Now, honestly: who the hell doesn't love this game? Like seriously, you think you don't like it you take one more look at it and think "wow, what a stupid ass I was..".
It all started on the original Sony's masterpiece: Playstation video game console which was released at Q3 of 1995.
'95? It really is so old already. God, I can't believe it!
It feels like yesterday; I picture it in my head; I open the big ass present on the christmas eve and find this beast inside alongside with two games; Crash Bandicoot and Porsche Challenge.
Oh what mindless entertainment ensued. That Porsche game was so damn awful: what with its repetative races (like three or four tracks total; all that changed was the difficulty went up. Beat all the tracks, do it again on higher difficulty. Rinse and repeat, that shit was mindless as all hell but I didn't care, I was innocent back then) and stupid ass and absolutely oversized Porsche models.
Crash on the other hand was quite good. I never actually beat it (without the infamous four-line cheatcode) but I still enjoyed it.
This all changed when I first got my first Gran Turismo game. I looked at the cover and I immediately got excited. I popped it inside the toaster and I was hooked for life.
First time ever in my life did I get to experience what I enjoyed most; drive beautiful and ultra-fast cars around real tracks; that shit was better than life itself and just thinking about it makes me teary-eyed...
I still remember the images of that Mitsubishi GTO Twin Turbo, the car I managed to break 400 KM/H with, now that I think about it; I never succeeded on that afterwards, not in any of the later games. Quite dramatic.
And the soundtrack; it was just magnificent! It didn't have any great orchestral scores or real manufactured tracks but boy did they kick ass.
Never before had entering a shop been such a eargasm inducing experience, it was just wonderful.
Now there were some problems, too. The game CD broke... A lot. I vaguely remember having to buy like 5-6 new CDs just to finish the game. That's bullcrap.
To be honest, I bought a new one just last year when I found one on discount, I haven't played it much though; lost my memory card for PS1.
Now the next milestone on my childhood is when I recieved my next console: Playstation 2.
This, changed everything. Again.
Not only did the games now come with unearthly visuals, their quality was on an neverending rise.
Crash Bandicoot on PS1 was a cute little game with what you wasted some time every now and then but Crash Bandicoot 2: the Wrath of Cortex on PS2...
It left an everlasting impression; the boss battles in particular. They were just brilliant.
See some crazy unnameable monkeyrabbit thingy planting TNTs and NITROs and getting blasted by them, itself? MORE OF THAT, PLEASE!
Likewise, Gran Turismo 2 on PS2 was a noticeable improvement over the first one.
I prefer the first one's "feel" over the second one's, personally, but there were some big leaps on the second game.
For one the car selection from the first game got its sorry ass handed to itself.
GT2 just thought to itself "lol, you have what, a hundred cars? Well I have over five hundred! Suck it!" and it became instacool.
It also added many new tracks but, for some fucked up reason, removed one! Special Stage 12 no less! WHY?!!?
It also had these tracks like Redrock Speedway and Rome, two tracks that haven't returned to a GT game to date, sadly.
After these two games they announced the third one. Taking into consideration these first two games' wide success you can only assume how high the expectations were... And judging from the fact that up 'till this point the games have steadily improved from the last ones and been steadily better and better, you can only see what kind of a masterpiece we are talking about.
Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec, the second last GT game for PS2, was released on Q1 of 2001 and with it your GT experience would be blossomed to even greater heights.
No longer did you ride with cars with squarish tires or on pixelated tracks and shit; this game looked beautiful.
Up 'till this point I had never seen anything so sharp in a videogame.
The visuals still were but one of the many great improvements over the last game.
Car selection was steepened, many cars removed but I believe what they tried to do was optimize the car pool; remove useless ones from the mix.
Race competition system was improved, kind of; at least I feel it was a step in the right direction.
Instead of them being categorized under European, Japanese etc., they were put into categories Beginner, Amateur, Professional, Endurance and Rally, like so.
This would be optimized even more on the next game Gran Turismo 4: a game I decide to not touch due to my inability to do it justice.
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Good lord, I opened my blog and was supposed to write a musical article about NFS UG2's OST, I guess I leave that for another day though.
Good lord, I opened my blog and was supposed to write a musical article about NFS UG2's OST, I guess I leave that for another day though.
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