Gran Turismo has seen a release on every single PlayStation format barring the PS Vita, with
GT Sport hitting PS4 recently at the time of writing.
Reading.
Speaking.
Whatever time this is.
Almost every PlayStation has a GT in its top two best-selling games of all time, and the
only two that don't are the Vita, which never had a GT, and the PS4, which at the
time of making this has GT Sport with sales figures I do not know.
Still, it's safe to say this is an unpopular and terrible series nah I'm just kidding
it's great.
And now here's 20 things you may not know about Gran Turismo, and if you do maybe you
just want to hear them again who knows.
Number one, those sales figures
Might as well start by filling you in on what I was bleating on about a second ago - the
original Gran Turismo is the highest-selling PSone game of all time with 10.85 million
copies shifted, Gran Turismo 3 is the PS2's second top selling game ever with 14.89 million
copies shunted, and Gran Turismo 5 made it to second place in the PS3's highest sales
for games with 11.94 million copies shun-ifted.
The PSP's Gran Turismo, meanwhile, sold 4.66 million copies and was the underrated
handheld's second place seller.
Not what you would call a bad run for the series.
BONUS FACT
On average, including the Prologue spin-offs, Gran Turismo sells 6.4 million per game.
That's more than the averages - per game - for the Zelda series (4.14 million per game),
the Uncharted series (5.24 million per game), the Halo series (5 million per game), Assassin's
Creed (5.55 million per game), and almost as much as the Need For Speed series, which
averages at 6.81 million sales per game.
All of these figures come from before the last release for each game mentioned, because
getting up to date sales figures is like pulling teeth from a rock.
Still it's no wonder Sony puts so much stock in the bloody thing.
Number two, not a one-game studio
Polyphony Digital is known as the Gran Turismo studio, likely because it has made about 32
thousand different versions of V Rally.
Gran Turismo.
Whatever it's called.
But it is not a one-game studio, with a whopping four other games flooding like a literal flood
from its doors.
Motor Toon Grand Prix and its sequel, Omega Boost and Tourist Trophy.
Yes, three of them are racing games, but hey - a giant robot thing!
That's branching out if ever I've seen it.
BONUS FACT
For all the resolution fans out there, Tourist Trophy shares the distinction of being one
of only four titles for the PS2 capable of 1080i output.
The others are Gran Turismo 4, Valkyrie Profile 2 and… err…
Jackass: The Game.
Number three, the prototype… sort of
The earliest version of Gran Turismo is said to have been in the works for the Nintendo
PlayStation, but I couldn't corroborate anything about that so will just ignore that
and leave it as a statement uttered by a buffoon.
However, those playing Motor Toon Grand Prix 2 were privy to Polyphony's ambitions for
the racing genre - at least if they completed the game on expert.
Those doing so were rewarded with the 'goodie' of Motor Toon Gran Prix R; a mode of the game
that replaced the bouncy Mario Kart-alike racers with realistic vehicles and realistic
physics.
Naturally I wasn't good enough to complete the game on expert, even though I have it,
so this footage isn't mine.
Sorry.
NO BONUS FACT
Number four, boys' club
Kazunori Yamauchi revealed at Gran Turismo 4's launch party back in 2004 that he and
his team were working on a new entry to the series: Gran Turismo For Boys.
Aimed squarely at children - well, male children, apparently, Yamauchi intended the project
to create car lovers from a young age, stating: "If we don't grow to love cars in youth, we
become adults who are uninterested in cars."
And apparently girls and women can't be interested in cars, or something?
Anyway, it never came out and, instead, morphed into Gran Turismo on PSP.
Sort of.
Girls were allowed to play it, as far as I'm aware.
BONUS FACT
Gran Turismo received the Golden Marker Special Award at the Japan Car Design Awards in 2016,
and I quote, "For being an instrument about learning how to drive a car for those who
are below the legal driving age and for learning about cars in general", and "For giving
opportunities to car designers around the world while broadening the vision of the market".
So it seems Yamauchi didn't even need his sexist Gran Turismo spin-off, huzzah!
Number five, dee oh double-gee
For Gran Turismo 3, Snoop Dogg penned the track Dogg's Turismo 3 for the game.
It is, as you would expect, utterly superb in all the wrong ways.
And I quote:
"It's all about winning y'all know whats up
PlayStation 2 taking you to a whole new dimension where the cars look fly and they got good
suspension"
"I take the lead while others crash the wall
Doggy D-O-double G in the motherfucking Gran Turismo 3
the coolest game doin' things, I'm picking up speed while I'm switching
lanes"
"If I lose I'm gon' turn it off and get right back
choose a whole 'nother car a whole new course
with tunnels and trees."
