In October 2019, Sony PlayStation 5 was finally officially announced under the gaze of everyone. In March this year, MARK CERNY, the chief architect of PS 4, announced the parameters of PS 5, which is a more powerful CPU and GPU, and the video output supports 4K 120HZ and 8K ultra-high-definition video output. At the same time, the exclusive SSD with powerful reading capabilities also changed the loading process from the time of "pouring a cup of tea" to the time of "a blink of an eye" (the 2G file loading time is only 0.27 seconds)... Generally speaking, the comment on the host generation is later comments and records of previous products, which generally describes the past. However, when PS5 and its competitor Xbox X series were launched, everyone knows that the ninth generation of the host will indeed be fully launched in 2020.
Just after the PS5 architecture launch conference, Sony's ninth generation battle with its current main rival Microsoft also promptly sent blessings and greetings. Of course, players can also smell the strong smell of gunpowder from it.
It is undeniable that in the past 26 years, even though PlayStation has encountered challenges from all parties, it still leads the host industry with its cutting-edge design and concepts. As Ken Kutaraki, the father of PlayStation, once said, from the very beginning, Sony defined itself as a "technology company" rather than an entertainment company. From the launch of the first generation of PlayStation, it completely subverted the cassette gaming thinking in the console industry, and now it has made 4K 120hz video output to break through the 60hz refresh rate ceiling of the home console. To a certain extent, PlayStation is definitely one of the representatives of the frontiers of the console industry.
From the results, the console industry in the 1990s was full of flowers and a hundred schools of thought contending. After these 30 years of competition, only Sony, Microsoft, and , Nintendo, , are the only ones left. In addition to lamenting the changes in the world, we have to praise these three schools of thought that they have different unique ideas.
Reviewing the birth of PS, it is not difficult to find that it has come to the world with a golden spoon from the beginning. According to official data in 2011, the total sales of PlayStation's first generation was close to 102.5 million units, successfully crushing Nintendo N64 (32.93 million) and Sega Saturn (9.26 million), the fifth-generation competitor, and jumped from a "primary school student" in the console industry to a "overlord". Of course, in this gorgeous debut, in addition to Ken Kutaraki insisting on joining the optical drive and greatly increasing the ability and potential of the game console, a large number of excellent exclusive and "semi-exclusive" game works are also key factors in the success of the first generation Playstation. Among them, there are many works such as "Final Fantasy 7" and "Iron Fist 3" that are regarded as "the best electronic game in history", as well as first generation works of legendary series such as "Tomb Raider" and " Hidden Dragon Spy Shadow ", which have brought countless exposures and sales to it.
In the "PlayStation Best-Selling Games Ranking" counted by Wikipedia, more than 200 million copies of the top 50 products on the PS platform sold. It is worth noting that the top 10 accounts for more than 80 million points. Among them, the first one is a work called "GT Racing ", with a total sales of 10.85 million, exceeding the second place "Final Fantasy 7" about 800,000 copies.
Perhaps for domestic players, especially the new generation of players, the name of this game may not be too famous. Compared with series such as "Final Fantasy", " Iron Fist ", and "Tomb Raider", it seems very niche. However, in the racing game circle, this racing game is undoubtedly an irreplaceable work.
In metacritic, the comprehensive media score of "GT Racing" reached 96 points and was marked as "must-play game". The origin of the
GT series could be pushed to the 1990s. The founder of the GT series, Yamauchi Ichinori, began his attempt to develop games as early as 1983. Even though he could only use wireframe graphics to simulate 3D, this still shocked him, who was only a junior high school student at that time, and also planted a seed for "making 3D games" in his heart, which also laid the foreshadowing for the emergence of "GT Racing" later.
1983's wireframe 3D game "Elite"
Despite this, the appearance of "GT Racing" was not actually smooth, and Yamauchi Kazuno made "GT Racing" is also full of legend.In 1993, one year before the Sony PlayStation was officially released, Yamauchi Ichinori, the producer of the small game team of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE, the predecessor of Sony Interactive Entertainment SIE), proposed the well-known "100 gameplay suggestions" for the upcoming PS. "Real Racing" is one of them.
Yamauchi Ichidian
Of course, it was not easy to convince the leadership to let him develop a real 3D racing game. Even though at that time, even though a small group of 3D racing simulator games such as "Indianapolis 500: The Simulation" had already shown its mark, making such a game may still be risky and difficult to understand in the eyes of management. To put it bluntly, although Yamauchi Ichinomi believes it, it is difficult to prove that future racing games belong to 3D real racing.
