Sega GT Game Sample - Dreamcast
0Sega GT is dubbed a "semi-simulation" racing game and is stated to have secretly been designed to be the Dreamcast's "Gran Turismo" killer and compete with the upcoming "Gran Turismo 2000"; the game was so heavily influenced by GT that Sony delayed GT2000 to assess Sega GT and later released GT2000 in 2001 under the new name, Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec. It's a good racing game with a few innovations from Gran Turismo, but it never really caught on despite several efforts from Sega to get its name out there-- even going as far as to add extras to the PAL version of the game like extra cars. Some criticisms include an "unintuitive" interface, poor control, and imbalance within the audio with sound effects easily drowning out the soundtrack. However, much of the aformentioned quickly becomes second nature and the sound effects and music volume can be adjusted at your leisure.
Something I can say about the game is that the physics aren't the most realistic, which is ironic since the game went through so much trouble to simulate realistic driving with plenty of licensed cars and realistic vehicle handling. Bumping into cars (even so much as lightly brushing into them or tapping them) will propel cars ahead of the track or slow you down significantly, but hitting walls at high speed at a certain angle has minimal impact and you retain most of your stability, which I don't think is right... they should've added slightly more user-friendly control in leiu of less penalty for crashes (but don't be mistaken; if you don't hit a wall right, it can screw you up big time), but things work out either way once you come to understand it.
The game has a pretty comprehensive "Championship Mode" where you can race to earn licenses and money which can be used to buy a variety of parts, cars, and upgrades, as well as unlock new tracks. The types of races in Championship Mode are determined depending on what cars you have as well as class and engine displacement, not to mention that there are a variety of other races and events that can be taken advantage of. Championship Mode does take some time before everything sinks in and you realize how many features the game provides. For this reason, we briefly show the core modes of Championship Mode but play a few Single Races for the purpose of this video. The other modes should be pretty easy to understand if you've played a racing game before.
In Single Race, the cars, tracks, and engine displacement depend on the difficulty level you select, and the cars aren't pimped-out to the max like Carrozzeria/Championship cars (Production & Works models only); this is what the manual considers the Arcade Experience, and its good for quick demonstration. The audio/visuals in this game are quite good (I especially like some of the track tunes), but there are better looking Dreamcast racers out there. There is plenty to see and do in this game, including playing a VMU mini-game to unlock additional cars. This is a video showing three tracks under Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulty. This game was also ported to Windows PCs in 2001. Try other good Dreamcast racers like MSR and Vanishing Point too. Enjoy.