Gran Turismo (1997 video game)
The first Gran Turismo, a landmark sim racer for PlayStation.
Gran Turismo is a 1997 sim racing video game developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation. It is the first game in the Gran Turismo series and was directed by Kazunori Yamauchi with Shuhei Yoshida as producer. The game shipped 10.85 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling PlayStation game, and holds a 95% aggregate score on GameRankings, the highest for a racing game at the site's closure.
Quick Facts
- Publisher
- Sony Computer Entertainment
- Producer
- Kazunori Yamauchi; Shuhei Yoshida
- Designer
- Kazunori Yamauchi
- Takeshi Yokouchi
- Hirotaka Komiyama
- Programmer
- Seiichi Ikiou
- Artist
- Masaaki Goto
- Composer
- Masahiro Andoh (JP); Isamu Ohira (JP), Jason Page (EU/US)
- Platforms
- PlayStation
- Released
- December 23, 1997 (JP)
- May 8, 1998 (EU)
- May 12, 1998 (NA)
Facts from the source article.
Gameplay
Gran Turismo is a racing game in which the player maneuvers a car against artificial intelligence drivers on various tracks; cars cannot take damage. It was the first game designed to fully support the PlayStation's DualShock controller, including analogue control and rumble. Two modes are available: Arcade Mode, where the player freely chooses courses and vehicles and unlocks more by winning races, and Simulation Mode (Gran Turismo Mode in PAL and Japanese versions), which requires earning driver's licenses to enter events and winning championships to earn credits, trophies, and prize cars. Credits buy vehicles, parts, and tuning. The game includes 140 cars and 11 tracks, each with a reversed version. It features a wide variety of cars, including standard commercial road cars alongside sports and race cars, from Japanese automakers such as Nissan, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Honda, and Mazda. Two 1992 Honda NSX cars were in the Japanese version but removed from North American and European versions. A 1967 Chevrolet Corvette and a 1998 Mazda Roadster are exclusive to Arcade mode.
Development
Development took five years with a budget of $5 million. The team largely consisted of the same personnel behind the earlier PlayStation racers Motor Toon Grand Prix and Motor Toon Grand Prix 2, and Gran Turismo uses parts of the Motor Toon game engine, including the physics model. Kazunori Yamauchi stated that development began in the second half of 1992, with only seven to fifteen people assisting him at various times. Because Motor Toon Grand Prix 2 was still in development when work on Gran Turismo started, several people joined only after that game was completed. Shuhei Yoshida, then head of Japan Studio, served as producer. Yamauchi described the difficulty: the team could not see the end for five years, and he estimated he was home only four days a year. To achieve optimal speed, the team used assembly code, but the PlayStation's CPU still prevented their initial goal of 12 cars per race. Yamauchi believed sound design was compromised due to lack of time, and while he considered the game's artificial intelligence superior to competitors', he remained unsatisfied with its development. At the time of the Japanese release, Polys Entertainment was a development group within Sony Computer Entertainment; it was reestablished as Polyphony Digital in April 1998 before the Western release. Yamauchi estimated the game used about 75% of the PlayStation's maximum performance. The PAL and NTSC versions featured a soundtrack with major label artists including Garbage, Manic Street Preachers (with a song remixed by The Chemical Brothers), Ash, Cubanate, Feeder (on PAL versions only), and TMF (on NTSC versions only). A companion soundtrack album was released by EMI in late 1998, including some in-game songs and artists not in the game such as David Bowie, Blur, Placebo, Terrorvision, and The Dandy Warhols.
Reception
Gran Turismo was a major commercial success. Sony gave it a Double Platinum Prize in May 1998 after it sold more than 2 million copies in Japan. During its first month on sale there, it moved over 1 million units and became the top-selling game of the 1997 holiday season. Weekly Famitsu reported that it sold another 1.34 million units in the first half of 1998, which made it Japan’s second-best-selling game for that stretch. For all of 1998, it ranked third in the country, trailing only Pokémon and Resident Evil 2. In the United States, it was the second-best-selling home console game in its debut month, behind Tekken 3. It was one of the PlayStation’s top sellers in 1998 with 1,431,483 copies sold, and the NPD Group ranked it as the third best-selling video game of the year by units, after GoldenEye 007 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The following year, it became the best-selling PlayStation game in the US. In Australia, it sold over 100,000 units in its first two months and had exceeded 130,000 by October 1998. The Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland gave it a Gold award in August 1998 for selling at least 100,000 copies across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. From January through September 1998, it sold 270,000 units in Germany alone, making it the best-selling console game in that region for the period. By November, the VUD upgraded it to Platinum status. At the 1999 Milia festival in Cannes, it earned a Platinum prize for its European Union revenue in 1998, which made it Europe’s second-highest-grossing game that year, behind Tomb Raider III. It repeated as Europe’s second-highest-grossing game in 1999.
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