- 10,000
- Portland, OR
- Jump_Ace
- JUMPxACE
Hey all,
I’ve been thinking of what I wanted to do for my 10K post and I guess more than anything, I will just tell my ‘old timer’ GT story. The vast majority of the early days have been wiped and my way back machine hunting for previous board challenge events came up dry. So for ‘proof’ I guess you’ll have to take my word for it 😆
TL;DR, it’s been a hell of a ride fellas & ladies and thanks everyone for making GTP the best place on the ‘net!
Where it all began.
General site:
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011041209/http://forums.gttimes.com/
I was just getting my license when GT1 came out and couldn’t wait to play it. And play it I did. The moment I completed the game fully, I erased my game save and re-did the game with the MT. I just was happy to get bronze on the license tests and truly enjoyed the game. I recall flipping between GT1 and Crash a lot in high school.
I was in college when I had a chance to buy and play GT2, I was late to the party on that one as my freshman year, I was hella busy, I completed my minor in Spanish that year, ran track year round, plus….girls. I did eventually complete as much as you could for that game, it was longer and better than GT1 in seemingly every way. I couldn’t wait for GT3, it was after GT2 that I truly got the ‘GT Bug’.
Fast forward to 2001, still in college. I remember I was being a boyscout rifle instructor for the summer when GT3 dropped and I only did it as a favor to my roommate and his family. I knew full well I’d miss the GT3 drop, but a promise is a promise. I never forget coming home after the summer camp and seeing GT3 sitting there on my bed, it’s etched in my mind as clear as ever still. I didn’t know it yet, but this game would send me on a trajectory of getting out of my comfort zone like nothing else before it.
I had an absolute blast with GT3, it was everything I could have hoped for in a GT sequel-sequel; better graphics, better handling, more tracks, great events. I was hooked immediately and I recall only getting my minimal 4-6 hours of sleep the rest of that summer. License tests first and foremost this time. I was happy to get silvers when I did by chance. I didn’t start the game until those were done, so donning my new ‘Super’ license, I set out and decided to buy the Plymouth PT Cruiser and upgrade it as my starting car.
After setting out and completing all the events over the ensuing many many months, I turned back to the license tests and wanted to try golding them all. I got all but one golded back then; A-7. OOF, I couldn’t ever get it just right. But I was proud that I got the S-12 golded most of all, I figured that GT-One at Monaco would be the hardest one.
I then had a thought. “Just how good am I, or not?” Having competed in track and field most of my life at that point, I felt the same urge to compete in GT as I did in Track (High Jump, Triple Jump). But I obliterate all my friends, because they don’t play much…how then?
Enter GTTimes.com a la Google.com
I did some searching for GT3 lap times, hotlaps, etc. I got a few results, the first being GTTimes.com, second being GTPlanet.net. I remember seeing GTPlanet and the website didn’t look as ‘polished’ as GT Times, so I just closed it out (sorry @Jordan!). I poked around on the GTTimes site for a bit and found their DB of laptimes and uploaded replays and found exactly what I was looking for.
A bit nervous and excited, I started looking at the fastest times and saw that they were using the F094/S and I was shocked to see that I didn’t have that car- *****! So I went back and grinded the event to get that car and I fully expected to run this thing 7,8-9 or more times. I had no idea what to expect, but the second time I completed it, I got the F094/S! I was stoked. I felt I was ready to burn up the track only to find out I’m only half way there-.....Dang it, everyone is using custom car settings! And I know zero about car tuning, I never touched it on any of the previous games; not even once. So I had to invest in getting to know the guys and their times, tips, gain their trust and prove myself. I will say that I got to chat with Lightning, (who I ‘think’ is the same GT World Champion? Based on his skill level I’m assuming its the same guy.) He gave me some good tips and a local guy Sough also gave me some excellent F094/S settings, I remember the settings being very soft to allow for smooth driving. The most popular of all GT3 hotlaps was the infamous F094/S @ Midfield Raceway. The stage was set. I was finally ready to tackle the king of hotlaps and chase down @MR. Ps top time.
