Dear motorsport fans

Today is the 25h anniversary of this Simcade racing franchise, the first game was released back on December 23rd, 1997 for the original PlayStation in Japan/Asia.
Plus, Gran Turismo's official YouTube channel has released its trailer, so I would like to see you guys share your thoughts and fond memories of them.

So here are my short thoughts:
This is the game franchise that made me love the PlayStation brand for having a good roster of playable cars & race circuits while having a good driving model for Simcade standards, the same goes for the Forza Motorsport series made me love the Xbox brand too.

I had Gran Turismo 1 on PS but I was garbage at it. Could not get higher than a B class license.

Still played a TON of it though.

Great series, can't imagine the amount of hours I've dumped into the first four games. The drivatar feature revealed in the third game was a god send when needed for those long endurance races.

Yeah, the driving school mode can be very confusing, especially for those who don't have much knowledge of motor racing in general.

When I play endurance racing events in whichever Simcades and Sim Racing games in general, I prefer to use the wheel which keeps my precision and motivation up.

@gtxforza: Couldn't make a tight hairpin turn to save my life unless it worked like Initial D. :P

@chamurai: You can also look up Keiichi Tsuchiya (The real car drifter) as an example.

For the tight hairpin, I guess you were driving a virtual low-performance road car rather than a virtual high-performance road or race car, well, in the original Gran Turismo, players must keep grinding before they can buy a superior car for each specific in-game event.

I still remember seeing a replay video of the first game and thinking I was looking at real cars.

Then GT 2 came out, and I had a cousin visit for the summer and he unlocked damn near everything. Which is impressive in such a gigantic game. GT 3 was also superb with one of the most impressive graphical leaps of the PS2 era (with Tekken Tag being the other mindblowing one).

Haven't played any GT since since I wound up playing more Need for Speed than anything, but I'll always have an appreciation for the series. And Moon Over the Castle is an amazing theme that I went and covered this year, which I didn't know much about back in the day since our intros featured The Cardigans and Lenny Kravitz.

@csl316: I understand why people prefer arcade-style street racing games more than Simcades?

So what I can see in something like Need For Speed, Burnout, Midtown Madness, Midnight Club and many others, it's to do with fast-paced arcade gameplay style, where the virtual street racers drive their high-performance street spec cars, dodging the traffic, and several other things to describe.

Meanwhile, in a majority of Simcades, taking place in racing circuits, the contestants drive most kinds of cars from low performance to high performance as they build up their reputation while progressing through their virtual racing career.

@gtxforza: Yeah, GT 3 is when I was deepest into it. Me and my friends had a competition going, so there was incentive to really dig into every option just so we could stay ahead. It was a damn fun time, but I dunno, these days I can't get myself deep into the tuning aspect.

NFS has some of that, but far simpler. It has me digging deep into each car, but not TOO deep for my minimal knowledge of cars. And it made me value each part more than Horizon's constant feed of new ones. It felt like a nice balance of customization, and I love the full control I feel I have at any given moment in the gameplay.

I think my shift from sim to something else was the first Most Wanted, and then I really loved Rivals and Heat. Hell, Unbound might be my game of the year, honestly.