Sega GT

"So much deeper than most give it credit for."

Sega GT is a deep, realistic racing simulation. It is underratedby many, but those who take the time to learn its intricacies will be enamored with the as yet unparallelled handling physics.

This is so far the only racing sim which really takes bumps in the road into account. For example, there is one long, winding corner on the Solid Circuit track with a subtle rise and fall in the middle of the corner. If you don't ease up on the gas, you will fly off the track into the grass. This game also makes a distinction between all the different drive types, even the different variations of 4wd (f4wd, m4wd, and r4wd).

The steering sensitivity is the most-heard complaint about this game; however, it is absolutely necessary once you get used to it. You can adjust the sensitivity inthe options menu, though, but I suggest you don't decrease the sensitivity to much. It is actually very realitic in that pushing tha analog stick all the way to one side is th equivalent of turning the steering wheel all the way to one side; most of the time your car will go out of control. This is one game where a newbie is not meant to be able to handle the mre powerful cars right away. That is the way it should be; since I don't know anyone who could just hop into a real racing car and race well with it on the fist day.

One must take note of the excellent use of the analog gas and brake. This game actually makes those functionalities useful, because sometimes you want to accelerate, but not full throttle because that would case you to spin out. Also, you may not always slam the brakes because, depending on your brake settings, you could lock your wheels by slamming the brakes.

The AI is generally good, but gets too agressive sometimes. Occasionally, a CPU car will just slam into you. This is annoying, but doesn't happen often. When it does happen, it is usually because you rammed the CPU car first. The AI cars can mess up, too, as well as get agressive towards othr CPU cars which is a nice touch.

The actual engine, gear, and drivetrain physics are mostly dead-on. The one problem is that 4wd cars accelerate too fast off he line, and oter cars too slow (only by a bit); and 4wd cars' top speeds are much lower than rear-drive cars. The cars are still well-balanced though. The way gear-ratios affect the acceleraton of a car is excellent, as matching ratios to a car's HP, weight, torque, and RPM levels are essential for optimum performance.

The tracks themselves are well designed, but a seem little tame at first. Once you get around to doing time attack runs on them with the fastest cars in the game, though, they become VERY interesting. There are a few differen oval variations, but this is understandable. All trakcs are reversed, giving a total of 20 plus 2 drag tracks.

Championship mode is the meat of the game, adis very much like Gran Turismo (license tests, buying, souping up and tuning cars). Some differences are that there is a better variety of race challenges. My only coplaint is that there should have been more endurance races (just 1) and more high-spec car races. The car selection is mainly Japanese cars, with a couple of American cars. That's where the carrozzeria comes in. You can combine many different engines, drivetrains, and bodies to make your own cars. This also allows a resourceful car nut like myself tomake some real-life cars not included in the game (such as the Ferrari F355 GTS). This is because some of he carrozzeria body types look almost exactl like the real thing.

Arcade mode is like any other simgame, except it's shorter and very easy thanks to the fact that you are allowed to use Works cars in the Hard difficulty class (you can race stock RX-7s with Castrol Tom's Supra).

2P Mode is excellent. There is a bit of fog, but the framerate is still a solid 30fps with no slowdown anywhere.

The graphics are excellent. The cars are not very shiny on daytime tracks, but are very well-rendered. The framerate is always 30fps, and the sense of speed is pretty good. The background detail is great, and the lighting effects on the dusk and night tracks are spectacular, especially Night Ground. The animated elements add greatly to the liveliness of the locales (moving windmills, flashing lights). There area few instances of the moire effect (some textures seem to be moving), but it is minimal. When usig a VGA box, however, the moired textures are just fine and the game looks flat-out awesome.

The engine sounds and sound FX are excellent. The different engine types are very distinguishable. The Music is rather bland except for the track overview music (played at the beginning of each race -listen to the whole thing in the Options menu, it is great). It's best to turn the music off and leave the sound FX on whle listening to suitable racing music (techno works very well).

Internet mode is for uploading ghosts of your best times, as well as dowloading others' ghosts. This is great, as it allows you to see how good you really are.

Perhaps the ost impressive thing about this game is that I have had it since day one and still play it daily. The depth of the physics and handling, along with th subtleties of each track make it a cult classic. Look no further than the gamefaqs Sega GT message board to see a small, close-knit community of gamers still love this game.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/27/01, Updated 08/27/01