PlayStation Celebrates 25 Years Of Gran Turismo With Retrospective Video

The Gran Turismo series has long been a favorite of sim-racing enthusiasts, and today marks a special milestone for the franchise. Gran Turismo: The Real Driving Simulator, which was launched in Japan by PlayStation on December 23, 1997 marks the 25th anniversary of the original series. PlayStation created a blog post and retrospective video to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Gran Turismo.

The blog post comes by way of Kazunori Yamauchi, creator and producer of the franchise and CEO of Polyphony Digital. Yamauchi explains how and why the series was created, citing his original ideas for it dating back to 1992.

He wrote that he was “fascinated by 3D real-time graphics” and had presented and developed plans for many types of video games. Gran Turismo was born in a fantasy racing format, the Motor Toon Grand Prix. It became one of the 1st PlayStation titles. But, even if Gran Turismo’s plan had been approved for it, I could have created a title that wasn’t racing. Gran Turismo was created by two engineers, three part-time artists, and the rest of the team.

Read the entire blog post. A four-and-a half-minute retrospective video by Polyphony Digital and PlayStation was released as part of this celebration. It reminisces each era in the Gran Turismo franchise. Alusville plays “Day to Live” in the video, as it is on Gran Turismo 6’s soundtrack. That video is available below.

Gran Turismo 7 launched in March 2022. Though the game featured various frustrating elements to its economy and structure, the core racing gameplay maintained the rock-solid pedigree of the long-running franchise, causing the game to earn a 8.75 out of 10 in our review. In fact, Gran Turismo has often fared well in the eyes of critics, with most of the games earning high marks from Game Informer.

You can see our previous reviews below.

• Gran Turismo – 9.5 out of 10
• Gran Turismo 2 – 9.5 out of 10
• Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec – 9 out of 10
• Gran Turismo 4 – 9.25 out of 10
• Gran Turismo 5: Prologue – 7.75 out of 10
• Gran Turismo (PSP) – 7 out of 10
• Gran Turismo 5 – 9 out of 10
• Gran Turismo 6 – 8 out of 10
• Gran Turismo 7 – 8.75 out of 10

Was Gran Turismo the game you loved most? Are there any long-forgotten memories that were triggered by the video? What direction would you like the series to go? Please leave your comments below!