Pole Position is considered one of the most important titles from the golden age of arcade video games.

It was an evolution of Namco's earlier arcade racing electro-mechanical games, like F-1 (1976), whose designer Sho Osugi worked on Pole Position.

A successful qualification awards bonus points and sets the player's starting position among seven computer-controlled cars, based on the lap time.

It was also the first game to feature a qualifying lap, requiring the player to finish a time trial before they can compete in Grand Prix races.

Once the player has qualified, they must complete the race in the time allowed, avoiding collisions with CPU-controlled opponents and billboards along the sides of the track.

The game's graphics featured full-colour landscapes with scaling sprites, including race cars and other signs, and a pseudo-3D, third-person, rear perspective view of the track, with its vanishing point swaying side to side as the player approaches corners, accurately simulating forward movement into the distance.

[3] While earlier three-dimensional arcade driving games emphasized staying on the road while avoiding crashes, Pole Position gives a higher reward for passing rival cars and finishing among the leaders.

[7][6] He also chose to add the Fuji Speedway into the game to make newer players recognize it when they first played.

[6] Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani chose the name Pole Position as he thought it sounded "cool" and appealing, and he shortly after filed a trademark for it.

[9] The controls also proved to be a challenge, as Okamoto wanted them to feel realistic and to match up with the gameplay[7] — Osugi remembers Namco president Masaya Nakamura becoming frustrated with them, having difficulty keeping the car moving in a straight line.

[6] The game's arcade cabinet, a sit-down "environmental" machine, was chosen due to their popularity at the time.

[6] The development team had long fights over how fast the gear-shift should be, until it was ultimately decided to simply be either high or low speed.

They also praised the gameplay, concluding that "trying to hold a screaming curve or overtake" offers "thrills to compare with the real racetrack".

[23] When reviewing the Atari 8-bit version, InfoWorld called it "by far the best road-race game ever thrown on a video screen" with "bright and brilliant" graphics,[60] and reiterated the recommendation in InfoWorld's Essential Guide to Atari Computers,[61] but said the Commodore 64 version "looks like a rush job and is far from arcade-game quality".

The magazine preferred Adventure International's Rally Speedway to both Pole Position and Epyx's Pitstop.

[64] In 2007, Eurogamer gave it a mixed retrospective review, calling it "a simulation down to the core" and that those dedicated racing fans will be deterred by the game's difficulty.

[68] Pole Position was the most successful racing game of the classic era, spawning ports, sequels, and a Saturday morning cartoon.