My Diaries

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

Thursday April 19, 2001

I Win the Normal Series with an Impreza Wagon

I decided to keep playing some more days in the supra game (Maybe here) to try out some other cars and test various possibilities, as well as just have fun.

Some of the cheapest cars which people claim can win the Normal series are the Subaru Imprezas. Biased by the fact that I own an Impreza Wagon, I decided to use a wagon. In GT1 the 1994 version tunes up to the most horsepower of all Imprezas, and so represents the best investment.

I'm not a great driver, so I reloaded the game until no NSX was present in the line-up.

It seemed to take a lot of reloads to do that; perhaps when the game has more days or more trophies or something the probability of an NSX is actually greater.

Well, I won, just, but even the point totals don't indicate all the drama.

As usual in this series, the TRD always placed the best it could. At Grand Valley East I won by a hair (0.093 seconds). I had trailed in second most of the race, but could see myself gaining slightly on the TRD.

On the last lap I was very close coming out of the tunnel, and, sure enough, the TRD went wide on that kink before the straight leading to the hairpin. That caused it to lose enough speed to allow me to pass it on that straight.

On the final straight it came up behind me, but, stupidly, bumped me in the rear--probably speeding me up slightly and allowing me to hold on for the win.

That was a relief, but I really didn't expect to need it.

It was no surprise when I came second at DFRW, but I was disappointed that I couldn't do better than third at SSR11. So I really did need that close win at GVE.

But I did do one thing at SSR11 that I could not have done when first learning GT. I actually passed the Impreza as I went through the cental chicane, on lap one or two.

On the other hand, after that lap I couldn't really keep a rhythm through that chicane at all, and because of that, combined with low top speed, I was unable to gain on the two leading cars (the TRD and also the RX-7) and so finished third. In fact, I got close to the RX-7 but hit a chicane barrier and lost a few seconds. But because I failed to gain time after that I sort of think it might have been even worse if I had passed it, although the rest of the cars were quite a way back.

So this was an interesting series because it indicated that I had improved some skills, but was not overall a reliable, reproducible win.

In spite of this, however, it's clear that this car can be part of another minimal game.

Relatively cheap ones (Cr14,980 and Cr15,600) can be found from days 10 to 29, and can be used to win the Normal Series and get the game rolling. Fully-modified, the car can win all races it can enter. The tuned version can win the Abnormal Series and the All-Night II.