I will have to admit, I didn’t read the GTTimes forum rules, so at first all my laptimes were ‘dirty’ with wall touches. Bobkart, who ran GTTimes asked me to read the rules, so I did. OOF. That was a hard lesson to learn, but was also the best lesson to learn. It forced me to be better in every aspect and hone in on the correct driving line, braking points without even tapping a wall. A fair playing field, I respected that and started again.
I spend month after month after month grinding laptimes at not just Midfield in the F094/S, but other tracks and I loved the Escudo in rally events so I managed to get a #1 time at Swiss Alps II…eventually. As for Midfield in the F1 car, I got a top 10 time! Except, I had 3 tires off of one of the turns. I recall I spend about 4 hours straight one night, gave up and then the next morning I tried again after breakfast and landed the following time out of the blue:
I was devastated to see it wasn’t fully clean, but it was a top 10 time and I was okay with that. I finally got a full lap together and that was my goal; adding up my best splits, I knew I could break 50 seconds and I did it and was super close to clean. I only have the screenshot of my time now, I couldn’t find the replay unfortunately.
I then stumbled upon a cool thread idea and thought, “WTF is a Board Challenge?” Come to find out, it was a team/website based competition where the teams agree upon 10 races; 8 tarmac 2 rally, usually. To have a level playing field, we would fully tune the car and specify the tires (verification of tires on-screen) and each time can tune the cars themselves. Once the teams were set, members tried and selected ‘their race’ to represent their team. Point values would be awarded for placement.
I tried searching the Way Back Machine on GTTimes.com and found just one Board Challenge (6):
https://web.archive.org/web/20070404115209/http://forums.gttimes.com/viewforum.php?f=63
I was able to make the team for GTTimes in GT3’s last BC event. But I don’t recall exactly where I placed or which race I did unfortunately. But it was a lot of fun and honestly, all we could do to ‘race online’. I did go back and gold A-7 too around this time.
Enter GT4 and the WRS
I got more connected with local members in the Portland area and drove up once a quarter to Bobkart’s NWGT events, some examples below:
NWGT Meetups:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070920065757/http://forums.gttimes.com/viewforum.php?f=54
https://web.archive.org/web/20060308052925/http://forums.gttimes.com/viewtopic.php?t=11159
https://web.archive.org/web/20060212192226/http://forums.gttimes.com/viewtopic.php?t=11101
https://web.archive.org/web/20060212191927/http://forums.gttimes.com/viewtopic.php?t=10956
https://web.archive.org/web/20060212191746/http://forums.gttimes.com/viewtopic.php?t=10913
I met a guy named Curtis and he told me about GTPlanet and their WRS and that I should sign up and race against him virtually every week. Driving against @h0t604b0i as one of the elite drivers in GT at the time (equal to @holl01 on tarmac) was a great experience and believe me, I wish there was GT Academy back then LOL. But I did sign up to GT Planet by this time and really only visited the Funny Pic Thread and Daily Babe Thread among a couple others LOL.
So I signed up week 5 of the GT4 WRS. I was shocked that I didn’t qualify in Div 1, but I figured my lap was ‘good enough’. OOF. So I had to climb the ranks and week in and week out @CFM would pump out great combos and we enjoyed running them. This was back, in my opinion the hay day of the WRS. There was just 3 divisions; 1 being for the fastest drivers, 2 good drivers and 3 improving drivers. On a small tangent, in my opinion, the WRS crumbled the moment we introduced 5 divisions and ‘gold’, ‘silver’ and ‘bronze’ tiers within each division. I found that waaaay to granular, unnecessary and made the competition VERY dry with all the numbers. It lost its way, its community, and scrutinized everything. To the extent that if I didn’t have time to submit a time, I wouldn’t bother. I know others followed suit.
But at this time, in GT4, I was having a blast with the game and shocked that it was better than GT3 in every way with better events, physics, graphics, car and track list. There was an INSANE amount of content and their decision to not take GT4 online was the best decision they ever made. What we got instead was a pure treasure trove of things to do.
Fast forward a bit and I did make it to division one and I made the difficult decision to team up with ‘Hot and Holl’ as a GTP Board Challenge driver. I was a rally driver for the first event as Dan (Holl01) didn’t want to do it. I believe it was at the Swiss Alps in a Hyundai rally car. I want to say I placed 3rd here.