In order to better win the trust of Sony's senior management, Yamauchi Ichinori led the Polys Entertainment team to start the production of "Motor Toon Grand Prix" and applied for a budget for it. On the other hand, five people including Yamauchi Ichinori formed the initial GT project team, silently and synchronized the development of this future-oriented myth that is regarded as the PlayStation's unique generation. Of course, "Motor Toon Grand Prix" is not a game used by Yamauchi Ichinobu to fool the company. This game is packaged in a cute cartoon style, and its art is played by Matsushita, who has participated in the production of "Story of Adventure". In the game, players can choose different characters with distinct personalities to perform kart competition. In addition to testing players' track skills, the game also requires players to pick up gold coins along the road and use the props that they exchanged randomly during the process to finally win the game. The gameplay of
MTGP is very similar to the SFC version of "Mario Kart" released in 1992, but in terms of screen experience, it really crushes the pseudo-3D of the carriage.
In 1994, although MTGP did not become a hit product after its release, it still attracted many fans. With the achievements obtained by MTGP, Yamauchi Ichino gained the trust of senior management and the possibility of truly "independent project establishment", and then he put "GT Racing" on the table. In order to better create this real racing simulator that truly has a 3D feeling in his mind, he must make up for the shortcomings in the team. According to the recollection of Sohei Yoshida, who was then co-producer of GT Racing, some of the 3D graphics encoding and car physics engine engineers of GT Racing would have contributed in a professional magazine. Yamauchi Ichinobu learned about them through the magazine and eventually attracted them through his personal charm.
Even if the personnel were expanded, the GT project team had only 20 people at the time. For an ordinary game, a team of this size may be able to handle it, but for a game that seeks a higher ceiling in development technology, 20 people is not enough. Therefore, during the development of GT Racing, everyone in the team took on a huge amount of work and a variety of work content. "When I arrived at the office in the morning, I always found him sleeping under the table with his team members," Yoshida said in an article on Sony's official blog. "The atmosphere is a bit like a university club room... I will wake up in the morning and find a leg on my head."
"GT Racing"
During the GT development process, in order to better give the game a higher sense of mimicry and experience, the team needs a lot of real data. Since the team was not as famous as it was later, many car manufacturers refused to disclose too much test data to Yamauchi Ichinomi team, so the team could only rely on simulation experiments and other methods to make these parameters. These efforts made the game reach an almost unparalleled level of simulation at that time, including the degree of tyre bending on the road and various collision methods related to curbs, all within its "reality" consideration dimension.
Not only that, the first generation GT also has a huge list of 140 vehicles, each car has its own different and realistic reconstruction model, and many parameters will change with the adjustment of the vehicle and the addition of new components. Yamauchi Ichino, who was deeply influenced by PC RPGs such as "The Witcher" and "Genesis", also added the growth elements of RPGs to racing games for the first time (modification and car purchase system). Although this setting has almost become the standard configuration now, this design really shocked many people back then.
In addition, in order to better create a "real racing game", Yamauchi Ichino even learned racing driving at the same time during the game development to better restore the driving experience of the real vehicle. Interestingly, with the popularity of "GT Racing", Yamauchi Ichinori not only became famous in one fell swoop, but his team also changed from an internal production team of Sony Interactive Entertainment called Polyphony Entertainment to a Sony first-party game company called Polyphony Digital. At the same time, he himself became a real racer and started his racing career in 2009. In Baidu Encyclopedia, in addition to the "game designer", Yamauchi Ichinobu also has a "famous Japanese racer".
To this day, although the new work "GT Sport" is mixed, players who like it blew it to the sky, and players who don't like it go to the end (the 2 squabbles are often the GT sects mainly Sony fans and the Forza sects mainly Microsoft fans), it is undeniable that this cannot shake its status as one of the most successful series in the field of racing games, and its existence has also filled the gap in Asian real racing simulation games.
Not only that, according to the record of "Guinness World Records: Player Edition 2008", the "GT Racing" series also broke 7 world records. In addition to the best-selling game of PlayStation, it also won "Racing Game with the Most Racing Models" and "Racing Game with the Largest Guide System". In the March 2017 issue of the well-known magazine Edge, the first generation of "GT Racing" is even known as "one of the top 10 video games in 20 years."
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