By now we should have all experienced Gran Turismo 2 and its original counterpart. With the upcoming release of the PS2 in Japan, it was definitely no surprise that Sony and Polyphony would team up again and release a new GT, entitled GT2000. Many people are familiar with GT2's enormous garage of approximately 600 cars with car manufacturers from all over the world. European, Japanese, and American cars were spread all over the game. Now that GT2000 is being released on the PS2 at the end of March 2000 there is much speculation that the game maybe only visually improved and have very few improvements in the gameplay.

       If you haven't played the PS1 version of GT2, then you don't know the graphical capabilities the game boasts. The car models were rendered perfectly on to the PSX and most likely used the console's full power. But along with the game was packaged a 3 minute video of GT2000 on the Arcade disk. The video was stored as an FMV file and crated on the PS2 dev kit. This motion picture was compressed to make it look as close to PS2 version as possible and it does a damn good job too.  The visuals in GT2000 are mind boggling, I did realize the PS2's power but I never in my wildest dreams thought that the PS2 can make cars look exactly like their real life counterparts. The cars are not only flawless on the PS2 but the lighting, blurring and chroming effects are marvelous.  So far we have all dreamt to play with the visuals that the CGs in game like Final Fantasy 8 and Resident Evil 3 had, now that is not only a reality but it will be here as soon as we al know it.

         GT2 featured around 600 cars to choose from and if that wasn't enough more than 20 tracks came along with it on 2 CDs. GT2 did suffer from many pop ups in the background but due to the PS2's huge 32MB RAM that will not be a problem anymore. In addition, the power of the Emotion Engine which is the main processor that will be used in PS2, will allow for more realistic game physics where even elements like aerodynamics count in real-time. The gameplay portion may nearly be exactly the same as GT2's was, there still isn't any reports about whether or not the game will feature anything new, like cars, menus, tracks, or new features. Sony is still keeping their lips shut on GT2000, but they will have to release some info sooner or later.

       GT2000 was suppose to be a launch title in Japan, but was pushed back by Polyphony in order to meet the GT2 date earlier this Winter '99. The game is currently scheduled to be released at the end of March 2000.

02/17/00  SolidSnake

Playstation 2

Scheduled release date:
Spring 2000

Publisher:
SCEA

Developer:
Polyphony Digital

Genre:
Racing

Number of Players:
1-2