Vroom - Grand Prix Game Comparison: Amiga vs QL (

In this journal entry, for #AMayGA2024, I'll do a game review of the Grand Prix racing game, Vroom. It was originally written on the Sinclair QL in 1986, and later ported to other platforms, including the Amiga in 1991. I'll look at various criteria and finish with the most important one, game play. Let's see how close the competition is.
#Vroom #Amiga #QL #GrandPrix #Game #Sinclair #Commodore #Retro

[@andre0000000007]

i remember hearing that Sony approached Sinclair to incorporate a 3.5" drive in the QL which he refused.. not sure if it's true or an urban legend : )

[@8BitRetroJournal]

I could imagine Sony, at that time, wanting to be put in all major new computer releases so I don't think it's a stretch. The 3.5" standard was just starting out back in the early 80s, trying to beat the 5.25" standard and maybe even the odd 3" here and there. Nothing is guaranteed until everyone jumps on board and uses it. One of Sinclair's selling points for microdrives was faster throughput once you found the file (so a trade-off for seek time). Also, some early 3.5" media was only about 250K in size, so two 128K drives was pretty comparable and having two drives made life a lot easier than a bigger single drive.

[@GSimpsonOAM]

Probably considered a nice idea but would have added to the cost of the machine. The microdrives already existed and having 2 drives was really needed prior to hard drives. There was also the competition with 3". I had a Sega at the time which came with 3" I actually replaced Sega with QL due to the QL being more practical with more columns for Word processing and Spreadsheet and of course came bundled with software. I actually found the microdrives fast and reliable.

[@AussieAmigan]

The Amiga version looks great. It's not quite Microprose Grand Prix level, or Lotus Turbo Challenge level, but it's not trying to be. I must try it out. I had no idea the QL was this limited. I thought it was more of a contender. I could conceive of a C64 version, and even a spectrum version running this game faster. Was there any racing game on the C64 that ran slower than this? Yes, many employed tricks, but even Revs with realistic 3d seems more playable than this. Even something as early as the original Pole Position(kzbin.info/www/bejne/nIOaZo2mrK2CeNU) on the C64 plays better than this. If I was so inclined I could hack the graphics on Pole Position 2(kzbin.info/www/bejne/aXzKgJ6pjL-Iiqc) on the C64, changing the main car sprite to a dashboard and have practically the same game as the QL, but faster and more fun.

[@8BitRetroJournal]

I think the QL version was just Daniel Macre's first attempt at writing a game. Once he had proof of concept he teamed up with a software house and developed the Atari (and eventually Amiga) version. The flicker and slow play is definitely something that could be improved on. There's been lots of demo-scene stuff that runs much smoother than this game on the QL. Unfortunately there we no money in developing for the QL since by 1986 Sinclair sold to Amstrad and the QL was dead.

[@fradd182]

I guess QL needs some kind of double buffering to resolve that flicker

[@8BitRetroJournal]

Someone said it wasn't well implemented. It was Daniel Macré first attempt (I think he did it partially to teach himself how to write such a game).

[@fradd182]

@@8BitRetroJournal Very possible, because ive seen other QL gaming videos and many other action games have no flicker.

[@ElectronGordo]

Comparing the same game in QL vs A600... is not it a little strange?

[@8BitRetroJournal]

How so? That's a pretty common theme to compare games between different platforms.

[@semicuriosity257]

A600's gaming hardware is the same as 1985 Amiga 1000.

[@8BitRetroJournal]

@@semicuriosity257 Oh great, thanks for clarifying. I wasn't sure if the chipset was significantly different (i.e. OCS vs ECS). So I'm guessing an A600 ran at the same speed as the A1000?

[@semicuriosity257]

@@8BitRetroJournal The same performance for games. ECS has extra high resolution modes for business use cases.

[@AussieAmigan]

According to Wikipedia, Vroom was originally for the ST. The ST port looks about the same as the Amiga version. So what are we looking at here on the QL? A fan creation? There's even a DOS version(kzbin.info/www/bejne/en28iX99YtaWi8U) from 91 which looks even better. ECS provides 2mb of chipram compared to the OCS 512k, but that probably wasn't something being utilised in this game. If so, it might have helped with more space for caching and rapidly animating the side object blobs/sprites, but this version looks like a straight port of the ST. See how it compares here (kzbin.info/www/bejne/jZDKeIF7bNpoe9U). I might just give it to the Amiga version, but I'm not sure if that is because that driver is doing better in the video.