Sure Feeder's Just A Day may have become popular thanks to GT3 - though it also may
not have - but it's all about Dogg's Turismo 3; gaming's greatest song.
NO BONUS FACT
Number six, PRICEMOBILE
The single most expensive real vehicle ever featured in the Gran Turismo series is…
the Honda Accord!
Wait no, the moon buggy.
Yes, Lunar Roving Vehicle LRV-001 from Gran Turismo 6 cost 38 million dollars to build
back in the early 70s.
Adjust that for inflation - because that's what you should do - and you get a fairly
princely sum of 228 million, 750 thousand dollars.
Stick that up your Bugatti.
NO BONUS FACT
Number seven, accu-race-ey ha ha ha ha haaa
The number of polygons in a car in the original gran turismo was 500.
By the time gran turismo 6 released in 2013, that number had increased to one people still
pretended to care about.
For the original Gran Turismo, one car was one day's work for one person.
For GT3, one car was one person's work for 30 days.
When GT5 rolled about, one car was one person's work for 180 days, or six months if you want
to be informal.
Gran Turismo Sport also took the devs six months per car, but while GT6 featured 1,197
cars at launch, GT Sport has 162 - so a lot more work has gone into each vehicle.
That man who done Gran Turismo, Kazunori Yamauchi, said: "We are building for future versions
of the console, not the one we see today."
So, like, we'll be seeing these models re-used in the PlayStation 9 I guess?
BONUS FACT
Gran Turismo 6 featured accurately positioned stars in the night sky, for some reason.
I have no idea if GT Sport keeps up the tradition.
Number eight, Name Recognition
Gran Turismo has model car kits, concept cars - a lot of which can't actually be built
yet because technology isn't good enough - a cafe, and even a street in Australia named
after it.
That's Gran Turismo Drive in Bathurst… at the Mount Panorama Motor Racing Circuit,
so not exactly an unexpected naming there.
Meanwhile, Kazunori Yamauchi doesn't have cars and concepts and cafes named after him
right now, so he just has to settle for a street of his own in the town of Ronda, Spain.
Look out for Paseo de Kazunori Yamauchi if you're ever around there.
BONUS FACT
Speaking of name recognition - you can spot a mention of Konami on the 1990s version of
Fuji Speedway on Gran Turismo 4.
Obviously it has to be in the past, because the only mention of Konami you get these days
is a sentence starting with the company name and ending with 'is a bit of a shitter these
days, innit?'
Number nine, This Game Ain't For You
The GT series often gets a bit of stick, especially from the non-believers and those who pretend
Forza is a better franchise, for being a little bit, shall we say, nerdy.
There's a real air about the games that they're almost embarrassed to be video games
and instead should just be left alone as car porn for those obsessed with gaskets.
Well, there's a bit of truth to that - see, Yamauchi himself has said he never intended
Gran Turismo to enjoy mass appeal, with the first game intended, initially, only for petrolheads,
or dieselarses or whatever they're called.
It wasn't until Taku Imasaki, now long-time producer on the series, then just producer
on the first game as none of the others existed, got his hands on GT that things changed.
Sensing the ever-belittled US audience wouldn't get on with the game as it stood, he was instrumental
in the decisions to up the speed of the game by some 25 per cent and altering the in-game
gravity so you would get cars leaping higher and further than they should.
He also had a big hand in introducing arcade mode to the game, as he figured Americans
wouldn't be into the role-playing ladder climb of Gran Turismo's core mode.
I mean, he was wrong, but it's pretty funny just how patronising that is.
And now?
Well, now we have GT Academy, in which people who are really good at the game have a chance
to become an actual, real racing driver.
People who probably didn't think they were that into cars - at least not as much as Yamauchi
expected players of his game to be - are now professionals.
Fun times.
BONUS FACT
Gran Turismo 2 could only be completed to 98.2% in US release as drag racing was removed.
The European release, meanwhile, could be completed to 100.9% thanks to the addition
of Vauxhall and Opel manufacturer races, which were absent in any other version.
GT4 had a similar issue, meanwhile, with the US and Chinese releases sometimes only allowing
99.8% completion.
Number ten, Word of Mouth
Never underestimate the power of telling people about stuff - on a totally unrelated note
don't forget to share this video and tell all your friends about the healing power of
Bransfield!
Anyway, Gran Turismo has been cited by some Japanese car manufacturers as a reason for
increased popularity in certain models they produce, with the likes of Nissan, Subaru
and Mitsubishi all declaring the game directly responsible for an uptick in interest.
