On the PlayStation (long before it became the PSone) Gran Turismo was a revelation. Rather than approximating a driving experience a la arcade centric games like Ridge Racer or even TOCA, it unblinkingly stared into the face of the motorsport industry and delivered an authentic experience. Where other game had long been marketed a life-like driving experience, Gran Turismo was the first that could truly say it was a real Driving Simulator.
As such it became a game more about relationships than about horsepower and traction control (stay with us here). Picking up a gamepad to play, the player slowly developed detailed interactions with both cars and circuits. Here they would spend hours fine tuning their skills on certain cars, and memorising every twist, camber and turn of each track. Apart from the real life renderings of other games (Laguna Seca for example) there are no tracks that come anywhere close in my memory to the heady delights of Grindwald.
Since the original release, and the franchise's establishment at the top of the driving game scene, it has seen numerous iterations. Such is the obsessive attention to detail of Polyphony Digital that they are often forced to release early samples of their games to keep fans happy. These entries usually go by the name of Prologue, and although should be quickly followed by the full game, history teaches that they often precede it by a good year. Today is just one of those moments - where publisher and fan pressure has squeezed an early release form the developers, and where we likely have another year to go before the full release.
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