Formula 1 Grand Prix (Second Review)

Title		Formula 1 Grand Prix (Second Review)
Game Type	Driving
Company		Microprose
Players		1-40
Compatibility	All (040/060 require VBR fix in F1GP-Ed)
Submission	msaupe@saale-net.de

Review
This game was released in 1992 and the fact that the 2nd re-release is in
the top 20 of the GTI charts in mid 98 shows it's excellent quality (and
unfortunately that we haven't enough good games like this on the Amiga).
It offers the 16 original tracks and the cars of the 1991 F1 season. You
can go for everything between a quick 3 lap race to a full GP weekend with
practise, qualifying, warm up and race at 100% distance. Available game
modes are practise, single race and championship at 5 different difficulty
settings. These determine not only the performance of the computer
controlled cars but also which of the six help options, automatic brakes,
gears, car invulnerability etc. , are available. The beginner will
probably need all of them. This is because of the realistic car handling
which forces the driver to drive on the ideal line if he wants good times
or doesn't like the walls. Also take care of the right setup. Wings, gears
and brake balance can be changed and you can also select the tyres from
6 types: Soft to hard plus qualifying and wet race tyres. So F1GP is more
like a flightsim on wheels than just a simple game. The game engine is
vector based and it doesn't look bad, considering that it's only 16
colours and more than 6 years old. You can also play with up to 40
friends. Sadly there's no link option available, but the players drive one
after another. You can select how many turns each driver has in the race
and the game switches from one player to the next so each will drive the
same distance.

I have to mention that there's an excellent editor for F1GP available:
F1GP-Ed by Oliver Roberts. You can alter almost every aspect of the game;
from colours to camera angles, from the performance of the computer
drivers to sounds and graphics. This utility boosts the long time
motivation of F1GP by a large amount. You'll find this editor and other
tools at: http://www.nanunanu.org/~oliver/AmigaF1.html Here you can also
join a Hall of Fame and an Internet F1GP Championship.

No other racing game on the Amiga offers the same atmosphere and realism
this masterpiece of Geoff Crammond has. While the PC users have the sequel
GP2 the hopes of the Amiga users rely on the upcoming VGP ... and who
knows, maybe we'll see GP3 on the AmigaNG.

Alphabetical list.