Harder difficulty settings make the game go faster.. difficulty level cuts the max speed of your car (and the other cars on track), the higher the difficulty, the faster your car can go. The game is real fun to play on the higher difficulty from what I remember, but you WILL NEED to make use of the brakes. On novice you can take all the tracks with full gas all the time if you know their layout and take corners correctly, but on higher difficulties you'll need to be more careful.
I played the hell out of this on the Mega-Drive, I didn't play the Amiga version that much mainly because of UP TO ACELLERATE, urgh. I don't think anyone could patch this madness in time for the competition, huh?
When I got the Mega-Drive cartridge even Vroom seemed outdated because I had better controls now (Both versions aren't identical, but the differences aren't that big. The Amiga version looks better though the way it shows your position on race is kinda lame... it's nice to look at but not very intuitive - also the car on the Mega-Drive version goes flying off the track when you hit it tyre againg tyre in a different way of the Amiga version.... collisions are handled a bit different overall on both versions. Also I prefer the menu music on the Mega-Drive version... )
Also couple of important questions:
1) We are NOT playing Turbo mode, right? Arcade mode but no Turbo, right?
2) I don't remember if this applies to arcade mode... but you have pit-stops in the game, you can brake at the pit and nothing will happen. Use the keyboard to press T to change tires and G to refuel the car.
The keys for Player 2 are different but I guess this won't matter for this competition
('P' and 'E' if you are wondering )