Mitsubishi chap Takashi Kiuchi said, back in 2002, "There's no doubt that Gran Turismo
played a huge role in our decision to launch the Lancer Evolution in the United States
- the car wouldn't have attracted as much attention as it has in the US without the
game."
Outside of Japan there's a similar picture - RUF, the brand known for modifying and releasing
its own versions of Porsche's lineup, wouldn't have been half as well known as it is were
it not for its inclusion in earlier Gran Turismo titles.
Those being the ones where Polyphony couldn't get the actual Porsche license, because EA
was doing its usual thing of just having all the licenses for everything ever.
Even here in Britain things were impacted, with the first GT game seeing TVR's sales
increase six-fold after its release.
I mean, correlation isn't causation and all that, but the Cerbera was a lovely little
car in that game, so...
BONUS FACT You can actually find a model of Porsche in
Gran Turismo 3, as the 911 996 GT3 was intended to be in the game until EA signed its exclusive
Porsche license and the horseless carriage had to be removed.
Its data is still present, though, and you can unlock it with some pokery and an Action
Replay or Gameshark.
Or if you download a save like I may or may not have done.
Number eleven, CONTROVERSY
Gran Turismo isn't a series that courts controversy.
Much as I love it, it's barely a series that courts anything beyond mild surprise.
While microtransactions in GT6 put some people off, complaints were limited - but Gran Turismo
Sport nudged things into outright outrage territory by requiring players to be online
whether they were playing the game in multiplayer or not.
What you might not have picked up on is the why behind all of this - now don't get me
wrong, I don't want to be an apologist for always-online, as I'm not big on multiplayer
anyway and I don't just listen to what's said and automatically go 'oh right that's
a good reason god I love these faceless company decisions!'
But I do pay attention to reasons when they're actually interesting - Gran Turismo Sport
requires you to be always online because of the motor sport governing body the FIA.
GT Sport includes FIA-endorsed online championships, you see, so the game itself has to actually
follow very strict rules and regulations for it to be taken seriously by the governing
body.
And I quote: "In order to ensure fair racing for all, GT Sport will require an internet
connection for the majority of functionality.
This connectivity requirement is to ensure that progress car availability and driver
ratings are properly maintained at all times."
Basically, it's so you can't be a scamming little cheater and cheese your way to victory
offline, before loading your times up into the online mode.
Why this applies to modes that don't link in with the FIA competition, though, I do
not know.
BONUS FACT
I didn't believe this one, so sourced an original copy of Gran Turismo 2 to check it
out and, yep, it's true.
The GT Mode disc has a scratch and sniff effect to it - if you give it a bit of a rub, it
lets off a scent of… well, it's a bit like asphalt and tires, basically.
Fifa 2001 had a similar effect, with a grassy disc smell.
Ah, the past.
Number twelve, Try Before You Buy
The accuracy of Gran Turismo's simulation has always been a big selling point, but it's
quite clearly more than just marketing gumph.
I mean, the real world ties to racing events, racing drivers and car designs just sings
that fact happily.
And I'm sure BMW was overjoyed to discover it could get away with a much cheaper, easier
way of letting potential 1 Series customers have a test drive: handing out a specially-made
Gran Turismo 4 demo disc.
The BMW 1-series Virtual Drive Disc, as it was known, allowed potential buyers to choose
from two cars, the 120Dse and the 120i, and race on three tracks, including the Nurdburg..
Nurenb..
Nerd Burger King.. whatever that famous one is called.
All with a three-minute time limit on each track.
I sincerely doubt anybody actually bought a car based on a Gran Turismo 4 demo - please
do correct me if I'm wrong there - but it was a cool little thing to happen all the
same.
NO BONUS FACT
/
And that, friends, is a big list of facts.
I know there's plenty more - it's a 20-year-old series, I was bound to miss more than I could
ever fit in.
But wasn't that interesting?
I think it was.
You should agree.
If you don't, that's fine, but also I've conned you into watching this for however
long this video lasts.
HAH.
Gran Turismo is cool because it's so nerdy, gotta love that series.
Thanks for watching, do like, share and subscribe if you want to because it's a nice thing
to do and it helps me bring in money on this horrible oversaturated platform so I can slowly
save up for a TVR Speed 12.
I deserve that, don't I?
I mean, I can't even drive so it's a little bit pointless but then you can't expect
me not to-BYE!
I now have a Patreon, which you can find the link to in the description.
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Alright maybe not dead, but you get the point.
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You're all good people, except for the one who's a dog.
You're a good dog.
Thank you for your continued support and I hope to never make you cry.
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