My Diaries

A Lurid Tale of Obsession, Depravity, Wits and Attempted Wit

Wednesday, December 06, 2000

(Gran Turismo 1) Hints for Winning the Gold Medal for B-3

I had reason to review my replay and formulate advice for this notorious licence test.

For all the time I've put into GT1 and GT2 I'm only a passable driver.

But I feel that makes me qualified to describe technique to people for whom things do not come naturally.

It took me ages to find my B-gold replays last night, but eventually I did.

To demonstrate my level of persistence, here are my replay titles:

That's playing almost every evening and a lot on weekends. Anyway, the description in the earlier posting pretty much describes my replay. Now, I used analog gas and brake all the time, with manual transmission mapped to R1 and R2. (In one GT2 test with an underpowered car on a circle pad I did switch to digital throttle to get gold).

In general, it looked like I pinned the tach before the start (after a little "warming up" by alternating of revs--I really don't know if the game does "warm up" the engine or not). And I always shifted up after the redline. I downshifted almost immediately after beginning the turn, but did no powerslide, since the car has no power!

I barely touched the outside rumble strip on entrance to the turn (I believe the non-gold demo goes right up on it), and stayed just clear of the inside rumble-strip at the apex. I hit a peak speed of 87 mph before turning, which slowed me down, after which I quickly downshifted (at about 80mph). I used all the road on my gradual exit, and ran off the road after the finish line. My lowest speed through the corner was 63mph. I'm reasonably sure I used no brakes (no lights), but can't remember and the replays don't really reveal the extent to which I may have feathered the throttle while slowing down.

My actual shift points were:

Unlike with a powerful car, your racing line should be almost symmetric around the turn (apex in the center). (With a powerful car, you want to enter such a turn deep so that you can apex late and thereby have more time to accelerate (because of the flatter exit curve). It's debateable how much that would help even with a powerful car in this particular scenario, since the finishing straight might be too short to allow increased acceleration and speed to offset extra time spent in the corner).

Oh yes. My biggest gold medal hint.

Turn the **** Music OFF!!!