Like the title says, thank you very much Ken Kutiragi. Ken who? Dubbed as the father of the PlayStation, it was the initiatives of Ken Kutiragi and his buddies at Sony that made the original PlayStation a household staple in the 90s. However, it wasn’t until 1997, a few years after the PlayStation’s launch in 1994 that a pioneering title would appear to challenge the status quo. Gran Turismo, the brainchild of Kazunori Yamauchi, not only changed the public’s perception of racing video games; it has contributed to the evolution of the automotive industry.
I always considered myself a car guy, even before I could say anything understandable to those around me. My adored toys were cars with a prancing horse, raging bull or golden crest wedged in between their headlights, not that I knew what they were at the time. They just looked cool. However, my life would forever change as a single-digit aged boy when I received a copy of Gran Turismo. All of a sudden my vocabulary had increased tenfold to include words like Skyline, Supra, RX-7, Evolution, WRX, Viper, Corvette, and within no time, Nismo, TRD, Mazadspeed, Ralliart, Mugen Power and many, many, more. I was a fixated sponge. Soon enough I was eagerly pointing out cars on the road that I had seen in the game to my much despair parents. I would use Gran Turismo as my encyclopedia for different models. Remember, these were the days when most people did not have a beastly 56k dial-up internet connection. A euphoric moment came when I was able to identify a particular long and low yellow supercar that would randomly circle my primary school. It was seldom spotted so I was only able to get a flash by glimpse of it when it would decide to make an appearance. I thought it was a Ferrari F50 as it looked similar to my yellow Bburago 1:43 scale model. After many weeks of “intensive researching” on Gran Turismo, I discovered what it was. The next time it drove passed, the then-and-still 9 year old me would proudly boast to my fellow primary school pals, who mind you probably didn’t give a shit, that it was indeed "a Honda NSX". From time to time, I still see this exact yellow NSX on the roads here in Adelaide.
Gran Turismo posses the most jam-packed count of vehicles into a single game. GT1 debuted with 140, GT2 with 650 and with the release of GT6 in 2013, a mind-boggling 1,226 cars were made available to players of the game. Despite this, enthusiasts were always prompt to criticise the in-game sound of the cars. Whilst I do agree and believe it’s taken way too long to rectify (developers of the game, Polyphony Digital, have already hired the previous Audio Lead of arguably the best in-game car sounding franchise, Microsoft’s Forza, to remedy the hitch), I think Gran Turismo’s other industry-wide initiatives have more than made up for this matter.
The fact that anyone with enough talent, commitment and dedication could become a professional race car driver thanks to Gran Turismo is truly transforming. Since 2008, 28 individuals from all around the globe have graduated from the GT Academy program, with some never even having driven a manual car in their life prior to commencing in the program. Qualification required players to set a regulated top 10 lap-time within Gran Turismo, before facing fellow home-combatants in their country’s National Finals. A winner is then selected to compete on a global scale at Race Camp, traditionally held at the Silverstone Circuit in England. After a week-long selection process, one lucky Gran Turismo gamer is crowned as the GT Academy winner and immediately undertakes a 3-month long driver development program. The GT Academy graduates aren’t one-hit wonders, with consistent podium finishes and outright victories at renown races such as the Dubai 24 Hour, Bathurst 12 Hour, Blackpain GT Series Endurance Cup, Super GT, All-Japan Formula Three as well as the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans. Yours truly even gave it a shot in 2015 but an embarrassing top 200 lap-time was enough to write this career off (anyone who could tackle the Porsche Curves, virtually without any lift-off, at Circuit de La Sarthe in that horrendous 2015 Nissan GT-R LM Nismo rightly deserved their spot).
In addition to GT Academy, Gran Turismo’s 15th anniversary saw the series creator, Yamauchi, ask the following question to the automotive sphere; "would you be willing to design your rendition of Gran Turismo (GT) for us?" To date, 19 out of the 29 manufactures who signed up for the gig have released their concept car expression of what a GT (i.e. 2-door sports car) car should be, with extravagant attention given to the aerodynamics. I have a feeling these expressions and design ques will carry onto the said manufacture’s future production models if the Bugatti Vision Gran Turismo and the Bugatti Chiron are anything to compare by. Gran Turismo’s influence on the community is so strong that manufactures have even sought to debut new models using the game. The production Nissan GT-R R35 was simultaneously unveiled in the game at the exact same time as the real life car during the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show. While at the 2012 Detroit Motor Show, the public received its first glimpse of the second-generation Honda NSX, unveiled during Honda’s press conference using Gran Turismo as the media platform. I’ve completely forgotten about the in-game sound affair already!
After graduating from primary school and high school, i.e. growing up, I thought I would have been done with Gran Turismo, because you know, only kids play video games. Nothing could be further from the truth. With university done and dusted, and now having been in the workforce long enough to complete a medicine degree, I am still a fan of the series and will forever be. The only difference between the version I played as a 9 year old lad and now, is the sequential number at the end of the title. The seventh instalment of Gran Turismo is set to be released this year (albeit with multiple delays, miserably associated with this franchise) and I’m already thinking to myself, what new automotive material will I soak up?