After playing more WRS events and eventually golding all the license tests and EVENTUALLY doing M34, I was able to drive the next BC on pavement which was the Protomotors @ Suzuka, I think I placed 6th or 7th(?) I was happy with that as I’ve always been a stronger rally driver than tarmac.
It was at this time I was flipping between the NWGT live races in Seattle and flying down to Emmeryville to stay with @Smallhorses. It was also when I think I was at my prime, with a controller anyway, haha. I was very good at live races and noticed that my overall lap times didn’t really improve per se (always about 1-1.5 seconds behind Curtis and Dan depending on the track), but that I could reach my limit nearly immediately, which made live racing great. I did complete GT4 100% with a 100% win ratio too:
GT5 & Beyond
It was around this time, in 2006 that I met my wife and so began my slow walk away from competitive racing.
When the GT Academy did come around, I tried my best with a wheel, but only made it to the 3rd round of eliminations, (I think was a top 200 time for the US?)
When GT5 and GT6 rolled around, I still raced in the WRS with my friends, when time permitted. This was also where GTPlanet initiated the GTP OLR Rules & Regulations agreement. They were a set of rules, largely based around the WRS rules, but adapted for online racing where myself and others contributed to them. When racing online we proudly donned our ‘GTP_’ prefixes. I became a moderator at GTP during this time too, which only lasted a couple years as I couldn’t dedicate too much time to this as the wife was begging me to start a family around then, haha. And I can’t count the number of times over the years where people wouldn’t believe me when I said I helped write the GTP rules when racing online
Lastly, I’ll say I was fortunate to do one article review for a sim cockpit too a few years ago.
Thank You
It was here when I realized that GTPlanet itself was equally as great as any GT games; the community here is second to none. Its taken me 12 years to get to 10,000 posts and vast majority of those posts were in the WRS. Some of the best memories I have are because of the GT series and GT Planet. So thank you to everyone who has come and gone and especially those who are still here. I have no idea what my post count will be when I’m gone, but whatever the number is, its because of you all who make me keep coming back and consider GTP my digital home.
Jerome
I’ve been thinking of what I wanted to do for my 10K post and I guess more than anything, I will just tell my ‘old timer’ GT story. The vast majority of the early days have been wiped and my way back machine hunting for previous board challenge events came up dry. So for ‘proof’ I guess you’ll have to take my word for it 😆
TL;DR, it’s been a hell of a ride fellas & ladies and thanks everyone for making GTP the best place on the ‘net!
Where it all began.
General site:
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011041209/http://forums.gttimes.com/
I was just getting my license when GT1 came out and couldn’t wait to play it. And play it I did. The moment I completed the game fully, I erased my game save and re-did the game with the MT. I just was happy to get bronze on the license tests and truly enjoyed the game. I recall flipping between GT1 and Crash a lot in high school.
I was in college when I had a chance to buy and play GT2, I was late to the party on that one as my freshman year, I was hella busy, I completed my minor in Spanish that year, ran track year round, plus….girls. I did eventually complete as much as you could for that game, it was longer and better than GT1 in seemingly every way. I couldn’t wait for GT3, it was after GT2 that I truly got the ‘GT Bug’.
Fast forward to 2001, still in college. I remember I was being a boyscout rifle instructor for the summer when GT3 dropped and I only did it as a favor to my roommate and his family. I knew full well I’d miss the GT3 drop, but a promise is a promise. I never forget coming home after the summer camp and seeing GT3 sitting there on my bed, it’s etched in my mind as clear as ever still. I didn’t know it yet, but this game would send me on a trajectory of getting out of my comfort zone like nothing else before it.
I had an absolute blast with GT3, it was everything I could have hoped for in a GT sequel-sequel; better graphics, better handling, more tracks, great events. I was hooked immediately and I recall only getting my minimal 4-6 hours of sleep the rest of that summer. License tests first and foremost this time. I was happy to get silvers when I did by chance. I didn’t start the game until those were done, so donning my new ‘Super’ license, I set out and decided to buy the Plymouth PT Cruiser and upgrade it as my starting car.
