My Diaries

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

Monday February 7, 2000

Start GT2 by Entering the Trail Mountain 30 with my Cr10,000 Starter

I started a new GT2 game, trying to be fair but minimal. It is difficult though. Is a Mine's Lancer Evolution V a Pure Sports Car, or not, for instance?

The log is here gt2-tm30

I started with my previous declarations that you should be able to buy a gold 1968 Toyota 2000GT before day 10 by using the following scheme:

I did this, and was lucky. The AI field I got on day 5 was headed by a Ford Focus Ghia 2.0i Zetec, and so it was easy to win. My time was almost identical to the time I did in the same car when I lost to a Lotus Elise by about 10 seconds. The Cr150,000 was enough to buy the gold 2000GT, and the Denso Sard Supra could make inroads into other money-makers and car-getters, such as the SSR5 All-night or the All-Stars series. Not to mention the GT500.

I started at 4:25pm, and bought the 2000GT at 10:45pm. So that's 6:20. But in that time I'd actually got my IA and S licenses saved on another card. S was time-consuming. I got some of the familiar tracks in one try, but took 5 for S5, and lost count of S9 (Rome Night). I got a kiddie prize after about eight tries, which surprised me because I had loaded at least one bronze time via "merge records", but I kept going until I got bronze. Getting IA and S took from 5:25 to 7:40pm, ie 2:15, so that makes time to get the 2000GT using this strategy and having good luck just over 4 hours. I practice a lot for enduros, by-the-way. Oh, and wait for all AI cars to finish.

And I also had to do mundane things like eat supper during that time as well. I must admit 3:05 is a long time for just the one TM30, though. (Actual race finish time was 52:13.765) So, two hours might get IB and first TM30 finish. Depending upon one's preferences one could redo the TM30 race until one has enough money (before day 9, though), or keep resetting and restarting until a friendly field shows up.

I discovered some interesting things about "Merge Records" too. This is still the original Gran Turismo 2.0

If you "merge records" into an empty game, you get records recorded for the license tests, but don't get your licenses or any of the cups. This has the strange effect that you can get a cup without setting a top five time. If your last cup of the set *does* set a a top five time, then you get the "license acquired" screen, and the opportunity to save the game. However, if you get a new cup, without setting a top five time, you don't get notified of the license acquisition, although, if you go to your game status, it is there. And you also don't get the chance to save the game from within the license test screens.

There is also a silver and a white 2000GT available days 10 to 20.

There's also a Grand Prix White Datsun 240Z available days 20-29.

I've seen three colours of that car: "Grand Prix White", "Grand Prix Red", and "Grand Prix Maroon". Hmm. That last one doesn't sound quite right. Sort of like "battleship turquoise" or "army pink".