Gran Turismo - PSX

As the release day for Gran Turismo 5 looms over us, I want to take a look back at the first Gran Turismo that started it all in 1998, twelve years ago. It's hard to believe how few racing games there were before that.

What drove me to play the game was that it almost worked like an RPG to me. Instead of gaining levels, you gained licenses. Instead of upgrading weapons, you upgraded your vehicles. Instead of fighting monsters, you raced cars. It was a numbers game to me, and I liked it. I remember the first license that you have to do is the start and stop. All you had to do was stop the car within a certain distance and do it within a certain time frame, it was like 30 seconds or something, but it was something that I couldn't do in the first try. I couldn't do it in the first five tries to be honest. The game was hard, but it was fun to play. You start buying cars and you start learning a thing or two about automobile distributors from all over the world. It was car porn and young men loved it. It sold 10.85 million copies world wide, making it one of the greatest selling titles for Sony Playstation (wikipedia).

With great music and simple menus, the game really lived up to its name as the "real driving simulator". The game was intuitive in a sense that sooner or later you learned how to slow down at S-curves and attack hair-pin turns; because if you didn't, you probably would end up losing. Sure you can use a stronger vehicle, but a lot of races limited you into using only a specific type of car. I remember the "Normal Vehicle" race, where you can only pick from vehicles with their stock options with no upgrades. I'd always use the Dodge Viper. Because it started with 400 HP and it handled awesome. My next favorite car was the Hond Del Sol, modified by Mugen. It was small and nimble so it could get through all the tight spaces easily.

And I did so to get myself to first place. I completed almost all the races and collected all of the unlockable cars. I sometimes wish I can play this on a handheld, but I didn't buy a PSP. Either way, great memories with this game.

• Game Time: 100 Hours
• Completed game in all it's difficulties