Welcome to the first installment of the Weekly Rewind, a feature where the primary focus will be you, the GTPlanet community. Of course that means there’s going to be plenty to discuss over the lifetime of this feature, so if you’ve been sitting idly by waiting for your time to shine among our brightest stars this may very well be the perfect opportunity for you. Continuing from that, there’s plenty to get through in this first installment as the community here has been ever-so-busy, so sit back and enjoy the ride.
As hobbies go, gaming tends to attract the stigma of being solitary, sedentary and for geeks. The image of the slacker playing games in his mom’s basement is tough to shake off and online gaming doesn’t do much to help.
GTPlanet member Abraxas went on a trip to Austria and Italy last year, with a special goal: to visit and photograph some of Gran Turismo 5’s most impressive Photomode locations in the real-world, then compare them to Polyphony Digital’s work.
US automotive giant Ford is the latest car manufacturer to acknowledge the effect that video games have on brand recognition and vehicle sales, particularly in the 20-30 demographic.
Kazunori Yamauchi has recently revealed via Twitter that the inspiration for the location of the latest GT5 track “Route X” was the port of Hakata, near the new Polyphony Digital offices in Fukuoka.
2011 has been yet another rollercoaster year for Gran Turismo and its fans, and our first full year of GT5. The year has been dominated by game updates, GT Academy successes and significant events affecting the infrastructure of both the PlayStation Network and the people of Japan. Just as with the last two years, GTPlanet is taking a look back over the last 12 months before we head on into 2012…
Work on the third issue of the popular grass-roots “GTlife” magazine (the first two issues received over 230,000 collective downloads) is now complete!
As you may recall, a few months ago, GTlife – a Gran Turismo fan-magazine – was assembled and published online entirely by members of the GTPlanet community. After a positive response and more than 30,000 collective downloads, work began on the second issue of GTlife, and now – it’s here!
You think you know a lot about the Gran Turismo series? This jaw-dropping collection of GT games and memorabilia collected by GTPlanet’s own edward_v12 will educate even the most hard-core fans.
As I announced a few weeks ago, Electronic Arts invited GTPlanet to a “community day” event for their latest driving game, Shift 2: Unleashed. I took them up on the offer, and I’m eager to share my impressions of the game. There’s a lot of eyes on Shift 2 after the series’ first title, billed as a realistic simulator, was highly criticized by “sim racers” for its too-friendly physics. According to EA’s marketing, these issues have been addressed, going so far as to call it “the most realistic racer ever”.
Fans of the Gran Turismo series have been through a lot over the past 13 years or so, but none of those years have been as dramatic as 2010. Though I wasn’t able to get this out before the calendar flipped over, I wanted to take one last look at where we’ve been before moving forward (just as I did at the end of 2009)…
I just got in from the Gran Turismo 5 launch party here in Madrid – packed with media representatives from around the world, it was a fitting way to celebrate the end of GT5’s long and dramatic development. Here’s what I learned:
The international Gran Turismo 5 launch party is here, and GTPlanet readers have a front row seat to all the festivities! I’ll be sharing lots of pictures and news from the event on Twitter and Facebook, so keep a close eye on my updates over the next few hours.
It’s been both the best of times and worst of times for Gran Turismo fans in 2009. It started out in what many believed would be the year of Gran Turismo 5, but actually turned out to be the year of another title almost nobody was expecting: Gran Turismo PSP! Regardless, we’ve learned a lot about GT5 – from WRC, to NASCAR, to our first look at damage and rumors of a track editor, it’s been a pretty good year. Now, as we look forward to GT5’s Japanese release in March, here’s a look back at 2009, along with all the links in case you missed something along the way…
GTPlanet Twitter follower jef722 sent me a link to a recent article posted by EDGE Online, and I found its perspective and approach incredibly refreshing. EDGE argues that Yamauchi’s creation is much more than just a racing game – it’s a classic Japanese RPG, played out in hundreds or even thousands of races:
Although Sony may have decided that we wouldn’t find Gran Turismo 5 under the tree this year, that doesn’t mean that the GT fanatic in your life needs to have a gloomy Christmas dreaming about “what could have been”. Even if they haven’t been good enough this year for a VisionRacer VR3 or a Wheel Stand Pro, there are actually quite a few unique and rare items out there which I know I would certainly love to receive. So, as the holiday shopping season starts in full swing today, here’s a few gift ideas you might not have considered for yourself or that ultimate fan. Keep in mind, however, that one-of-a-kind items on eBay go quickly after I spotlight them on GTPlanet (that’s what happened last year), so don’t hesitate too long if you find something you really like.
Few franchises in the gaming world can trigger such heated debate as Forza and Gran Turismo. The reason for the rivalry is obvious, with each high-profile game competing for hearts and minds on the front lines of the “console wars”. Up until this year, however, Microsoft’s Turn 10 Studios and Kazunori Yamauchi’s Polyphony Digital worked quietly on their respective titles and delivered driving games of excellent quality for each console. As the online rhetoric of fans begins to heat up, however, that code of silence is beginning to melt away. Here’s what Yamauchi had to say about the competition while speaking with NowGamer just last week: