Final Lap (Arcade)

Final Lap
Developer: Namco Publishers: Namco (JP), Atari Games (US) Platform: Arcade (Namco System 2) Released in JP: December 1987 Released in US: May 1988 This game has hidden developer credits. This game has unused graphics. This game has revisional differences.

Final Lap is basically a 16-bit version of Pole Position and has a multiplayer function which requires connecting multiple arcade cabinets to each other.

Unused Graphics

Original	Post-Lawsuit (Except March)

Unused car graphics, most of which have developer names written on them. Note that the March palette used in the post-lawsuit revision row are for the computer-controlled cars in both pre-lawsuit and post-lawsuit versions.

The names on the cars are as follows: KOHICHI, TATSURO, KUNIHITO, SATORU, SHIGEKI, and YOSHINOBU.

Revisional Differences

In 1990, Phillip Morris International (known for producing the Marlboro cigarette brand) sued Atari Games and Namco over unauthorized usage of the Marlboro logo in Final Lap (and in Super Monaco GP). This lawsuit was found in favor of Phillip Morris, with Namco/Atari being legally ordered to remove all mentions of Marlboro from the game.

In agreement between the parties, Namco produced modified Final Lap EEPROMs that removed the Marlboro trademarks. These ROMs were sent to all possible arcade locations that could be sourced as possessing a Final Lap machine, requesting the arcade operator(s) replace the chips on the circuit board. In addition to this, the operator would send the ROM chips containing infringing branding back to Namco, in which they would be destroyed (with an incentive of a discount on Final Lap 2 machines for complying operators).

This results in the following changes, in which other tobacco brandings was also removed (just in case), although it is currently unknown if the removed logos are still present in the revised ROM:

• The Marlboro ad in question, found in the bridge section, was removed.
• The John Player Special ad after the Spoon curve was replaced with a Pirelli ad.
• The Rothmans advertisement in the back straight was removed entirely.
• The Cabin advertisement in the start/finish line's grandstand was also removed entirely.
• The McLaren and Lotus (which feature another cigarette sponsor, Camel) cars had their palettes changed to white/blue and red, respectively. This change was carried forward to international revisions of Final Lap 2, though not for the McLaren car in Final Lap 3.