Original Release: Sony, 1999, PlayStation
The Gran Turismo sequel didn’t alter the core racing much but added more features and a whole lot more cars for the series farewell to the 64-bit era
Gran Turismo 2 (PS1, Sony, 1999)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
Sony’s second and last Gran Turismo entry for the venerable old PS1 didn’t really change the core formula or game engine, basically just added a boatload of cars (620 now, up from 180 in the original), an offroad “rally” dirt track racing mode and some little quality-of-life tweaks like breaking Simulation mode events out into smaller individual races and adding steering wheel support. Unfortunately that means it also retained some of the limiting niggles of the original game, chiefly the fussy licensing requirements to unlock the vast majority of the content.
Though this feature wouldn’t end up sticking for the rest of the series (probably unnecessary on the following generations of consoles), GT2 shipped in a two-disc case with the Arcade and Simulation modes each given their own CD. If you were around in the early 00s and remember a ton of these little fat cases around game stores at very low prices it is in part because they printed an absolute ton overall, but the first run was rushed to get the game out in time for Christmas ’99 and came packed with a couple of glitches that could wipe your save files. Another run was released in 2000 that fixed this and it was also cleaned up for the later “Greatest Hits” release.
I started off with Sim Mode since that’s the real meat of the game. Unfortunately, you quickly run face first into my biggest complaint with the prequel: the vast majority of its content locked off behind hard, fussy, time-consuming license tests that often stress teaching things that are completely unnecessary and useless for the casual gamer just looking to have fun. Without doing at least the introductory “B” license, which requires 10 slow and tedious tests of dumb things you’ll never need like “brake just after crossing the finish line within some fussy zone,” you only have access to three of the lowest-level races on three tracks.
The license tests are the most egregious offense, but overall it’s just not the most user-friendly design. In Sim Mode you’re dumped off to the game menu with $10,000 to buy a used car to start off with … problem is, there are dozens of dealerships just scattered about and there’s no real way to evaluate car quality unless you’re familiar with them already in real life. The Arcade Mode shows a basic rating for each car in three core stat categories, but this doesn’t appear in Sim Mode for whatever reason. Add in the menus kinda loading slow and being a bit clumsy to navigate, and you don’t have the best user experience outside of the races.
Hop over to Arcade Mode for more immediate fun, and you do get a small selection of the game’s nicer sports and high-performance cars to pick from right away … but also only the starting three tracks, until you go back over to Sim Mode and do your license homework. This kind of gating is crazy to me and I can’t believe it didn’t hurt the game’s reputation more.
The core racing action is very similar to the prequel, realistic in the vehicle details and handling but not at all in collisions with seemingly a thin force field membrane around the car protecting you from damage at all times. I’m not complaining, I actually like this style quite a bit, especially in Sim Mode as I don’t want to deal with car damage and wear-and-tear. You can focus entirely on the racing. The game does have blatant rubberbanding but it seems to favor you much more than the computer overall, if you spin out they really slow down to let you get right back in the race.
Once you struggle through the annoying licensing requirements, or just take the sane path and use Action Replay codes or download a save file, both discs are just a straightforward routine of winning races with Sim adding the aspect of earning money to buy new vehicles and upgrade parts. Everyone has their own strategies but what worked for me to get started in Sim is picking up a used Toyota Supra GT for around 5,000 as your first car, which fishtails when the wind blows but has the raw horsepower to just blow away the initial junk cars you race, then use the winnings from the first two or three races to upgrade to a used Mitsubishi Lancer Evo for around 15,000. I didn’t really see a point to upgrading these initial beaters at all but maybe experts will disagree with me, I dunno.
As far as aesthetics, obviously PS1 3D graphics are badly dated now but in 1999 this was as good as you were getting from a console for both car models and detailed track backgrounds. It’s a level of effort that still retains some appeal even if the polygon technology is now very quaint. After encountering the memed-but wonderful Blue Line instrumental from Keiji Matsumoto, I was expecting the game to have a similar jazz soundtrack throughout … which it kinda does in the menus, but the original Japanese OST has a lot of instrumental rock on the tracks and then for the international release they licensed some popular pop/rock tracks of the era. It’s not bad stuff, heavy on the better end of 90s grunge, but there’s only like 10 total tracks and they get pretty repetitive pretty quick (Stone Temple Pilots: “I’m gonna learn ya my philosophy …. I yam I yam I yam I yam Popeye”).
Between the overly demanding and restrictive license testing system, the dated graphics, limited soundtrack, and slightly janky menu navigation, there isn’t a lot of reason to come back to GT2 despite it being the most comprehensive and detailed racer for auto enthusiasts of the pre-Millennium era. If you do you’ll probably want to go straight for fan mods, of which there are a surprising amount still being released to this day (linked below). The one advantage I could see over not just jumping to the later generations is that you can emulate PS1 games on any old potato device you can scratch up.
Links
Project A-Spec mod – Fixes bugs, restores cut content, adds new cars and events created from scratch
Gran Turismo 2.1 mod – Improves opponents, cuts rubberbanding, physics fixes, updates graphics and sound, adds some new cars
Save file that just unlocks the licenses and nothing else
Gameshark codes to unlock all Gold licenses (and other neat stuff from the Old Internet)
Videos