Gran Turismo 1 walked so others can drive.


Compared to many of the popular racing games that existed before its time, such as Ridge Racer and Super Mario Kart, Gran Turismo would be one of the first games that offered a more realistic take on driving. Arcade-style drifting, speed boosts, and softer crashes were eschewed in favour of learning proper racing lines and managing your tires. Like the rest of the games in the series, this game's focus emulating real-world racing; whilst still retaining the easy-to-pick-up playability that the aforementioned Mario Kart series had.

There are about 140 cars in Gran Turismo 1; an obscenely large amount compared to the likes of other racers at the time like the Need For Speed games. As expected from a Japanese developer, the majority of the manufacturers originate from Japan, with many of the well-known brands like Mitsubishi, Toyota and Nissan being appearing in GT1 as well. Unlike future entries in the Gran Turismo series, there are very few "foreign" manufacturers; with only two British manufacturers (Aston Martin and TVR) and three American manufacturers (Chevrolet, Chrysler/Dodge (depending on the region you're playing it in) and, in the US version, Acura). The absence of many manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Ford may be startling to players who have played any of the other games in the franchise - especially to players who may only know German, French or Italian.


There are two main modes of play in GT1. Arcade Mode is very simple to explain; you pick a car and track and race against others. Winning more races unlocks more cars and more tracks, going from smaller, easier tracks like High Speed Ring, a track mostly filled with gentle turns, to more complex tracks like the infamous Special Stage Route 11, a highly technical track in the city set at night, with many 90 degree turns. All well and good, but where the game truly shines, however, is in the other mode; Simulation Mode.


In Simulation Mode, players start off with a mere 10,000 dollars, with not a car to their name. With all of the shiny new cars being outside of the player's budget, most players will have to brave the deadly frontiers known as the Used Car Dealership. Instead of players being able to start off with all the shiny NSX's and Skylines they could dream of (or play in Arcade Mode), players are instead forced to settile for old, unattractive cars from the 80s and early 90s, progressively getting newer, flashier, faster cars in the process.

After getting used to their car in Spot Races, to progress any further, players will have to obtain a racing license to be able to race in any of the other events. There are three different tiers of racing licenses - a B License, A License, and an IA License; with each license having 8 tests attached to it. Each separate license is more difficult than the last - B Licenses teaches the players simple driving techniques like cornering and braking, A License teaches the players advanced driving skills such as taking multiple corners, and IA License has the player complete multiple 1-lap time trials across the GT1 tracks.

Each license test has three different levels of completion - a Gold, Silver and Bronze medal, depending on how fast a player completes a particular license test. Gold is the best, while bronze just means you passed (barely sometimes) Unlike in later games, only the time requirement of getting Bronze is listed, making getting Gold Medal runs particularly difficult and annoying. By completing all 8 tests of a particular license successfully, the player will obtain that particular license, not only unlocking the next license for players to attempt to succeed, but also opens up new events for the players to race in. Just getting bronze on each test is good enough to obtain a license, however, if a player gets all golds on a particular license, they obtain a high-powered free car to use. These can be used to breeze through many of the lower-tier races in the game due to the prize cars having high power, whilst saving money that can be used to upgrade or buy cars later on, though obtaining all gold medals on a license can be extremely tough to do.


Outside of 2-lap time trials and no-license spot races, there are two categories of events a player can enter - the GT League and the Special Events. With the exception of the three Endurance Races, each event consists of multiple races at different tracks, with racers obtaining more points the better their finishing position is. Like many real-world race events like the F1 and NASCAR, the driver with the most points after all the races in an event have been completed wins. Fucking up on a corner and coming in third in one race won't matter in the grand scheme of things as long as you win the rest of the races. With the exception of the GT World Cup, finishing first in each event obtains the player a new car for free; these can be used in future races, or sold for money for additional cars and/or upgrades. Each prize car is either a new car you cannot buy normally from a dealership, or a car you could buy with a unique paint-job applied to it. Each individual race offers a monetary prize reward as well for all positions. The higher the position, the higher the money - there is an incentive to finishing first in every race as you get more money, though finishing last still gives you some money as well in case the cars you have are all slow as shit.

In GT League, players race in four different events; the Sunday Cup, Clubman Cup, GT Cup and GT World Cup. As players progress through each of the four cups, the tracks get more complex and the opponents get faster; whereas the Sunday Cup has the player race against low-powered cars like Honda Civics, the GT World Cup requires players to get into a race car to stand a chance against their opponent's own race cars.

In Special Events, players often race in events where there are limitations on what cars can be picked, ranging from what drivetrain a car has, to what country a car is from, with one of the most difficult events in the series requiring players to drive fully stock cars. Special Events also plays home to three different endurance races - races that can last up to two hours, for all gamers that had bladders of steel and/or a savestate function. Endurance races not only last very long, but also feature "tire wear", requiring players to pit in multiple times per race, lest they deal with their car becoming slowly undrivable over time.


One feature GT1 innovated was the ability to provide upgrades to cars. Car upgrades generally required some thought put into them - upgrading your car by putting the fastest turbo inside it would often leave the car undrivable in many of the races. Upgrades ranged from easy for anyone to add - such as better tires and larger turbos, to stuff catered to the hardcore racers - like being able to manually adjust each individual gear ratio's of a car. In addition, this was one of the few games, alongside GT2 (and, to a significantly lesser extent, GT5), to enable players to give their cars flashy paint jobs that often emulated many real world racing cars of the time (such as the Subaru Impreza Rally Car and the legendary TOM's Castrol Supra GT that was the cover car of GT3).


