careening off into the hard shoulder or smashing into a billboard, then you merely start off again from where you crashed. If you stopped or crashed short of a billboard, then you can in some cases not have enough room to manoeuvre and you are stuck; still if you find yourself in such a state then function key 1 will start you off into a new game.

You can view how many laps and general game status by pressing F2, you can toggle between joysticks and keyboard controls by F3 whereas F4 and F5 turn on and off sound but the skidding sound effects are useful to determine speed and whether you should slow down or not, a nice touch is F6 which pauses the game, useful if the telephone rings and you are halfway through your best ever game!!

The sound effects are good, and not too noisy, swerving in and out of the other contenders shows how accurate the sound effects are and how well implemented the game actually is, the cars are a little on the chunky side, which may put off a few avid "Pole Positioners", but given a little time to get used to the feel of the game, Pole Position is an excellent version.