Top Ten Gran Turismo Fails
Remember what I said about them taking a few tries to get something right? Well, there isn't any doubt that this is Gran Turismo's biggest blunder to date. In late 1999 and early 2000, people were getting Gran Turismo 2 after much hype. However, upon playing, many bugs and errors were found in the 1.0 version of the game.
For instance, there was an expensive car wash costing 5,000 credits. Additionally, an unlicensed NASCAR racer appeared when you modified the Ford Taurus SHO, and cars reportedly disappeared from your garage. An updated version, 1.1, was released, removing the unlicensed race car and setting the car wash credits down to the traditional 50. But there was more.
The muscle car cup in racing mode required the IA license, with opponents more worthy of the A or B license. Technically, you couldn't get full 100% game completion in the US or Japanese versions, as in both versions, it stops at 98.1% for unknown reasons. In the European version, it was possible to get a 101.5% game completion, as this version has one-make races for both Opel and its British counterpart, Vauxhall.
Perhaps the most sinister glitch was the machine test glitch. If you ran any factor of the machine test, either 400M, 1000M, or max speed, over eight times, on the ninth time, your entire garage would be completely erased. If you had no money to get a reasonable car, your game was over, and you'd have to start from the beginning again.
The 1.2 updated version came out to fix all of this, but by then, it was too late. It was less than a year before Gran Turismo 3's release. For this reason, the game never got to be enjoyed to its full extent while it was what was happening in the Gran Turismo community, making this the biggest Gran Turismo fail in history.
This really angered PS3 users when it was discovered that Polyphony was discontinuing online playability for GT5 in favor of GT6. So, if you're running the seasonal events, which require online capability, and you're after that GT-ONE race car they promised you, I'm sorry, you're too late. They discontinued the online ability for the game.
Is it just me, or does it seem that Gran Turismo is jumping on the Japanese RPG bandwagon recently, with leveling up, online support drops, and similar actions?
When Gran Turismo 4 came out, people were shocked at what the series was still capable of. It carried on the success of three and did more with it, adding more tracks, more cars, the new B-spec mode, and even the ability to unlock cars in arcade mode by simply buying them in simulation mode. What more could we want?
Well, somebody answered that rhetorical question, and about a year later, Polyphony Digital released Tourist Trophy, a motorcycle racing game that was based on Gran Turismo 4's game engine. The game wasn't bad, but what it had in creativity, it lacked in basic Gran Turismo features, such as a monetary system, a washing station, and even a tuning shop.
To get a bike you wanted, you had to race for it. You couldn't buy anything. They were basically saying, "Sure, we'll give you this $50,000 Ducati for free if you win a race on it." Even more so, you HAD to get all of the bikes to progress through the game, and you couldn't sell duplicates. Fail.
There is a sequel planned for some time in the future. Let's just hope they nail it perfectly this time.
This is the game that introduced the ASM and TCS assists. But, you had to buy them at a staggering fifty grand for each. This means you needed to shovel out a whopping $100,000 to be able to handle the car, and you'd be lucky if you could at that. Even with the assists, the cars tended to spin like crazy when coming out of a turn, especially the Dodge Viper.
This problem occurred in one as well, but on a much lower scale. It took them three games to get this right? Wow, fail! And it isn't the only time they did something like this!
Another result of needing to cut back for more advanced graphics. Whereas Gran Turismo 2 had over 500 cars to choose from, GT3 had only 184, not counting special cars found in the game's file, like the Lamborghini Diablo.
Fortunately, you can own all of the cars at the same time in this game. However, to do so in GT2, you'll need about six memory cards, as you can only own up to 100 cars at once, which is half of GT3's 200 cars in a garage. Seriously, GT2? 100 per garage in a game with over 500 cars? Epic fail!
This here is a big pain to see. We all have that one track that hasn't been seen in Gran Turismo in a while that we like to drive. Over the course of time, they've dropped Special Stage Route 11, Midfield Raceway, Tahiti Road, all of the original Rome courses, Test Course, all of the Driving Park courses in 4, Complex String, the Tahiti rally courses, and Red Rock Valley Speedway, just to name a few.
Most of these are fantasy tracks because Gran Turismo has been taking a more realistic turn recently, even including NASCAR as a feature in the game. Well, I guess we can all cross NASCAR off our PlayStation library need list.
What do you mean by this? The actual orange one? I own a special purple one in GT1, but not the actual orange one. Also, there's a race car version in 2 (and I think it's in 1 as well?), and I own it too. The only way to get the orange one is to get all golds in a license (I think it's IA for both).
Also, didn't this thing start the "Not For Sale" policy that finally died off in GT5? On a side note, the car's real name was to be the Copperhead, as an affordable version of the Viper. However, it had issues with naming due to the name Copperhead having already been taken for a car owned by a member of the rock band ZZ Top (I think it was Billy Gibbons). So, they renamed it the Concept Car and never released it.