All of these features are very commonplace now in the racing genre - from progressively buying better and better cars to upgrading existing cars to giving cars flashy paint-jobs, but Gran Turismo 1 was arguably the first to incorporate what would now become very commonplace features there. For this, it's a very impressive game, and certainly worth a look at. However, the actual game itself has largely been done better since then, and there's largely very few reasons to play GT1 by itself now (primarily for the original Special Stage Route 11 layout). If you're looking for a PS1 racing game, I'd be more prone to recommend a few different games over this, like Gran Turismo 2.

Played on a PS2 Fat

Now, I am not a racing fan. The only racing games I've really played was Mario Kart and Forza and I'm good at Mario Kart, but I literally couldn't win a race online in Forza. I've hardly played any realistic racing games is what I'm saying, and while I know Gran Turismo is like kinda a mix of simulation and arcade it's realistic for me. Just wanna let you guys know I know very little in this genre.

I really enjoyed this game. I was super frustrated at first, as I couldn't win any races and I didn't understand how literally any of the mechanics worked. But I slowly learned and learned, I started passing the licenses easily and winning races. The learning curve is truly masterful, really feels good to finally understand how to do a sharp turn. It's also notable even after learning how to win, races are still thrilling and fun. I never lost that sense of intensity.

The car selection is huge, especially for a PS1 game. I know the second game is even larger but I haven't played anything else in the series yet. All the cars are cool and feel different. There are like 5 sections of different types of vehicles I think, and each is like a completely different planet. Even changing between cars that are the same type is a noticeable difference. I'm not a car guy at all, but the cars in this game are pretty cool as well. Modding your cars is also a nice feature and adds depth.

I just wanna talk about the soundtrack for a second, the soundtrack is fucking killer. Literally almost every song is fucking great, really makes you wanna race. Even the menu music is super good, and how every dealership has their own unique music, and all of them sound great. I love this soundtrack.

I only played the traditional mode, where you start out with some cash and buy a shitty car, then build your way up through gaining licenses and winning cups. It has a great flow to it and is a lot of simple fun.

The maps were somewhat simple cause y'know, there's only so much they can possibly do, yet somehow each map feels distinct and you'll know every map by heart after some time playing. This game also looks great for a PS1 game, one of the best graphically I've seen.

All in all, Gran Turismo is a legendary racing game and has a lot to offer, it's aged quite well I think and I'd highly recommend it. Play it.

It's adorable!
Okay, what I mean is that you can tell just how much everybody involved in this game cared about getting absolutely everything perfect, and it's an astonishing accomplishment given what they had to work with. It was probably the best looking console game ever made to this point (Final Fantasy VII was earlier in the year, and at its best it definitely looked better, but the overworld in that game was very famously low-poly triangle people walking across jpegs). And as someone who has a pretty good amount of technical familiarity with the Japanese cars of the 1990s this game's roster is based off of, the way that they have painstakingly recreated the details of them is really clear and gives the game this incredible sense of texture. The basic feel of the game was there right in the first one (provided you buy the expensive tires for cars, cars in this game on their stock tires turn into hilarious understeer-ers).
All of that being said, the difficulty curve in this game is all over the fucking place. The license tests are the hardest part of the game, and there are no upper limits on power for most of the events (there aren't actually any explicit ones but there are some de facto ones because of car restrictions). So you'll go from having a reasonably hard time to start the game in the B-tests, then sleepwalking through the early stuff, then tearing your hair out for the A and International-A license tests, and making everything from there on feel much tamer. The car roster is genuinely quite limited, though if you're going to make a game pretty much entirely out of one setting's cars, 90s Japan isn't half bad (I would do unholy things for an 80s German car game) and the track selection is small enough that you know every one like the back of your hand by the end of the game. All of these however are problems of budget (licensing) and of technology (getting the AI to be tougher in a way that doesn't involve insane rubber banding), the core was there, a core that I'm excited to see perfected as I play other games in the series.

as a gt megafan i had fun with gt1, but there's really not much reason to go back to this one over gt2 unless youre like me and you just really want to complete every game in the series. gt2 has way more cars, way more tracks, way more events with more variety in the entry lists and far less track repetition (no reverse tracks!), WAY better soundtrack imo (both in the menus and in-race), etc. i have tremendous respect for this game and what it accomplished in 1997, it's a true technological wonder. but that pioneering status can only carry it so far in 2022. 5 stars, but unlike gt2 i dont see myself ever playing through this one again.

I mostly played this because the OST for the japanese version slaps really hard and I wanted to know what sim racing was all about since I'm mostly an arcade racer sort of guy. All in all, I'd say this was pretty eye-opening to play. More realism and less arcade wackiness means that taking corners involves properly balancing your car and not just ripping through drifts like an insane person. While I personally still believe that arcade racers are more entertaining due to their focus on fun over realism, I definitely still think that both genres have their place in the gamer world with their own unique personal appeals. I enjoyed what I played, and would definitely recommend it to anyone with a PS1 lying around that likes cars.