My Diaries

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

Thu Feb 11, 1999

PlayStation Cooling, Feet, and trying from Day 1 again...

The principal thing I did last night was make some replacement feet for my PlayStation. I cut them out of a tallish cylindrical 500ml shampoo bottle made of opaque #2 recyclable plastic. My workmanship wasn't great; I used a hacksaw, and it was difficult to get a precise initial purchase and then after you had a start the bottle was too flexible to easily cut accurately. A hot knife plus a pair of sharpish utility scissors might have been better. They support the weight alright, but I think the result is somewhat less stable than the pieces of toilet roll were.

What is needed, actually, is something to make it impossible to pull the PlayStation forward by tugging on the controller wires.

After making the feet I decided to play Simulation Mode from Day 1 again. (Not permanently, just as a temporary experiment!) Initially, there is an MA70 Supra available for less than Cr7000. If you snap that up, you can also afford weight reduction 1, and hard stabilizers with the initial Cr10000.

For a while I just abandoned race entries to use up one day at a time so I could check how dealers' used stock varied with the day. In particular I was curious about the fact that someone claimed to have seen a '67 Corvette at the Chevy dealer. All-in-all, I expect they were mistaken, though. People who compile lists of available cars presumably cycle through all possible combinations with a Game Shark and would know whether a '67 Corvette could possibly be had in simulation mode.

Nonetheless, I certainly did observe that in the first few days of the game the game's claim that you must "check back frequently since dealer stock varies" is certainly true. One day when I checked there was not even a red MA70 to be had. But it came back a few days later. A few days in there is an MA70 for less than Cr6000, so one could argue you should start doing license tests and check back until that car appears, buy it and perhaps even add turbo spec 1 (Cr4000) rather than the other mods. But for a good player it's not worth buying any mods to your first car. You can win the Sunday Cup with a used MA70 "straight out of the box" and quite quickly get enough money to start real racing. It seems to me that as your saved game gets more "mature" (my "real" game is at 1300+ days now), the stock seems to vary less. [Later I realized my observations here were inaccurate; I'm not sure what happened to give me the impressions].

On the other hand, this means of user-controlled handicapping is excellent when users are learning the game. Initially, every race is a struggle; it is a relief that you are guaranteed Cr100 every time. So being able to buy your way to easy(er) victory by adding parts to give your car an unfair advantage is a nice playability feature. It might even make the game suitable for children. (Not meaning by that "less suitable for adults"; I really cannot tell what the intended target age of the Gran Turismo market was).

But gee, in my replays I still seem to have 2nd place Autumn Ring Spot Race finish. At the time it felt like an accomplishment. The game presents a certain class of user with a lot to learn, but gives them the means to learn most of it.

Eventually last night I decided to actually try a race instead of abandoning it. Then I had a shock, for I had forgotten to reconfigure my controller. I decided to see how long it would take me to win with the default controller configuration. It took me about four races, which was certainly a lot fewer races than I had needed when I first started playing.

The custom controller configuration I use is:

This leaves X and circle free, so I have a digital mapping which is identical but using X for accelerator and circle for brake. The main problem with this configuration is that I have a tendency to hit the handbrake when going for "rear view".