After setting out and completing all the events over the ensuing many many months, I turned back to the license tests and wanted to try golding them all. I got all but one golded back then; A-7. OOF, I couldn’t ever get it just right. But I was proud that I got the S-12 golded most of all, I figured that GT-One at Monaco would be the hardest one.
I then had a thought. “Just how good am I, or not?” Having competed in track and field most of my life at that point, I felt the same urge to compete in GT as I did in Track (High Jump, Triple Jump). But I obliterate all my friends, because they don’t play much…how then?
Enter GTTimes.com a la Google.com
I did some searching for GT3 lap times, hotlaps, etc. I got a few results, the first being GTTimes.com, second being GTPlanet.net. I remember seeing GTPlanet and the website didn’t look as ‘polished’ as GT Times, so I just closed it out (sorry @Jordan!). I poked around on the GTTimes site for a bit and found their DB of laptimes and uploaded replays and found exactly what I was looking for.
A bit nervous and excited, I started looking at the fastest times and saw that they were using the F094/S and I was shocked to see that I didn’t have that car- *****! So I went back and grinded the event to get that car and I fully expected to run this thing 7,8-9 or more times. I had no idea what to expect, but the second time I completed it, I got the F094/S! I was stoked. I felt I was ready to burn up the track only to find out I’m only half way there-.....Dang it, everyone is using custom car settings! And I know zero about car tuning, I never touched it on any of the previous games; not even once. So I had to invest in getting to know the guys and their times, tips, gain their trust and prove myself. I will say that I got to chat with Lightning, (who I ‘think’ is the same GT World Champion? Based on his skill level I’m assuming its the same guy.) He gave me some good tips and a local guy Sough also gave me some excellent F094/S settings, I remember the settings being very soft to allow for smooth driving. The most popular of all GT3 hotlaps was the infamous F094/S @ Midfield Raceway. The stage was set. I was finally ready to tackle the king of hotlaps and chase down @MR. Ps top time.
I will have to admit, I didn’t read the GTTimes forum rules, so at first all my laptimes were ‘dirty’ with wall touches. Bobkart, who ran GTTimes asked me to read the rules, so I did. OOF. That was a hard lesson to learn, but was also the best lesson to learn. It forced me to be better in every aspect and hone in on the correct driving line, braking points without even tapping a wall. A fair playing field, I respected that and started again.
I spend month after month after month grinding laptimes at not just Midfield in the F094/S, but other tracks and I loved the Escudo in rally events so I managed to get a #1 time at Swiss Alps II…eventually. As for Midfield in the F1 car, I got a top 10 time! Except, I had 3 tires off of one of the turns. I recall I spend about 4 hours straight one night, gave up and then the next morning I tried again after breakfast and landed the following time out of the blue:
I was devastated to see it wasn’t fully clean, but it was a top 10 time and I was okay with that. I finally got a full lap together and that was my goal; adding up my best splits, I knew I could break 50 seconds and I did it and was super close to clean. I only have the screenshot of my time now, I couldn’t find the replay unfortunately.
I then stumbled upon a cool thread idea and thought, “WTF is a Board Challenge?” Come to find out, it was a team/website based competition where the teams agree upon 10 races; 8 tarmac 2 rally, usually. To have a level playing field, we would fully tune the car and specify the tires (verification of tires on-screen) and each time can tune the cars themselves. Once the teams were set, members tried and selected ‘their race’ to represent their team. Point values would be awarded for placement.
I tried searching the Way Back Machine on GTTimes.com and found just one Board Challenge (6):
https://web.archive.org/web/20070404115209/http://forums.gttimes.com/viewforum.php?f=63
I was able to make the team for GTTimes in GT3’s last BC event. But I don’t recall exactly where I placed or which race I did unfortunately. But it was a lot of fun and honestly, all we could do to ‘race online’. I did go back and gold A-7 too around this time.
