Gran Turismo 5′s Nurburgring Nissan goes up for sale
You could own the Shulze Motorsport Nissan GT-R N24 #71 which was co-driven by Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi at the 2011 Nurburgring 24 hour race, and was then added to GT5 in the Spec 2.0 release back in October 2011. That’s assuming you have 120,000 Euros or $155,000 to spend, plus sales tax.
The car recorded a class victory at the 2011 event, driven by the team of Kazunori Yamauchi, Tobias Shchulze, Michael Schulze and Yasuyoshi Yamamoto. They completed 134 laps in 24 hours, 2 minutes and 26.9 seconds, having recorded a fastest lap of 9:17.707.
Yamauchi amongst Polyphony Digital staff moving to Fukuoka
Polyphony Digital appears to be making a larger move from Tokyo to new officies in Fukuoka, Japan, than previously thought. As more information comes to light, it appears boss and Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi will himself be based in the new location of Fukuoka Software Research Park.
The plans include expansion and hiring new developers and engineers, along with hopes to open an even larger studio in a few years and possibly a game development school.
GT5 creator finishes first-in-class at Nurburgring 24 Hours
Gran Turismo 5 creator Kazunori Yamauchi raced at the real 2011 Nurburgring 24 Hours this weekend, and after a dramatic series of events, finished first-in-class with team-mates Tobias and Michael Schulze, and Yasuyoshi Yamamoto.
Despite mechanical problems which cost them some time, the team were able to put in consistent lap times to bring themselves back to 36th place overall as Kazunori Yamauchi himself drove across the finishing line. They achieved 134 laps in 24 hours, 2 minutes and 26.9 seconds, with a fastest lap of 9:17:707.
Meanwhile it wasn’t quite such a happy event for the two Need for Speed sponsored teams. The number 4 car was forced to retire with a mechanical failure, the number 76 car was forced out following a collision with an SLS, and the number 77 car was in a dramatic cash which sent the car flying over the railings. That left all the Need for Speed Team Schubert cars out of the race, and two of the BMW Z4 GT3 cars destroyed.
The overall win was taken by the Porsche 911 GT3 of Team Manthey, with drivers Lieb,Luhr,Bern and Duma taking the lead on Saturday evening and eventually completing 156 laps and almost 4000 kilometres. The only hiccup for the team throughout the race was a faulty petrol pump which cost them a minute when they had to push the car to the next working fuel pump – but aside from that, they had a pretty faultless race after taking the lead late on Saturday evening.
Nurgburgring 24 Hours puts Kazunori Yamuachi vs Team Need for Speed
Ever seen the world of videogames spill over into real-life racing? Well it will this weekend, as both Gran Turismo 5 creator Kazunori Yamuachi, and two Team Need for Speed cars are competing in the Nurburgring 24 Hours race.
In 2010 Yamauchi finished fourth in the SP-8 class with the Team World Car Awards outfit in a Lexus IS-F, and Yamauchi himself posted the second-fastest lap within the team, a lap of 9 minutes 48 seconds. This year he’s again in the SP-8 class, but this time he’s running in a Nissan GT-R with team-mates Tobias Schulze, Michael Schulze and Yasuyoshi Yamamoto.
But that’s not the only videogame representation, with Team Need for Speed fielding two teams. The first features drivers Edward Sandstrom, Tommy Milner, Fredrik Larsson and Claudia Hurtgen, whilst the second Need for Speed Team Schubert outfit includes Anders Buchardt, Peter Posovac, John Mayes and Stian Sorlie. Both teams will race a BMW Z4 GT3 in the SP9 GT3 class.
We’ll be cheering for all three teams, although we have to admit to being slightly more biased towards Yamauchi, as he’s an actual game developer who is also fast enough to race, rather than a team of professional drivers involved with a game and sponsored by them.
GT5 – Not a test of endurance
Gran Turismo 5 has come in for much criticism regarding the amount of time and effort it takes to finish. To achieve 100% completion and a coveted Platinum PlayStation trophy, players must win every single race and time trial in the game, own a thousand cars, take a picture of a building and achieve the nigh-impossible task of winning a race by just one hundredth of a second.
To be fair, none of that sounds like very much fun, especially considering to unlock some of the later endurance races, such as the Nürburgring 24-hour, you have to do the preceding endurance races over and over again. When one of those races is the Le Mans 24-hour race you can begin to see why people are complaining they can never finish the game. And fair enough – they have lives, families and other games to fill their time with.
But those fixated by finishing the game are missing the point.
Gran Turismo’s creator Kazunori Yamauchi has spoken previously about how he and the GT series is inspired by the concept of ‘mimesis’ – the pursuit of natural perfection through imitation. At the 2011 ‘DICE’ summit, Yamauchi said “The Gran Turismo franchise is something closer to a movement and not a game… The thing about a movement is that it is a challenge of the impossible that’s destined to fail. But we have to keep facing up to that challenge.”
And I argue the game should be played with this in mind. Gran Turismo is trying to be more than just a game – one to be played just to achieve the satisfaction of completion. And many elements of how the game is being received already reflect this.
The online community is thriving – players are buying, customising and tuning their cars for competition and time trials against each other. Some servers are open purely just for trading – users join a game with a car they want to trade, drive it about a bit and then get offers from other members of the GT5 community as to what they’ll swap it for.
