25 Years Ago Gran Turismo Redefined the Racing Game

Driving a car has been a popular game activity almost since the dawn of the medium—mechanical versions were in use in British amusement arcades in the 1930s, and in the early 70s, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell contemplated making a driving game before Pong. Starting from primitive examples, such as 1972’s Wipeout for the Magnavox Odyssey, the video-game-driving genre has become one of the most technically sophisticated and immersive in gaming. And 25 years ago, one of the most influential racing games helped make that possible: Gran Turismo was released(Opens in a new window) on December 23, 1997.

Building the Dream Game

When Sony was preparing to launch the PlayStation game console, the company knew it would have to represent the major genres in gaming right off the bat. Racing was a priority, so Sony devoted an internal team to creating Motor Toon Grand Prix, a kart racer that was overshadowed by Namco’s more realistic Ridge Racer. MTGP got a sequel, and both of them sold well, which enabled the developers to make a big move.

Team leader Kazunori “Kaz” Yamauchi(Opens in a new window) had been working on a passion project during his time at Sony, and in 1992, he started work in earnest. Now in charge of an internal development studio dubbed “Polys,” Yamauchi knew he could create a racing title that would surpass all competitors. Working with a small team, sometimes as few as five people, he began laying the foundation for what would become Gran Turismo(Opens in a new window).

Kaz threw himself into his task with manic abandon, sleeping almost every night in the office as he painstakingly tweaked the simulation to get closer to reality. While previous racing games were often clumsy approximations of the real thing, Gran Turismo would give the player a massive virtual garage with over 175 cars, all of which handled like their real-world counterparts. While the driving was pitch-perfect, the little details really sold Gran Turismo. Windows reflected the track for the first time. Tires had different grips. Braking and turning were complex dances of timing and precision, and new drivers needed to adjust to the reality of a simulation like nothing they’d played before.

Even after five years of development, Yamauchi wasn’t completely satisfied with Gran Turismo. He thought the sound design wasn’t up to par, and the AI didn’t perform as realistically as he wanted. That obsessive focus on quality would define the series moving forward. The first game smashed expectations, selling more than 11 million copies and becoming the best-performing piece of PS1 software ever released.

Shifting Into Second Gear

Obviously, Sony wanted a sequel, but it couldn’t wait five years for another Gran Turismo game. This would kick off a constant push-pull between Polys and company management, in which the power shifted back and forth regularly.

Sony got its sequel relatively quickly, though—Gran Turismo 2(Opens in a new window) shipped just two years after the first game, in 1999—but it was far from the seismic event of the first title’s release. In fact, the second version fell victim to the excesses of “sequelitis,” boasting more cars but less innovation. The only significant change made to the game was that the braking physics were more gentle, to discourage oversteering.  

Unfortunately, the game was also plagued by glitches. Creating a simulation with the complexity of Gran Turismo opens the doors to tons of bugs. One of the most notorious errors made the game impossible to complete, which definitely offended the hardcore fans. It sold well, but it gave Kaz ammunition for an argument to Sony that the next game in the series, for the PS2 console, needed more time in the oven.

Revving the Engine

Initially, the company wanted Gran Turismo 2000 out the door in…2000. But Polyphony Digital, as the studio was renamed in 1998, had more leverage. It was able to argue that the game’s transition to the PlayStation 2 needed to be a significant upgrade across all fronts, not just more of the same.

The increased processing and rendering power of the PS2 allowed the team to amp up the verisimilitude of the simulation in both big and small ways. Renamed Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec, the 2001 release showed Polyphony at the top of its game. Everything looked more realistic than in the PS1 entries, with new features, including being able to wash your car, adding extra sheen to the world. Yamauchi went so far as to record the engine noises of each individual car to make them even more accurate.

As hardware continued to advance, Gran Turismo became Sony’s barometer for its new console features. When the series hit the PS3 with GT5, online racing was included for the first time: Up to 16 players could compete. Also added was visible damage from crashes, something that had previously been left out to avoid angering car manufacturers. Add in over a thousand cars and 81 track layouts, and you had a racing game that truly felt next-generation. Sony would do the same for future games, adding haptic feedback, 3D spatial audio, and more.

Kaz’s team understood something very basic in the car lover’s mentality: Driving involves a deep level of connection between man and machine, beyond the simple action of wheels and pedals. It’s a synesthetic experience where in many ways the car acts as an avatar of oneself, a chrome-and-steel embodiment. By paying attention to to details that most developers would gloss over, Polyphony’s Gran Turismo made a deeper connection than any racing game had ever done.

Turning In Advance

Typically, it’s rare for a franchise title not to ship at the launch of a new console, but the Polyphony Digital team has leveraged itself into a unique position. Sony gives it the time to really come to terms with the hardware’s power, which always results in a new entry into the franchise that’s leaps and bounds ahead of the last.

The most recent installment in the series is a perfect example of that philosophy. GT7(Opens in a new window)’s cars boast a staggering 500,000 polygons apiece—a thousand times what the original offered. But Polyphony isn’t the only game in town anymore. Franchises such as Microsoft’s Forza have embraced the attention to detail of GT, establishing themselves as worthy rivals. 

So what’s next for Gran Turismo, a quarter of a century after its first release? A live-action film(Opens in a new window) by Neill Blomkamp is scheduled for 2023, starring Archie Madekwe as a gamer turned pro driver. And this may sound far-fetched, but Gran Turismo’s scrupulous attention to detail has made it a popular training tool for racers(Opens in a new window). In 2008, Nissan partnered with Sony to launch GT Academy, a program that bridged the gap between the digital world and the real track, and graduates went on to compete in numerous international races.

Who would have thought in the early days of moving chunky pixels around digital racetracks that we’d one day be able to take the skills we learned on our consoles and employ them in the real world? All it took was one man’s insane attention to detail and willingness to sleep in the office for years to get us there.