Songbird Productions has recently announced that it will be publishing a brand new Atari Jaguar port of the Atari ST racer Vroom next year (thanks Retro News!).
Vroom, for those unfamiliar, is a Formula 1-style racing game that initially began life in 1986 as an attempt by its creator Daniel Macré to capture some of the magic of Namco's arcade classic Pole Position on the Sinclair QL computer.
It was created in just 6 months by a single person and got its title from a French comic series called Michel Vaillant, which would feature Vroom in gigantic letters behind the cars to convey the sound and the speed of the vehicles on the page.
Sometime later, Macré decided to revive the game on the Atari ST. However, seeing the quality of the other games on the computer, including the work of The Bitmap Brothers, he realized he couldn't do it alone, so he teamed up with members of the French developer Lankhor, including the programmers Jean-Luc Langlois and Christian Droin.
The Atari ST version of the game was eventually published in 1991 and received positive reviews at the time from publications, including the French Magazine Generation 4, leading to more versions for the Commodore Amiga and MS-DOS following not long after.
A data disk for the Atari ST game was also later released in 1993, adding new tracks and joystick control, which was followed by an expanded version of the game called Vroom Multiplayer that introduced split-screen multiplayer and other features.
This multiplayer version of the game would later be released with the FIA license under the name F1 (or Formula One in the States) for platforms like the Amiga, Atari ST, Mega Drive/Genesis, Game Gear, and Master System, and spawned a sequel F1 World Championship Edition as well as a spin-off made in the same engine called Kawasaki Superbike Challenge / Kawasaki Superbikes.
According to Songbird Productions, this new port is officially licensed from Lankhor and will be developed by the homebrew developer CJ Reboot. It is being made without the source code but will feature some new features not included in the original Atari ST release such as additional tracks and 2-player split screen support.
You can watch a very brief teaser for the game below.