In 1997 racing games for the PlayStation were arcade racers. Sim racers were confined to PC and at the time it was thought that consoles just weren’t made for sims. The main problem racers had on PlayStation is the controller only had a d-pad and digital buttons. So for controlling the car the steering was either off or full lock. Same for the throttle and the brake. So one month before the launch of Gran Turismo Sony released the first Dualshock controller equipped with two analogue sticks that could provide finer and more accurate control of games. It also featured built-in vibration motors so players could now feel the games.
Then along comes Gran Turismo in December 1997 and showed the world that serious sim racing games belonged on PlayStation. Offering a massive 140 cars and 11 circuits (21 if you count the reverse layouts) and dozens of parts for you to upgrade your cars with.
The amount of credits you’re given to start means you’ll be heading for the used cars and probably a Honda Prelude. It’s cheap and fast enough to win the first few races. Unfortunately it won’t be long before your grinding the same races over and over to get the cash you need to upgrade the car or buy a new one. But the grinding is minimal and before long you’ll be driving half million credit cars.
Sadly there aren’t many events on offer and the game can be finished using only a handful of cars out of the 140 available. That’s not to say you won’t have fun in the 18-24 hours it will take to finish all Gran Turismo has to offer.
Before you can compete in most of the events you will have to pass the licence tests. These will teach you how to race and tackle the various types of corners you’ll find on the tracks. Getting bronze to pass the tests is fairly easy but the gold times seem way too difficult.
The event list is varied enough so you’ll have to buy a range of small, light, front wheel drive, rear wheel drive and US, EU and JP cars and you’ll want a racing car for the 2 hour endurance races. You’ll be surprised just how far your first car will go when you start bolting turbo chargers, racing gear boxes and racing tyres to it. My Prelude was holding its own against cars costing 5x more.
GT does have its share of issues. Like having to select manual transmission before every race and the gold times on the later licence tests are unbelievably hard. The AI will drive on what seems like a predetermined path and will drive straight into you like you’re not even there and they are slow as hell in the corners.
Overall the first Gran Turismo is a very fun game and any fan of the franchise should definitely play it if you have the means.
Reviewed on a PlayStation 3.
How to play in 2023
Gran Turismo is playable on PS1, PS2 & PS3 with the original disc and has never been released digitally. A copy in good condition costs between £8 and £15.
I remember the excitement leading up to the original Gran Turismo launch. I had a Dual Analog controller already, but picked up a DualShock just for this game.
The things that really stood out for me were:
- The number of cars. There were some racing games, like Porsche Challenge that had literally one car.
- You could drive “normal” cars, that you may have actually owned in real life, like Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas
- You could buy and install performance parts for your cars, and you could tune your car using settings that felt based in reality
- The actual driving felt authentic. I might be getting the first one mixed up with Gran Turismo 2, but definitely one of them at least came with a reference manual that actually helped you understand driving dynamics, tire grip, etc. I remember it felt like I had learned something tangible from reading that little book.
This game on PS2 was my entire life as a teenager.
This was the game that converted me from Nintendo to Sony. I wasn’t really into racing games prior, but GT was just so in-depth and different from everything before it that I ended up buying a used PS1 and copy of GT from Funcoland.
The first, and only, game I’ve ever pre-ordered was GT2.
