Tourist Trophy: The Real Riding Simulator
September 15, 2005 - The next game from the people who make Gran Turismo won't be a Gran Turismo game. Polyphony Digital has announced its oft-rumored motorcycle simulator. Titled Tourist Trophy: The Real Riding Simulator, this PS2 title promises to do to two wheels what Gran Turismo did to four.
On the eve of the Tokyo Game Show, Tourist Trophy has been unveiled on the pages of Famitsu magazine. Polyphony seems to be going all out with this one, with a collection of bikes from big bike makers like Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki and Honda. The developer is even including real life suits and helmets.
While we're not sure how many bikes will feature in the game, Famitsu provides a partial list. Here's some of what you can expect to ride in Polyphony's first motorbike game:
Honda CBR600RR
Honda NSR250R SE
Honda CB750F
Honda CBR1100XX
Yamaha YZF R-1
Yamaha MT 01
Yamaha TZR 250 SPR
Yamaha Grand Majesty 250
Kawasaki ZRX1200R
Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R
Suzuki GSX1400
Suzuki Hayabusa
Suzuki GSX-R600
The final selection will include a small number of motorcycles from the 80s, although 70% will be from the 90s to the present. Although the above makers are all Japanese, the final game will feature European bikes as well.
Polyphony is concentrating on making these bikes control like the real thing. Of course, with motorcycles, cornering is an important part of the race, and, sure enough, changing your riding form during cornering plays a major role in the game. The magazine introduces a few of the more important moves, including lean in and lean out (these describe how far you lean your bike when going into corners -- lean in makes your bike go closer to the ground than lean out). You'll also apparently be able to create your own riding form.
We know less about the courses set for inclusion in the game. Screenshots in the magazine show Tsukuba and Fuji Raceway, both of which are in Gran Turismo. The game will feature non GT courses, though.
As with Gran Turismo, tuning will play a big part in the game. You'll be able to tune such areas as your front fork angle, engine, dumper and final gear ratio. You'll also be able to select your tire type, selecting between three types of slick tires and two types of commercial tires.
Control will inherit quite a bit from Gran Turismo. In fact, the control setup will be, in its default state, exactly the same as that of GT. However, for the pros out there, Polyphony is also adding the ability to lean your body flat on your bike, which is the best way to attain top speed. You can do this with the L2 button. In this pro mode of play, the R2 button breaks and up and down on the analogue stick changes your weight around. Remember, this is just the professional control setup, so we expect it to take some getting used to.
There will be some additional functionality that you didn't find in Gran Turismo. The game will make use of the PS2's analogue face buttons to determine throttle and breaking, which is similar to what Polyphony did with GT, only here on-screen displays will show exactly how hard you're pressing the buttons.
Tourist Trophy is clearly aimed at motorcycle lovers. The game is even set to feature a photo mode where players will be able to snap pictures of their bikes and their virtual riders.
It should come as no surprise that this new Polyphony project is being headed up by a motorcycle lover. And we're not talking about company president and Gran Turismo father Kazunori Yamauchi. Yamauchi is serving as the producer of the game with a more recent Polyphony employee, Takamasa Shichisawa, serving as director.
Shichisawa joined Polyphony in 2000. He initially worked on the opening movies for the GT games, but his real love was apparently in motorcycles, as he had raced for ten years as an amateur. Two weeks after entering Polyphony, Shichisawa asked Yamauchi to make a motorbike game with the same level of quality found in GT.
Interviewed in the magazine, Yamauchi states that he made Gran Turismo because he loves cars and he therefore understands how people who love cars feel. He doesn't know too much about motorcycles, though, and he jokes that this is true even though bikes, like cars, have wheels. Yamauchi entrusted the required love of motorcycles and understanding of biker culture to Shichisawa.
A motorcycle game from Polyphony has been rumored for some time now, and there might have been some truth to the rumors. Yamauchi knew for some time that it would be technically possible to use the GT development team and Polyphony's resources to make a motorcycle game. It was just a question of timing and the need for someone who loves motorcycles. Actual development on Tourist Trophy began only recently -- in January, following the Japanese release of Gran Turismo 4.
Shichisawa shares some details on the game structure of Tourist Trophy. You start off with two bikes. It's not the case that in the game's arcade mode you'll be able to just pick from any number of bikes and race away. The reason for this is that, unlike with cars, most people don't have familiarity with bikes, so Polyphony hopes to hold the player's hand early on and teach the basics of motorcycle racing. The development team hasn't decided yet if they'll have players go through license tests as part of the single player mode, however we can expect a mode of play where the player performs tasks of progressive complexity.
Yamauchi gets the final word in the interview. He states that Polyphony first knocked on the door of car culture back in 1997 with the release of Gran Turismo. With Tourist Trophy, Yamauchi says, the team is knocking on the world of motorcycles. The knocking will begin in Japan this Winter. Sooner than that, we can look forward to a video demonstration of the game at the Tokyo Game Show this Friday
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