Original Release: PlayStation, 1997, Sony
Sony’s pioneering driving title was the first to bring PC-style realism to consoles and proved that there was a big market for it.
Gran Turismo (PS1, Sony, 1997)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
When Gran Turismo came out in 1997, the primary market niche it was filling for Sony was giving the PS1 a great-looking racer that flexed those polygons over the nerds still playing in 2D. But it also ended up being a game as much for car enthusiasts as for the standard generalist gamer, which was a bit surprising at the time. Aside from looking good and having solid driving action, the central appeal ended up being the gradual collecting and modification of fairly realistic versions of real-world sports and racing cars (some 180 in total). Each of these is meant to be at least somewhat realistic in how it would feel and handle on an actual road, giving players a chance to drive all sorts of expensive beasts that they might never get a chance to in real life.
However, the focus on realism is a bit of a double-edged sword in that the game can be harder to get into because the more realistic handling is unlike most racing games (especially the simplified arcadey “drifting” trend coming out in the wake of Ridge Racer at the time). As it turned out this style was very much embraced by players, but it was definitely a gamble for Sony at the time considering what they sunk into development (reportedly some five years, with the original plan being to release this for the vaporware SNES CD drive). Aside from just being the best-looking console racer at the time and having the biggest lineup of licensed cars, Gran Turismo was novel in that no one had really attempted a realistic driving sim on consoles prior to this; the genre was exclusively the province of niche PC gamers with racing wheels until Gran Turismo demonstrated there was a more mainstream market for it (if you could make it work with a gamepad).
Speaking of which, Gran Turismo was also a pioneer in that it was the first game to support Sony’s then-new DualShock complete with rumbling and all that. For some reason the stick only works in the actual driving portions, though, you have to use the D-pad to navigate the game’s menus. Another pioneering quality that has gone underlooked is that it was one of the first games to offer a really robust system of cinematic race replays with multiple selectable camera angles.
Gran Turismo nailed graphics and did remarkably well on the technical particulars of handling and physics. Where it comes up short is more fundamental game design. The meat of the game is Simulation Mode, but the actual consequential racing is locked off by a “licensing” system that sucks shit. The conceit is that you start off with $10,000 with which to buy a not-great car, you participate in all sorts of races and compete for prize money, gradually you buy better cars and tune them up with all sorts of parts and customize the appearance and so forth. All fine and good, except you don’t actually get to start this process until you first pass a set of Driver-esque “basic skills tests” that can be tougher to pull off than just jumping into the game and winning a race.
You can argue that these teach you some fundamental skills needed to handle the game’s more realistic racing, but I would counter-argue that A) I was able to win races without passing even one of these things and B) said skills could be taught much more efficiently and in a less player-hostile way with tutorial races that don’t lock the game’s central mode out. For some reason every license test is a gimmick that puts you in a comically bad beater car and has you do something really fussy that the beater car is particularly poorly designed for. I didn’t understand why making Sue’s Minivan stop on some very precise spot from full acceleration within a tight time limit was necessary for me to enjoy the rest of the game, which makes it all the more enraging when you’re still getting fussed out of it after 10 tries. I guess someone played Driver and was like “Wow all that stupid frustrating gatekeeping shit at the beginning of the game is a GREAT idea, let’s make it even worse!”
If you give up on Simulation Mode due to the obnoxious license tests, that leaves you with Arcade Mode to play. Thankfully, this starts you with a bunch of decent cars and a variety of tracks to race on (you can unlock even better stuff by placing first and beating times). Unfortunately, the racing variety is pretty limited. I quickly got sick of the endless tight packs of six computer cars that drive robotically and quickly rubberband back to where they’re “supposed” to be. Other than doing time trials there isn’t really a race that doesn’t unfold this way. It’s better than beating your head against the license tests, but if this was the sole game mode Gran Turismo would be a mediocre forgotten racer instead of a powerhouse series.
And while the physics are a selling point, I would characterize them as “realistic until they aren’t.” Mostly impressive, but have unexpected sudden flare-ups of being stupid. The main issue is collisions and spin-outs, where seemingly mild things will suddenly send you into impossibly wild flailing around that ruins the whole race.
The first Gran Turismo ultimately doesn’t hold up not because of the graphics, which look great for the PS1 library in general let alone a fairly early release. Not even really the core driving, some spots of physics wonk aside. It’s the structure, with one game mode locked off until you do tedious homework and the other too limited to stay interesting for long. Skip this one and move on to the later entries in the series.
Links
Why You’ll Never See A Gran Turismo Remaster
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