Gran Turismo 1: The Ultimate Guide

An in-depth guide for Gran Turismo 1's GT Mode which details the best starting cars to buy, how to handle and tune a variety of cars, and how to get gold in every licence test and beat every event for 100% completion.

00:00 Intro
01:49 Welcome
06:43 Buying Your First Car
12:40 Weight Transfer & Handling Tuning
20:40 B Licence All Golds
26:00 Early Game Route
35:59 Torque, Power & Gear Setup
44:18 A Licence All Golds
54:07 Mid Game & Best Cars / Tuning Platforms
1:12:00 Race Cars & Downforce
1:21:48 IA Licence All Golds
1:29:20 The Late-Game & Endurances
1:37:31 Outro

Step-by-step guide for setting up analog acceleration/brake using triggers in DuckStation:
1: In the in-game options menu, go to the controller settings, then map acceleration to right analog stick up, brake to right analog stick down, and gear up/gear down from L2/R2 to any other buttons
2: In DuckStation, click Settings in the top bar, then Controllers, then New Profile at the bottom, name it something, and say yes to copy all settings from the current profile
3: Map your controller as normal with the Analog Controller layout, but map your controller's left trigger to Right Analog Down and the right trigger to Right Analog Up (L2 and R2 can be left unmapped)
4: Go back to the DuckStation main screen, right-click on Gran Turismo in the game list, then Properties, then change the Input Profile to the controller profile you just created

DuckStation uses a very high analog sensitivity setting by default (200%), I suggest reducing it to around 120% in the controller settings to make cars much easier to handle.

Intro music by me.

Music used:
GT-FORCE - Cargo
After The Rain - MAKOTO
Dream World - KEMMEI
Sunset Haze - Keiji Inai
Park Side Café - Daisuke Kawai
Sea Line - Daisuke Kawai
Cubic Luster - Yuto Takei
Let me see your mind - Tyme.
at night - Akihisa Yamaguchi
Cube - Akihisa Yamaguchi
Horizons in May - Keiji Inai
calm calm - Tyme.
Beautiful Area - Akihisa Yamaguchi
The First Person - Akihisa Yamaguchi

[TeaKanji]

Thanks for watching! I will keep this pinned comment updated to clarify upon things and to add new info.

- I mentioned it in the description, but I'll leave it here also: DuckStation's default analog sensitivity is very high, so make sure to lower it to around 120% or lower. This will greatly help with controlling cars in this game.

- A bit of trivia regarding the Western menu music: it was composed and produced by Jason Page, who also made music for the game selection screens of PAL demo discs released by Official PS1 Magazine, along with the 'underwater' Demo One disc.

- Small typo at 4:49, the PAL FTO weighs 23kg more, not 33kg.

- When playing on console at original frame rates, dealing with bouncing requires a trade-off. On some cars (eg. RX-7's and Griffith's), even with the rear springs set as soft as possible, the car can still bounce heavily on tracks like Trial Mountain. Stiffening the rear damper above 2 will fix it, but it will also make the car feel less responsive while turning. Personally, I find I drive faster with the rear damper set to 2, but it's personal preference. Raise the rear damper to 3 or 4 to help suppress bouncing.

- A disclaimer about the tuning settings I provide: they're just what worked for me, using PAL 25 / 50 FPS with a DualShock 4 in DuckStation. As everyone has their own driving style and controller setup, you'll likely need to make adjustments to suit your preferences. Use the handling tuning section as a guide when tuning each setting; I also try to explain my reasoning for increasing/decreasing certain settings in each tune.

- Something I didn't mention for the sake of brevity was tyre width. In a car's spec sheet, you can see the width of the front and rear tyres. Essentially, wider tyres give better grip and traction. It's another reason why the '96 Supra RZ is better than the '95, and why the Griffith 4.0 is better than the 500: their tyres are wider. The Concept Car LM has some of the widest tyres in the game, which is why its traction is exceptional.

- While the odds of getting either prize car from the regional events is 50/50, the colours work a bit differently. There seems to be some variable that causes the prize cars to skew towards one of two possible colours. From testing using save states, the game can favour one of two colours between 75 - 90% of the time. My only lead right now is that watching the end credits after beating GT World Cup flips the odds from one colour to another.

[Whyteeford]

It's amazing what was possible on 33.8mhz, 2mb of system ram and 1mb of video memory. When Gran Turismo came out, I couldn't imagine that a racing game could possibly look more realistic (I'll be 40 this year, and was 14 when this game released)

[fliban]

Another masterpiece. Your passion for the game is an absolute pleasure to witness. Your rich deep dives into the game’s mechanics embodies the very spirit of Gran Turismo. Can’t wait to watch the next

[xgbox]

I was looking to get back into GT1 and found your video. Calling it "The Ultimate Guide" is an understatement. It's so good and your research is incredibly thorough! I wish I had something like this back in 1998

[Driff]

This is my favourite Gran Turismo game. Not even kidding.
I love the style. I love the championship angle, I love the track selection and usage. I keep coming back to this game time and time again because it's just so easy to get lost into this extremely likable world.

[Jazril]

This video is unbelievable. Couldn't find any information online about GT1 tuning, and this video has EVERYTHING, and the way the information is presented is great. Great job, I hope your channel blows up! 👍👍👍

[zodiac]

What is truly crazy about this game is that even though it is 25 years old, the final reward was an unlocked 60 fps mode. On a PS1 in 1997!

[XShadowSeer]

I was able to get all golds for licenses before watching your video but holy shit, after watching your rundown on each test with recommendations on when to shift and when to launch, getting licenses all gold is so freaking easy now lmao. Started a new playthrough recently and got them all gold in under 3 hours, it took me about 4 hours to get gold on A-5 alone the last time I did it. You were not kidding about this being the ultimate guide. Great video dude!

[DoVe_]

I'm very impressed with the amount of details and effort you put into this video, learnt some new things about this masterpiece, you did an excellent job on this video! 👏

[GranMotoring]

Neat custom camera angles at the start. This guide will be handy for future reference. Nice work.

[dylanksturbo]

Amazing guides for a game series that kick-started my love for cars as a child! Impressive detail and awesome job.

[jdcp]

Back to the roots, I didnt expect thid for sure, loving it so far! Damn is it just me or your guides are getting better and better? Even despite their quality is near perfect!!!

[Samuragamer]

incredible work. It isn't an overstatement by any measure to call it the ultimate guide

[glaceontheiciest]

I watched the other three game guides as well as your budget video for GT2, and I'm very excited to tuck into this one. Keep the good stuff coming Boss Man.

[D-generon]

What I also love about GT1 is this ability to do the "surprise, motherf..." moment by appearing in races like Sunday Cup with cars like Mitsubishi 3000GT LM Edition.

[StopNightcoreV]

5:10 just wanted to point out how insane the power to weight ratio is on the NTSC-J Cerbera LM. About 1 kg per hp, that's almost F1 levels of performance. Great guide!

[neogriff]

I played this game back then without the knowledge of tuning the cars. My first car is the mark 3 supra turbo. And like you said, the FTO LM is one of the best car. It is my weapon of choice for mid to late game races, even in stock tune. It's also decent enough to beat cars with higher horse powers in multi player. Those were the days ...

[GTSuzukaTimeTrials]

I just turned 39 but it feels like I just turned 14 again after just 60 seconds. Insane quality work mate.

[nijunikuro]

Thank you very much for all the time and effort you spent to make this guide. I got GT1 recently and your guide helped me a lot - mostly with deciding which cars to buy and how to tune them.

[Kiri]

THE Guide. Beautiful intro, i like the music. :)