My Diaries

A Lurid Tale of Obsession, Depravity, Wits and Attempted Wit

Mon Jan 4, 1999

Background and some initial impressions of a new player

Based on mail to Nick.

So, we decided to get Gran Turismo because we thought my nephew might enjoy it. Oh, alright, the sales clerk where I bought it didn't believe me either.

One thing I find amusing is that if you have multiple instances of the same car (a Mazda Demio perhaps you can "share" tune-up parts without purchasing new ones. You can even have the parts installed in both cars simultaneously.

Conversely, it's not clear that "one time irreversible" modifications can be done to a second car after having been done to a first. (E.g. weight reduction). It does seem possible to keep a racing and non-racing version of the same car. E.g. a pretty raspberry near-stock Cerbera and a somewhat ugly mostly grey racing modified one.

As far as I can tell Demios are a unit of currency within the game. The GT League cars almost wait for you to win the series, and this is a good way of getting about cr25000 + a Demio (worth cr12000 at a Mazda dealer, cr10000 elsewhere I wonder if real-life Demios spend a lot of their racing time on 3 or even two wheels? Strange thing is you don't get significantly more compensation for winning the more difficult FF and FR series. (Can't really say yet about the 4W or lightweight series yet).

It's interesting; simulation mode is like "Test Drive" (is that a dirty word?) but using the psychological trick of increasing the perceived value of driving a particular car by making you work a little bit for it.

I don't think I'd want to start my own GT pages, but might be persuaded to do some updates to other peoples'. Or perhaps I should find someone to do a sort of "trading mirror" with. I.e. I'd first mirror their pages, make some modifications, and then offer them back.

Sigh. I really don't need motivation which might cause me to spend an excessive amount of time doing "research", however.

I'm really new to this PlayStation thing. I wonder if there is by any chance a "download" of some sort that will allow manipulation of Replay files? E.g. copying existing replays from one file on one card to a larger file on another card?

I've only seen the term "memory card download"--never actually loaded one and used it, so I can only imagine that they might occasionally be such utilities that can be loaded and executed.

Oh well. The RCA video adapter is plugged into my VCR. I might start storing a different style of Replay.

Basic GT game state is 5 blocks of card memory. (The blocks of which a standard card has 15).

GT car settings data is separate, and seems to be always 2 of those blocks, and is room for 120 separate car settings.

The Replay data is also another separate memory card file, but requires you to choose how big to make it. They refer to the size in sectors, and I think you get about 60 of those sectors per memory block, and need something over 20 for the average replay. Yes, you can copy the entire Replay file to another card, but you do not seem to be able to copy one Replay file on top of an existing one on the other card in any way. The upshot is that on the particular memory card you are stuck with your initial choice of file size. (To add to confusion, the replay elements within the memory card "file" are also referred to as "files"; what I'd like to be able to do, you see, is copy individual replay files from within one replay File and put those replay files inside another replay File. I've used "file" there for the "replay elements", and "File" for the entity the main Memory Card editor sees.)

The best thing to do is probably keep all replays on a separate card and allocate all 15 blocks. But it makes me nervous switching cards with the power on, especially since you don't seem to be able to view contents, etc. of cards from within the game. (Plus it's just after Christmas, and it's hard to find more of the things to buy...)

[Aside: It would be really nice to be able to get to and from the main "Options" menu, e.g. just before starting a race, if, e.g. one track is better viewed in narrow mode, while others are better in normal or wide, or especially to set 2 player settings, e.g. laps, handicap, etc.]

I've seen the term "memory card download" on the "Jampack" CDs that come with Playstation club subscription and/or are occasionally retailed real cheap and in fact was thrown in free with the PlayStation I bought. (I bought mine at Canadian Tire; ever heard of them? Wal-Mart hadn't when they conducted phone surveys prior to moving in up here).

I am just speculating that Sony could make extension utilities available as memory card downloads.

The downloads on the JamPack CD I have are for some other game, and I think do the usual sleazy free life type stuff. Ah. I guess that would be done by just downloading a file containing a certain game state. E.g. they could make a download for GT with B license and a couple of cars and a couple of cr100K. (And then there's that Shark thing I saw referred to at another site; how unsporting...) But perhaps pre-configured game configurations is the limit of what they do with downloads. Providing a means to transfer execution to within the memory card ROM would open up a whole can of worms which Sony probably doesn't want to.

(Rest base on mail to empire) Quotes.

<quote>

Gran Turismo is the greatest car game that I have ever played on any system and I have a Sony Playstation, Nintendo 64 and a PC with a 3dfx graphics card! The Game has an unbelievable amount of options and almost endless amount of game play. Most magazines including Australia's own Official Playstation Magazine have rated the game 10/10. It would have to be the best driving simulator I have ever seen and that is why I have dedicated this page to the greatest Playstation Game of all time.

On the left there is a link for some images from the game. The playability is so realistic you would think that you're actually in the car. Australia's own Peter Brock said that the cars are incredibly realistic and they handle like the real thing.

</quote>

The clash of modern super cars vs. muscle cars from the past continues in the sequel to the best-selling Test Drive 4. Test Drive 5 features twice the cars (28) and three times as many tracks (18). The addition of new [5]features like split-screen mode, branching roads, and breathtaking photo realistic graphics make Test Drive 5 the ultimate racing challenge.

</quote>

Gran Turismo must have at least 28 types of Toyota alone. But no Jaguars. TVR Cerbera is probably a better car, though. And a '67 Corvette in arcade mode slides really well round medium corners. Looks especially good on multi-view replays.

Gran Turismo has about a dozen tracks, and doubles that by providing races in both directions, and also has License qualification runs.

See http://www.pug.to/gt.html

It says 187 cars.