TL;DR
- What it is: Kazunori Yamauchi’s 1997 PS1 racing simulator — the ‘Real Driving Simulator’
- Platform/Price: PS1 boxed — around £5 to £15 on eBay
- Dad Filter verdict: Buy — still one of the best racing games ever made
- One thing to know: Polyphony Digital estimated the game used 75% of the PS1’s max performance
New to TurboGeek Gaming? Start with the Dad Filter manifesto to understand how I review games — as a 46-year-old dad with two boys aged 10 and 7, not as a professional games journalist. Then check the Gaming hub for every review.
What It Is
Gran Turismo is a racing simulation developed by Polyphony Digital and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, released in Japan in December 1997 and in the rest of the world in 1998. It was designed by Kazunori Yamauchi and developed over five years by a team that started at seven people and grew to fifteen. The pitch was simple and, at the time, preposterous: a racing game with real manufacturer-licensed cars, real physics, and a structure that forced the player to earn their way into championships through progressively difficult licence tests.
What Polyphony actually delivered was 140 licensed cars, 11 tracks plus reversed versions, arcade and simulation modes, tuning and upgrade systems, and a physics engine that made the PS1 feel like a racing arcade machine you owned. The game shipped on a single CD-ROM at 60 frames per second in Hi-Fi mode for time trials. Over a decade it sold 10.85 million copies. For context: the PS1 shifted roughly 100 million units over its life. One in every ten PlayStations sold got a copy of Gran Turismo on its shelf.
Why This One Matters To Me
Gran Turismo was the game that convinced my dad that video games were not a waste of time. He had watched me play Ridge Racer and Tomb Raider with polite disinterest. When he saw the Trial Mountain replay camera pan across a Mitsubishi FTO with all four wheels hung in the air, he sat down. He watched the whole session. He asked what car I was driving. He asked if that was a real track. The answer was no, but the question told me everything about what the game had achieved.
That replay-camera moment is still the thing Gran Turismo is remembered for. The in-game action is good. The replays are sublime. Polyphony deliberately engineered the camera to make every replay look like a Top Gear intro, and the effect was that every session felt a little bit like a film. Modern racing games have tried to match this and mostly failed, because they confuse realism with drama.
The licence test structure is divisive. The original game gates championship entries behind a progression of increasingly difficult tests that require you to learn car control, cornering lines, and braking discipline before the game lets you race. In 1997 this was seen as exacting. In 2026 it is seen as borderline hostile to casual players. But the tests genuinely teach you something about driving, and the modern simplifications have quietly made racing games worse.
My ten-year-old was tolerant of the licence tests for about thirty minutes before bouncing to Arcade Mode, which is the right choice for kids. My seven-year-old wanted to play the replay mode and nothing else, which is also a legitimate way to enjoy Gran Turismo. This is a family game in the narrow sense that different family members can extract different pleasures from different parts of it.
The Dad Filter
Worth Full Price?
Buy. A boxed PS1 original is £5 to £15 on eBay. There is no currently sold digital re-release of this specific game, because Sony’s strategy has been to move players forward to the numbered sequels rather than back-catalogue the original.
If you have a PS1 and a CRT, this is the way to play it. If you have a modern setup, the PS2-era GT3 and GT4 are the spiritual successors worth considering; GT4 in particular is the direct descendant and is readily available.
Kid Appeal
Medium. The licence tests will frustrate modern kids raised on instant gratification. Arcade Mode bypasses this and delivers the core driving experience without gatekeeping.
The roster of real cars is a draw. My boys were delighted to drive their uncle’s car (a mid-90s Civic). The replay mode is universally appealing.
Parent Tolerance
High. Gran Turismo is a game designed for people who already like driving. If you do, it is essentially therapeutic — the hum of a medium-paced engine, the weight transfer through a corner, the satisfaction of a clean apex.
If you do not like driving, this is not the game to convert you. But if you do, it is one of the great quiet pleasures of the PS1 era.
Family Play Value
Hot-seat. The original supported two-player split-screen on specific tracks. In practice, Arcade Mode is where the family activity lives — take turns on the same track, compare times, argue about lines.
This worked in 1998 and it still works in 2026. It is not online multiplayer, but it is a legitimate family gaming format.
Time Respect
Good. A race in Arcade Mode is 3 to 6 minutes. A licence test is a minute. A championship series is a longer commitment, but each race within it is bounded. You can save between events.
The natural rhythm of racing games — race, brake, restart — suits dad sessions extremely well.
Replay Chances
High. 140 cars is a lot. The licence test system extends the game considerably. Championships take real time. Tuning and upgrading your favourite car is a whole separate mode.
A full playthrough is 40+ hours. Most people will put 10-20 hours into it and come back to it over years. It is one of the most sustained retro pleasures you can buy.
The Verdict
Buy. Gran Turismo on PS1 is one of the small number of games that is genuinely better than its reputation suggests, and its reputation is already outstanding. It is a careful, precise, five-year labour of engineering love that reshaped what a racing game could be. The replays alone are worth the price of entry. The rest of the game is a sustained masterclass.
This is not a family game in the conventional sense, but it has legs as a family activity — Arcade Mode, licence tests as a skill-building exercise, replay mode as a spectator sport. Different ages will extract different things. That is the mark of a rich design.
If you never played the original, go back. If you did, go back again. The hum of the Civic through Trial Mountain has not changed in thirty years. That is the polar opposite of planned obsolescence, and it is why this game will still be talked about in 2046.
Related Reviews
- Bomb Jack on C16/Plus 4 — Dad Review — The arcade in a cassette box, reviewed forty years on.
- V-Rally ’97 — Dad Review — Another nostalgia-first review, this time the PS1 rally classic.
- TurboGeek Gaming Hub — Every review, guide, and parent resource in one place.
- The Dad Filter Manifesto — How and why I review games as a dad, not a gamer.