If you’re into cars, there’s a high chance you’ve played or at least heard of the Gran Turismo racing game that is exclusively available on PlayStation only. Possibly the reason most young kids turn into car enthusiasts, the Gran Turismo celebrates its 25th anniversary today, after the first of its series debuted on November 16, 2022.
Created by Kazunori Yamauchi, development started with him, two part-time artists, and three engineers. Several iterations and many years later, the team behind the Gran Turismo franchise, Polyphony Digital, consists of more than 200 people.
The first Gran Turismo game wowed players with its large collection of cars and impressive graphics at its time of release. Nearly all car brands were available in the game and players could purchase a wide variety of performance upgrades (with in-game credits) and add ‘Racing Modification’ livery upgrades to certain cars. The most memorable thing about the Gran Turismo game would be the fact that players would have to first obtain a ‘Racing Drivers License’ before they could even start racing in the ‘Simulation Mode’.
Following the many iterations of the PlayStation console, the Gran Turismo series too has had many iterations with Gran Turismo 7 being the latest installation. In between the 7 ‘main’ installations, there have also been other sub-versions of the game like Gran Turismo Concept, Gran Turismo 4: Prologue, Gran Turismo HD Concept, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, and Gran Turismo Sport.
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Starting out as a mere console game, the Gran Turismo franchise has even managed to get car brands to participate in their Vision concept, where each company makes a concept car that pushes the limits of the physical world. The game has even appeared on the old Top Gear series where Jeremy Clarkson used the game to practice driving a Honda NSX on the Laguna Seca racetrack before doing it in real life.
Kazunori Yamauchi even made a post on the PlayStation blog to commemorate the game’s 25th anniversary. In his post, he said, “My heartfelt thanks goes out to all of them for their support. And above all else, I can’t ever thank enough the GT users and people of the GT community who have played our new titles, which at times could be said to have been very experimental.”
“We are here today because of all the people who supported us. I believe the Gran Turismo series has always pursued “Beauty”. The beauty of the cars, the beauty of the scenery, the beauty of the lighting, the beauty of driving, the beauty of sounds/music and the beauty of the graphics. The ‘pursuit of beauty’ is the motivation for creating Gran Turismo.”
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