Enter GT4 and the WRS
I got more connected with local members in the Portland area and drove up once a quarter to Bobkart’s NWGT events, some examples below:
NWGT Meetups:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070920065757/http://forums.gttimes.com/viewforum.php?f=54
https://web.archive.org/web/20060308052925/http://forums.gttimes.com/viewtopic.php?t=11159
https://web.archive.org/web/20060212192226/http://forums.gttimes.com/viewtopic.php?t=11101
https://web.archive.org/web/20060212191927/http://forums.gttimes.com/viewtopic.php?t=10956
https://web.archive.org/web/20060212191746/http://forums.gttimes.com/viewtopic.php?t=10913
I met a guy named Curtis and he told me about GTPlanet and their WRS and that I should sign up and race against him virtually every week. Driving against @h0t604b0i as one of the elite drivers in GT at the time (equal to @holl01 on tarmac) was a great experience and believe me, I wish there was GT Academy back then LOL. But I did sign up to GT Planet by this time and really only visited the Funny Pic Thread and Daily Babe Thread among a couple others LOL.
So I signed up week 5 of the GT4 WRS. I was shocked that I didn’t qualify in Div 1, but I figured my lap was ‘good enough’. OOF. So I had to climb the ranks and week in and week out @CFM would pump out great combos and we enjoyed running them. This was back, in my opinion the hay day of the WRS. There was just 3 divisions; 1 being for the fastest drivers, 2 good drivers and 3 improving drivers. On a small tangent, in my opinion, the WRS crumbled the moment we introduced 5 divisions and ‘gold’, ‘silver’ and ‘bronze’ tiers within each division. I found that waaaay to granular, unnecessary and made the competition VERY dry with all the numbers. It lost its way, its community, and scrutinized everything. To the extent that if I didn’t have time to submit a time, I wouldn’t bother. I know others followed suit.
But at this time, in GT4, I was having a blast with the game and shocked that it was better than GT3 in every way with better events, physics, graphics, car and track list. There was an INSANE amount of content and their decision to not take GT4 online was the best decision they ever made. What we got instead was a pure treasure trove of things to do.
Fast forward a bit and I did make it to division one and I made the difficult decision to team up with ‘Hot and Holl’ as a GTP Board Challenge driver. I was a rally driver for the first event as Dan (Holl01) didn’t want to do it. I believe it was at the Swiss Alps in a Hyundai rally car. I want to say I placed 3rd here.
After playing more WRS events and eventually golding all the license tests and EVENTUALLY doing M34, I was able to drive the next BC on pavement which was the Protomotors @ Suzuka, I think I placed 6th or 7th(?) I was happy with that as I’ve always been a stronger rally driver than tarmac.
It was at this time I was flipping between the NWGT live races in Seattle and flying down to Emmeryville to stay with @Smallhorses. It was also when I think I was at my prime, with a controller anyway, haha. I was very good at live races and noticed that my overall lap times didn’t really improve per se (always about 1-1.5 seconds behind Curtis and Dan depending on the track), but that I could reach my limit nearly immediately, which made live racing great. I did complete GT4 100% with a 100% win ratio too:
It was around this time, in 2006 that I met my wife and so began my slow walk away from competitive racing.
When the GT Academy did come around, I tried my best with a wheel, but only made it to the 3rd round of eliminations, (I think was a top 200 time for the US?)
When GT5 and GT6 rolled around, I still raced in the WRS with my friends, when time permitted. This was also where GTPlanet initiated the GTP OLR Rules & Regulations agreement. They were a set of rules, largely based around the WRS rules, but adapted for online racing where myself and others contributed to them. When racing online we proudly donned our ‘GTP_’ prefixes. I became a moderator at GTP during this time too, which only lasted a couple years as I couldn’t dedicate too much time to this as the wife was begging me to start a family around then, haha. And I can’t count the number of times over the years where people wouldn’t believe me when I said I helped write the GTP rules when racing online
Lastly, I’ll say I was fortunate to do one article review for a sim cockpit too a few years ago.
Thank You
It was here when I realized that GTPlanet itself was equally as great as any GT games; the community here is second to none. Its taken me 12 years to get to 10,000 posts and vast majority of those posts were in the WRS. Some of the best memories I have are because of the GT series and GT Planet. So thank you to everyone who has come and gone and especially those who are still here. I have no idea what my post count will be when I’m gone, but whatever the number is, its because of you all who make me keep coming back and consider GTP my digital home.
Jerome
