Gran Turismo Concept (2002) Review #Blogpost

Gran Turismo Concept came out on the Playstation 2 in 2002. It was Developed by Polyphony Digital and Published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It’s one of Polyphony Digital’s spin-off GT games which are released to mainly show what can happen in the main games.

All Gran Turismo games have amazing car lists, but GT Concept goes one further, because you get the strange cars from other games and a few strange concepts like the Toyota Pod and the Toyota RSC. Gran Turismo concept was the first GT game to feature Hyundai. That doesn’t sound very exciting and it might to not be, but for some reason I like the Hyundai Accent WRC. The lack of cars is a bit terrible. What they should have done is include all the cars that have been made for Gran Turismo 4.

There aren’t as many tracks as I would have hoped there to be, but the tracks that they did use all looked amazing. Some of the tracks include Autumn Ring, Tokyo Route 246 and Tahiti Maze. I think The High Speed Ring should have made a comeback, and a few real world tracks such as The Nurburgring should have been added as well.

There isn’t a career mode of such. It’s a done like the license tests that are in other GT games. The tests are time trials that you have to do on every track in the game. This is good, because it gives you more cars to unlock, and feels more like an achievement when you win them. The career mode and single races have merged together, because when you complete a single race you win a car.

There was a lot of interesting content that wasn’t used. Mini Cooper S Rally 2002 had some different rims, lights, a racing number, and a tire on its top. There were a few tracks that were unused such as Motegi South, Laguna Seca, Test Course and “Demo_UpDown” which was “An odd, rally-like course using a layout similar to Tsukuba Circuit that is set at a forest with some big elevation bumps”. Bikes were going to be part of the game as a teaser for Tourist Trophy.

In conclusion Gran Turismo Concept could have had more cars, more tracks and more of a career mode, as a game just to show what the Gran Turismo series was going to be like in the next few years (2002 – 2005). Because of that I will give GT Concept a 7 out of 10.