Perhaps all the other car games would have square wheels, engine sounds like lawnmowers and weed eaters, graphics like those you'd be able to create in Microsoft Paint, handling like a skateboard with no wheels, enough races to just last all of the five minute commercial break during your favourite TV program, so many options/settings that you could count them with a closed fist and as many tracks as you could dream of - if your dreams included a maximum of three tracks. One circle one, one square one and a square and circle one combined. That's innovation!

Okay maybe i'm exaggerating (just a little...) but this game did make every other developer sit up and take notice. They obviously didn't sit up straight enough though as the Gran Turismo series has dominated this genre since day one and the 63 million + games sold just backs that up. Only the Forza series has offered any real competition so far. Bow down to Polyphony, car game fans.

RACES

The sad thing is that i never bought Gran Turismo 1 until mid 2007. Although i did play it a bit (renting it out and 'borrowing' from people) i had never actually owned it.
In 2010 i finally started playing it properly (procrastination FTW!) for the first time ever - and its been out since 1997... So now i can tell you a tiny bit about the game that you likely already know.

First off, so far i've found this the HARDEST Gran Turismo game to date. It leaves me wondering if we've all got it easy with games these days, as the older games always seem to pose more of a challenge when replaying them in modern times. Fire one up to see my point... Maybe i'm just too old. Where's my hearing aid? What?

I really hate the 'cheating' AI in this game, no matter how powerful your car is you can never really break away from the pack too far and although its like that to keep racing close it does frustrate because its just not realistic. That 290hp NSX shouldn't be able to keep relative pace with my 913hp R32 GT-R thanks. Unless i'm towing it (i could put a Honda joke here, but i'm not Fit for the task...).
The handling is also very hard to get used to, slightest of inclines bounce your car around and you get on two wheels quite often, sometimes bouncing those wheels on and off the ground - kinda cool in a way but it doesn't help much.

Nevertheless, there aren't too many races in this game. You've got Time Trial races (one for each track, plus its reverse version), Spot Races (basically easy ones that you need no licence to enter), Special Event races (where you've got the country vs country, endurance races, top FF/FR/4WD competitions, megaspeed races and so on - plus later Hi-Fi modes' three track choices), and of course GT League (Sunday Cup, Clubman Cup, GT Cup and GT World Cup - after which you get the ending credits). There is also Memory Card Battle which is a two player mode. False advertising really, i was all prepared for the plastic vs. plastic battle between memory cards with that guy in the mirror.

Qualifying for the race is a really great feature of the game (something every other subsequent GT game has failed to do as well as in GT1, or at all) and essential if your car is disadvantaged in some way. Which it usually is. Depending on the race event, qualifying in first place can get you 1,500cr. to 10,000cr! No points bonus though.

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CARS

One of the reasons why this game was so successful was because of the amount of cars (you know, those things with four wheels and a horn?). About 178 cars feature in the game which was more than any other game on the shelves (or floor) at the time (until GT2 came along - showing off its 594 or so cars, pfft). Naturally the majority of them are Japanese and range from the Honda NSX, Nissan Skyline GT-R, Mazda RX-7 to the Japanese Grand Touring Cars. Then there were a few others from around the world such as TVR, Aston Martin, Chevrolet and Dodge.

There are ten of them below but if you want to check out the whole lot then i dare you to click here.
- Aston Martin DB7 Volante
- Chevrolet Corvette Coupe '96
- Honda Civic 3Door Si '93
- Mazda FC Savanna RX-7 GT-X
- Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution III GSR
- Nissan Skyline GTS-4 (R32)
- Nissan Skyline GTS-25t Type M (R33)
- Toyota Soarer 2.5 GT-T VVT-i
- Toyota Supra RZ '95
- TVR Griffith 4.0

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TRACKS

There's no real point in having a racing game without tracks now is there? (correct answer: no, i think?).
There is plenty of variety in GT1, from night-time tracks like Special Stage Route 5 and Clubman Stage Route 5 (smaller version of SSR5) to long twisty tracks like Grand Valley Speedway and the infamous High-speed Ring. All of which are made up tracks by Polyphony. Well, i didn't make them up - i just made this site. Even then i didn't really make it. Hmm. So what did i do then?

There's a total of eleven tracks - all of which have been in at least one other Gran Turismo game, albeit somewhat changed from what they looked like the first time in this game due to the increased processing power/capabilities etc of the PS2/PS3/PSP. Or because the game designers tried to improve the look/layout. Or because <inserthilariouslyfunnyreasonhere>.

To see information about the tracks, some of which you will never see on any other GT site, or even in the game (uh.... ignore that last bit), click here. Or here. Actually, try here.