In The Sentinel, you cannot move the camera around, only rotate it. The lack of movement is compensated by the ability to teleport.
The camera projection is specifically chosen to eliminate any kind of parallax effect for camera rotation. This means to rotate the camera, existing screen content can easily be scrolled "out", and only newly visible landscape needs to be rendered. As a side-effect of the projection, straight lines are rendered as curved.
In contrast, when teleporting, a full frame needs to be rendered. I haven't checked, but I expect the teleport to take considerably longer to render then a scroll step.
As a side-effect of the projection, straight lines are rendered as curved.
The absence of movement as a conceptual limitation is quite unique for a game of that era, so its rather unlikely the game is based on any exisiting engine.