Inside Pulse launched on August 9, 2004, and has covered the world of gaming for over a decade. Every day, we take a look back at what was happening in the world of gaming 10 years ago, as reported right here at Inside Pulse/Diehard Gamefan!
Preview: Gran Turismo 4 (PS2)
Publisher: SCEA / Developer: Polyphony Digital / Genre: Driving / Release Date: 1Q 2005
With the game set to come out soon, Gran Turismo 4 is right around the corner and will be driving over the competition. GT4 is projected to be one of the highest selling games this year, an impressive estimate considering that the sales charts are still burning up over the recent releases of both Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Halo 2. Then again the game has already sold very well in Japan with Sony reporting that they’ve shipped over 1 million copies in the first two days of sale there.
How did this racing game become such a giant name in the business that it has people predicting that it can outsell highly popular action titles and overshadow other popular racers being released this winter? Let’s take a brief look at the history of the Gran Turismo series and see how this juggernaut got started.
The History:
Gran Turismo:
The first Gran Turismo game hit the US shores in 1998 and was quickly a hit. Part of this was due to the large selection of licensed vehicles available to choose from that each handled uniquely and realistically. Another addition that grabbed racing fans at the time was the ability to customize each vehicle with parts that affected the handling of the cars. This was all due to the efforts of longtime automobile fan and game developer of the series Kazunori Yamauchi who was tired of racing games with special cars and special races and decided to try and make a game using actual vehicles that you would see on the streets. Gamers took to this simple idea like a fish takes to water. While some of this might not seem like much now, at the time it was enough to put the Gran Turismo name on the map. With the success of Gran Turismo Yamauchi split of from SCEI and formed his own studio, Polyphonal Digital (some of this may be because of
Leave a Reply