Introduction

Developer: Polyphony Digital
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America
Gran Turismo 3 official page: http://www.scea.com/games/categories/racing/Gt3/

The First Killer App?

When we wrote our PlayStation 2 Technical Overview last year, we explained how Ken Kutaragi's vision led to the development of an unconventional but powerful system. At the time, many PS2 games looked worse than their Dreamcast counterparts, but by the theoretical technical analysis, we still thought it was possible for the PS2 architecture to produce high quality graphics (though perhaps not CG quality) if it was placed in the hands of the right developers. It's been over a year since the PS2 was released in Japan, but the first of the promised killer-apps has finally been released: Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec.

The US cover is blue

Welcome to Gran Turismo 3

History

At one point, GT3 was supposed to be a PlayStation2 launch title -- it was originally called Gran Turismo 2000. Gran Turismo 2 for the PSOne had been a huge success internationally and 11 million discs were shipped for the entire GT series. Polyphony Digital, Sony's elite in-house software development team, was planning on taking Gran Turismo 2 and updating the graphics. Their initial efforts were well intentioned, but for the most part GT2000 lacked the visual impact the PlayStation2 was supposedly capable of delivering.

As Polyphony Digital continued to delay the game, it was hard for people not to make disparaging comparisons to Daikatana. GT2000 missed one release date after another, and Polyphony Digital continued to make promises about gorgeous graphics and realistic physics…at least Daikatana was being developed for a proven platform!

Somewhere along the way, Gran Turismo 2000 was renamed Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec. Polyphony Digital argued, that the game had progressed to a point where it was a true sequel, hence the 3, and "A-Spec" was supposed to imply that the Gran Turismo 3 was more than just a simple sequel to the last game. With one mediocre PS2 game being released after another, one couldn't help but to think that Polyphony Digital's claims were just another part of Sony's well-tuned marketing machine, that even NVIDIA would be jealous of.

When a US demo made its way around the various publications, journalists were enthusiastic but not jubilant. The game had certainly shaped up to become a good racing game for the PlayStation2, but by then most journalists had already lowered their expectations for PS2 games. The game was already looking good, but it wasn't a system-seller or system-killer. Polyphony Digital noted that the demo was using an engine that was months old, and that the latest build was significantly better - probably just the Sony PS2 marketing team at work we thought.

Then, Polyphony Digital started to release newer screenshots revealing more polygonal rich backgrounds, more cars, and even "wet road" effects. The newer screenshots certainly looked impressive - but Polyphony Digital continued to tell seemingly tall tales of amazing AI, realism, gameplay and graphics. They made it sound as if the game would be a new paradigm in racing, and the demo certainly did not reflect that. Still, the hype continued to grow. Would Sony really be able to put out a PS2 game living up to the hype this? Would Sony finally release a game that could stand up to the PC or Xbox?

I'm placing my bets on the Subaru	Artistic
The camera man must have fallen asleep	Looks mean

Impatience

On April 28, Sony released Gran Turismo 3 in Japan. 48 hours later, Sony announced that they had shipped 1 million copies of the game to retailers. We took notice and with such success in Japan, we decided that we needed to look at this game right away. Importing the elusive game was a task more difficult than any of our other adventures, but after a weekend of intensive play, GT3 walked away with our Editor's Choice award.