This was a feature that appeared throughout one and two, where you could modify your street cars into race cars. In fact, to beat this game, you had to do this! However, a lot of people were pissed to find out the feature was dropped in three to make room for the advanced PS2 graphics.
A lot of the race mods, such as the Celica GT Four and the Lister Storm V12's racing mods, became their own independent cars. Although it returned in five, it was heavily limited to about 17 cars, and even they became their own cars in six. Fail!

Both of the first two Gran Turismo games had kickass soundtracks, but they had a major flaw: only one song would play through an entire race. This could be very annoying if you're not a big fan of the song playing.
So, my advice: if a song you don't like is playing and you're running a long race, get out your Walkman, your iPod, or whatever you have, and put on some other driving tunes. It gets really repetitive hearing Rob Zombie's Dragula over and over again while running the Rome 2-hour run.
The Newcomers
The whole game has been one big controversy! In order:
1. Disabled the microtransactions for reviewers' copies.
2. $19.99 for a 2 million credit microtransaction.
3. Real prices for cars in a video game.
4. Version 1.07 crashed the game for 30+ hours.
5. Version 1.07 nerfed the payouts for specific races.
The list goes on. They screwed up royally here!
UPDATE: This post aged like a dog turd in the Texas summer sun. They've fixed almost every issue I talked about.
If there's one thing a racing game shouldn't incorporate, it's an RPG-like mode. The leveling up in GT5 made it so you couldn't get that Dodge Viper once you've made all of the money from redoing the Sunday Cup 20 times like we've been doing.
Sorry, you're a level 6. That car is for people level 8 and up. May I hook you up with a nice Volkswagen Golf instead?
When it was announced that GT4 would be released in HD, fans had a frenzy of joy. However, whereas the games were made to run in HD, the consoles didn't. The 2000 PS2 ran on Hi-Fi, not HD. Many people reported an endless black screen after the copyright screen, the game wouldn't load after the intro, and even the 'Red Clock of Death,' signifying a reading error.
The reason was that the console's disc drive laser had to be in pristine condition, meaning they had to be either cleaned or replaced. Even worse news came for owners of the slim version of the console, as some copies of GT4 wouldn't even load past the boot-up screen.
If any game in the franchise is guilty of this, it's definitely GT3. This is actually due to the lack of cars in the game. Rubber banding is the act of making opponents weaker so you can have an easy win, or making them harder for a bigger challenge.
I'm not gonna say GT3 is the only game in the series that did this, oh no! GT4 did it in places too! Remember the Speedster Trophy? That was ridiculously hard, even with a fully modified car, because of rubber banding.
So, you know the races that require specific vehicles only. However, there's one CPU car that breaks those rules. One example would be the Supercar Festival in GT4, which calls for production cars with 493 HP or more.
However, concept cars you cannot enter, such as the Acura HSC or the Volkswagen W12 Nardo Concept, can enter as CPU cars. Normally, they're very overpowered due to the presence of rubber banding in the games.
Remember the Escudo Pikes Peak Version (Escudo Dirt Trial Car in GT4)? Remember how epic it was? Practically, if you owned this car and ran it in a race, you were guaranteed a flawless victory. Sure, F1 cars in GT3 made it undefeatable only on oval courses like Test Course and Super Speedway, but Gran Turismo 4 proved to be the killer of the Titan.
Much faster cars were introduced, its transmission was cut back, wall grinding couldn't counter its poor handling from 3, and it was outpowered off-road by other cars, such as the Impreza Super Touring Car. It just sucks to see this amazing car that many saw as the best early in the series go to nothing. In fact, in GT5, it's easy to beat it in the Like the Wind race, which is its CPU debut. Some debut, eh?
Besides that, also in GT5, the Red Bull X2010 would come along and become the new best car. All we can do now is give this poor car the same treatment as the Cultus Pikes Peak did after GT2 laid it to rest already.
RIP Escudo Pikes Peak Version
1999-2015
Remember Special Stage Route 11 in Gran Turismo 3? Remember how it had a color-changing Ferris wheel in the distance? Well, it's supposed to face down the main straight.
So, why does it seem to be facing down the straight after the last hairpin, and then, after you get off the final turn, back down the main straight? It's like it's watching you or something! While this isn't a fail per se, it's still a little weird.
You know the FF, FR, MR, and 4WD drivetrains, right? What about RR? Such cars would be the RUF RGT and the old Fiat 500R. There have been enough cars with this drivetrain for a race in GT4!
In fact, new ones came in with GT6, and still no RR Cup! Even more so, electric cars got a special race for them in GT6.
FUN FACT: Only one electric car debuted in GT2, the Toyota Prius. Meanwhile, RR cars debuted in the same game, with a big lineup of RUFs and a Fiat.
I agree. It's been four games since their debut in GT2, and STILL no RR Cup? Why not?
I am greatly disappointed by this. I know games are focused on online these days and GT is focused on online racing because of FIA, but I don't want to pay for online racing!
Dirty drivers are everywhere, and I just don't like paying for playing with other players.