People are also sharing pictures of their favourite cars on Facebook and Twitter, sending cars to friends as gifts and creating original circuits to play with mates – so friends can share in a quite unique sense of ‘community’ in a racing game for the first time on a console. Sure, Forza might have done some things the same and others a bit better (I’d love a livery editor), but for PlayStation owners this is new – and with so many different cars and tracks to play with, the potential combinations for fun are huge.
“It would make me happy to see a videogame that really makes you think about how a person should live and how they should come to terms with death.” – Kazunori Yamauchi
Drifting clans have emerged, each with their own preferred styles, arguing with each other on forums about whether rear-wheel drive or four wheel-drive drifting is best. Others are sharing set-ups for their favourite cars and favourite circuits, and the GT Academy competition is returning for a third time 2011 – giving talented virtual racers to put their money where their mouth is and win the chance to compete in real-life motorsport.
And in what other game can you actually do the Le Mans 24 hour race, in real-time? Other than this one, obviously. And this one. And this one. Ok, not the best point but you know what I mean – the level of authenticity in the game is mind-boggling and any racers released from this point on will be judged against this new benchmark.
Put simply, it may be a lofty ambition to create ‘more than a game’ and not all of GT5 may be perfect, but Polyphony Digital have quietly redefined the console racing genre, bringing a new experience to the masses for the first time – and I argue that, despite its flaws, GT5 is still brilliant. Like a fine wine the game is getting better with time, and I can see it being the only disc spinning in my PS3 for a long time to come.
So whilst I’m in the revolutionary spirit, here are a few of my favourite cars from my own game for your visual arousal. Hope you enjoy, and see you online!
Kazunori Yamauchi honoured by Esquire magazine
It’s always nice to see online racing appearing in mainstream media, and the December 2010 UK issue of Esquire magazine has featured Polyphony Digital boss Kazunori Yamauchi as one of their 10 ‘Man at the Top Awards 2010′.
Individuals were selected as those who “rewrote the future through their works in the past year”, and Yamauchi was placed fourth in the countdown. Within the feature is an interview with Kazunori, covering the philosophy of Gran Turismo 5, visions for the future and workings behind the scenes at Polyphony Digital.
The Esquire UK website includes some pictures from the Polyphony Digital offices, taken in preparation for the December issue.
Grand Plans for Gran Turismo
The fifth in the Gran Turismo series is late. The game is so delayed in fact, that many fans have stopped caring about it’s release and have moved on to other activities such as raising families, learning to speak backwards and teaching monkeys to ride motorbikes.
Gran Turismo 5 at GamesCom on Flickr by Sergey Galyonkin (CC Licence)
However, their ears may prick up once again after the President of Sony Worldwide – Shuhei Yoshida – revealed in an official PlayStation blog that GT5 will not only feature “damage, night racing and weather”, but also… wait for it… “stunt arenas”, “go-karting” and “creating and sharing your own track”.
First things first – it has a track editor! I love track editors! One of my first games was Accolade’s Grand Prix Circuit, in which I spent many an hour making tracks that did not fit together and were impossible to complete. What a satisfying feeling it was to create a half-built circuit and watch the whole F1 grid crash when they got to the bit where I had placed a tree in the middle of the track. It was rather like building a half-finished rollercoaster in Theme Park and watching your guests fly to their deaths… although obviously nobody died, they just cried and went for some chips… and then a drink because I had put so much salt in the chips. Anyway, I digress; the point is that no-one has made a proper track editor for a bloody long time. The track editor in ModNation Racers is great fun and very well designed, but MNR isn’t a proper racing game – GT5 will be, and a proper GT5 track editor could be worthy of standing as a game in it’s own right.
I was tempted to pass over the “stunt arenas” feature because I’m not that interested in the concept, but thinking about it, with the great physics engine that the Gran Turismo series is renowned for it is a very interesting prospect. All ‘stunt car’ games I have played to date have made me want to gouge my eyes out with my controller, but GT series creator Kazunori Yamauchi doesn’t do things by halves (hence the 18-month delay in this game coming out) and it might just be brilliant.
Now then, go-karting mode… many have tried, many have failed, and only Nintendo have ever truly succeeded. Yet it’s hard for budding racers to pretend they are a young Senna, Schumacher or Hamilton when they are racing on a track in outer space made from a rainbow when a green dinosaur is firing red shells at them. A proper karting simulation could be brilliant, ideal for a ‘pick up and play’ party and also for an introduction to a career mode that feels truly realistic. The game already has the Super GT licence. And the NASCAR licence. And the WRC Rally licence. Throw in the rumoured PlayStation Eye camera head-tracking feature, voice chat and the ability to race in teams/clans and this might not just be the best racing game ever made, but one of the best games ever made full-stop.
Best of all, Sony have confirmed that it will definitely be out this year (November 2nd launch in America is already confirmed). President Yoshida, although obviously speaking in irritating highly-edited PR language, sums it up well: “This time around Gran Turismo is likely not just to be the definitive driving experience but a definitive gaming experience full stop”. I hope they pull this off. I pray they pull it off. And I’m already pulling myself off in anticipation.
