Gran Turismo (1997 video game)

GPX on Trial Mountain Circuit Gran Turismo is a racing game. The player must maneuver a car to compete against artificially intelligent drivers on various race tracks. It is not possible for cars to take damage in the game. Gran Turismo was the first game designed to fully support the PlayStation's DualShock controller. This includes both the analogue control and rumble support. and earn credits (money), trophies and prize cars by winning race championships. Winning one particular championship also unlocks a video and a few additional demonstration tracks. Credits can be used to purchase additional vehicles, and for parts and tuning. Gran Turismo features 140 cars and 11 race tracks (as well as their reversed versions). The game features a wide variety of kinds of cars which is not typical in most racing games, as in addition to sports cars and race cars, the game also features standard commercial road cars. The game features cars from many Japanese automakers, such as Nissan, Mitubishi, Toyota, Honda, and Mazda. Two Honda NSX cars from 1992 were included in the Japanese version, but were removed from the North American and European versions. There is also a 1967 Chevrolet Corvette and a 1998 Mazda Roadster exclusive to the Arcade mode. ==Development==

The game took five years to complete with a development budget of $5 million. The development personnel were largely the same team which was 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, such as the physics model. Kazunori Yamauchi said that the development of Gran Turismo started in the second half of 1992. Yamauchi added that at different times only seven to fifteen people were assisting him. Since Motor Toon Grand Prix 2 was still in development when work on Gran Turismo started, several people only joined the development team after the completion of Motor Toon Grand Prix 2 freed them up to work on Gran Turismo. When asked how difficult it was to create Gran Turismo, Yamauchi remarked: "It took five years. In those five years, we could not see the end. I would wake up at work, go to sleep at work. It was getting cold, so I knew it must be winter. I estimate I was home only four days a year." When Gran Turismo was released in Japan, Polys Entertainment was still a development group within Sony Computer Entertainment's internal development team. The studio was reestablished as Polyphony Digital in April 1998, before the Western release of the game. Yamauchi estimated that Gran Turismo utilized around 75% of the PlayStation's maximum performance. The PAL and NTSC versions of Gran Turismo notably contained a soundtrack which featured major label artists: 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). Additionally, a companion soundtrack album was released by the major label EMI in late 1998. It featured a few of the in-game songs, along with other artists that did not appear in the game, such as David Bowie, Blur, Placebo, Terrorvision, The Dandy Warhols, among others. ==Reception==

Commercial Gran Turismo was a commercial hit. In its first month on the Japanese market, it sold over 1 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of the 1997 holiday shopping season in Japan. Overall in 1998, it ranked third in the best-selling video games of that year in the country, only behind Pokémon and Resident Evil 2. In its first month of release in the United States, Gran Turismo was the second best-selling home console game, behind Tekken 3. It was one of the best-selling PlayStation games of 1998 with 1,431,483 sales and revenue; according to the NPD Group, it was the third best-selling video game of 1998 by unit sales, behind GoldenEye 007 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It was the best-selling PlayStation game of 1999 in the United States, where it sold units and grossed an estimated that year, adding up to sales and about revenue in the United States by 1999. It was also a high-seller in Australia, selling over 100,000 units in the first two months and with sales exceeding 130,000 by October 1998. It received a "Gold" award from the Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD) in August 1998, for sales of at least 100,000 units across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It sold 270,000 units in the German market from January through September 1998, which made it the region's best-selling console game of the period across all systems. The VUD raised it to "Platinum" status, indicating 200,000 sales, by November. At the 1999 Milia festival in Cannes, it took home a "Platinum" prize for revenues above or in the European Union during 1998. This made it Europe's second-highest-grossing game of the year, behind Tomb Raider III. It was again Europe's second highest-grossing game of 1999 with or grossed that year, adding up to over or grossed in Europe by 1999, and over across Europe and the United States by 1999. By March 1999, Gran Turismo had sold over six million units worldwide, of which two million were derived from the United States. By February 2000, it had sold units worldwide, for which it was awarded the Guinness World Record for Best-Selling Driving Simulator. By December 2000, it had sold more than copies worldwide, including units in the United States. As of April 2008, the game has shipped 2.55 million copies in Japan, 10,000 in Southeast Asia, 4.3 million in Europe, and 3.99 million in North America, for a total of 10.85 million copies. It remains the best-selling video game for the PlayStation and the fifth highest-selling game in the Gran Turismo franchise, behind Gran Turismo 4, Gran Turismo 5, Gran Turismo Sport and Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec respectively. Critical Gran Turismo received widespread acclaim, with praise for its graphics, It was classified as "universal acclaim" by review aggregator website Metacritic. Reviewing the U.S. release, John Ricciardi and Kraig Kujawa of EGM criticized that it retained the Japanese names and likenesses for many of the cars instead of using the American versions, but were just as enthusiastic about the game as a whole, commenting, "Get used to this quote, 'cause you're gonna hear it a lot: Gran Turismo is the best racing game of all time." won "Best Simulation" of 1999 at the Spotlight Awards, won "Best Driving Game" and "Best Graphics" of 1999 according to the staff of PlayStation Official Magazine, and was voted the sixth best game of all time by the magazine's readers in the same issue. At the 1999 edition of the Milia D’Or Awards in Cannes, Gran Turismo won in the "Racing Game" category. In 2000, readers of Computer and Video Games voted it the eighth best video game of all time. Game Informer ranked it the 21st best video game ever made in 2001. The staff felt that the racing genre had not offered as "complete [a] package" as Gran Turismo. In 2017, Gran Turismo was declared the best driving game ever by Top Gear. In 1999, Next Generation listed Gran Turismo as number 15 on their "Top 50 Games of All Time", commenting that, "Gran Turismo features cars that handle better than any other racing game ever made". In 2006, Gran Turismo was inducted into GameSpots list of the greatest games of all time. In 2015, IGN listed Gran Turismo as the second most influential racing game of all time (after Pole Position), calling it "the grandfather of all modern console racing sims." ==Notes==