I was not a fan of 2 of the 3 best-selling PS1 games

We all have our favorite types of games. Mine at the time of PS1 was platformers and RPG games. That is basically how I feel today as well but aside from a few gems here and there, the platformer genre is one that is mostly limited to small studios and therefore aren't always the best products.

Back when the PS1 was released, the took the world by storm and quickly became a powerhouse in the industry and I believe they are the second biggest reason why Sega eventually went under. The number one reason was that Sega made a LOT of terrible choices and basically committed business suicide.

The top 3 selling PS1 games sold significantly more copies that most of the other titles and I did not like the number 1 seller, and I never even played the number 3 seller.

What were these games you ask?

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Gran Turismo, I will admit, was a real game changer as far as the racing genre was concerned. They introduced more realistic physics into the game and also turned it into an RPG of sorts as you would start out with basically no money and crap car and then as your skills improved and you performed better in races, you would get more money and work your way up to the supercars that were in the game.

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The sound and graphics were pretty great considering the time period (1997-1999) and this was pretty mind-blowing to everyone interested in gaming at the time. It was an unusual time to be into gaming because the home consoles were quickly approaching being just as good and sometimes even better than the games at actual arcades, so developers were quickly starting to completely phase our their arcade divisions.

My roommate and most of my friends absolutely LOVED Grand Turismo and would practice / play it for hours. I recall my roommate going through tutorials about cornering over.... and over... and over again until he was perfect at it. It is worth noting that my roommate also BARELY graduated from college despite majoring in what everyone kind of agrees is an extremely easy major. The good news is that he works in the field that he studied and excels at it and loves his job - which is more than I can say for most of the other people I went to school with. He can also barely spell.

Anyway, back to Gran Turismo and why I didn't like it.

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While the racing fan community was obviously in agreement about the realism of the game being a big plus and this is something I can understand, I am not interested in a game where one bad turn ends the entire race for you in the last lap and now you have to start over. I'm more of a "oh crap, I smashed into a wall at full speed, guess I'll back up and get back in the race!" kind of guy. Think F-Zero or Mario Kart. You could fly completely off the track and some magic something or other would put you back in the fray.

That is more my style.

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_{From what I am told, this was one of the best cars in the game and even my addicted roommate never acquired it}

To this day I don't enjoy hyper-realistic racing games and every now and then the PlayStation store will throw us a freebie every now and then one of which was a rally-car simulator that is meant to be the most realistic game of its type ever made. It is so realistic in fact, that stages take as long as an actual real-life race would take... that is, it takes 45 minutes to several hours per race. I do NOT like this level of realism and after crashing and destroying my car two times in a row after 20 minutes of taking it easy (this was the VERY FIRST track) I exited the game. I deleted it a few days later.

I understand that this is much more like putting you in the actual driver's seat and makes you realize that your actions or attempts at pushing the limits has dire consequences but imagine if we took this and applied it to other genres? Let's say you are playing Skyrim and roam into a bad area where the enemies are too strong for your level, and you get wiped out. Now you have to start the entire game over.

That wouldn't be much fun now would it? So while Gran Turismo might have been great for a bunch of folks out there... more than 10 million of them, they really liked it. On a side note given today's gaming industry it is also a bit difficult to believe that 10 million was once considered and amazing sales figure. I was in a great minority because I only played it a handful of times before handing the controller back to my roommate and telling him "this isn't for me."

What did you think of Gran Turismo? Were you even alive? Am I too old for you to be able to relate to my stories? :P