[DC/PC] Sega GT ~ Official Race, SA Class + Short Ending
32000. This game is 20 years old. Yes, it has been that long. Yes, you are getting old.
Sega GT is a 2000 release for the Sega Dreamcast (and PC, being played here). It is Sega's direct response to the Playstation's Gran Turismo series. More accurately, you could say this game is trying to compete with Gran Turismo 2. Although by no means a bad game, bringing quite a few unique ideas to the table, it doesn't compare very favourably to its rival in my opinion.
You get all the usual modes of play a racing game of the time would have: Single Race and Championship (the Carreer mode) for Single Player and Dual Screen for Split-Screen Multiplayer. I don't remember if the Dreamcast version of this game had online play back in Y2K, but it is a moot point in 2020. The PC version definitely doesn't have the feature regardless.
Single Race and Dual Screen are self explanatary. Obviously the meat of the content is in the Championship mode. An imitation of the usual Carreer mode you would see in Gran Turismo 1, 2 and later 3, it inherits most of its features, such as managing money to buy new and used cars, tuning your vehicles with new parts, racing in many different events and cups with different themes and restrictions, it even has the dreaded Licence Tests (although to Sega's credit, getting all the licences is incredibly easy and takes less than 10 minutes). As for features it doesn't just lift off its competition, perhaps the main gimmick of the Championship mode is the "Carrozzeria". This allows you to build (commission?) a custom car to your exact specifications (an "Original Car" as the game calls it), choosing from a pool of different premade pieces. By our modern sensibilities, the customisation is quite limited, although back when the game was released, this was a very novel concept and offerred a wide array of options. You need to get even more Licence Tests done before you can build/commission anything meaningful, though, with those tests being structured far closer to Gran Turismo's, although once again they're not too difficult... as long as you have deep enough pockets to build/commission a car good enough to pass the tests. Many events require you to use an "Original Car" while many others can be made much easier by getting a car taylor made to meet their desired specifications, however this isn't very viable since these commissioned cars cost magnitudes more than Standard Cars you can buy.
But what about the gameplay and content itself? Comparisons to Gran Turismo 2 are completely inevitable, since this game is very clearly meant to be pitted against it. Sega GT's gameplay is alright, but it honestly lacks polish compared to GT2 (through no fault of its own, honestly, seeing that GT2 was building off a previous game). Cars are incredibly springy and bouncy and often have weird interactions with walls, bumpy terrain and especially other cars because of it. This, combined with the physics, rather counter-intuitively make the slower cars far more enjoyable to drive around. It's incredibly easy to customise many cars to make them drive faster than 300 miles per hour with uncontrollable lubed up tyres. Sega GT only has a meagre 130 licenced cars in its roster, compared to GT2's over 500. You can argue Sega GT somewhat makes up with this with all the "Original Cars" you can build, but you only have so many sensible options for vehicles you would ever actually get made, thus even theoretically speaking you can't ever get the game to have as many cars as its rival. GT2 also has 27 tracks, compared to Sega GT's 22 (really, half those are just reverse versions of other tracks, some tracks only really show up once or twice!). GT2 includes Rally courses, Sega GT doesn't. At least, since Sega GT is a Dreamcast game, it looks much nicer graphically than GT2's jagged PS1 polygons, however to dampen this victory somewhat, Gran Turismo 3 came out on the PS2 barely a year later and blows it out of the water in that regard...
Sega GT isn't devoid of its own problems, as well. Making the Licences very easy to get - and considering doing well in the licences potentially gives you completely free cars and lots of money, on top of that! - completely breaks the balance of the money management aspect of the game, since this pretty much means you will very rarely need to buy cars when the licences give you most of the cars you need for free! This also means you can play the game completely outside of the intended order, breaking any sense of flow when you can potentially have an early game full of exciting race cars events and a late game where you're racing with grandma's old hatchback. It's also very easy to use the "Carrozzeria" to build a car costing half a million that doesn't race any better than the stuff the licences give you free.
Don't get me wrong. This game is still a big classic of the Dreamcast collection. It's still worth your time. However, it definitely needed more polish.
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