Picked up a random memory card and it had some OG Gran Turismo save files on there..

I played the first game back in the day a little, but I quickly moved on to the later releases and never put much time into it. Out of nostalgia, I’ve been picking up old games and consoles and during my PS1 collecting phase I grabbed a PS1 memory card (picked totally at random at a retro game shop) out of necessity. As a sim racing nerd I have the original Gran Turismo in my collection as it’s a pretty important racing game, to say the least.
Anyway, by pure chance when firing it up I realized I could load a game and holy balls he unlocked EVERYTHING. Fully upgraded Viper’s, RX-7’s, Supra’s with 900+ hp, crazy lap records, and all the licenses unlocked. What are the odds. Copied the save files to a second memory card as a backup and ima just buy another memory card instead of ever deleting these save files.

To the guy who unlocked all this stuff over 25 years ago: Thank you. There’s no way I’d ever have the time/patience to do it now. This save file makes the game 100x better and it’s genuinely a treat now to boot up and reaffirm how revolutionary the series was to the racing genre. It really is amazing to see what Polyphony Digital achieved in 1997 when you look at racing games prior. Sure simulation racing advanced in many ways and the Gran Turismo series is now comparatively pretty arcadey as they’ve targeted general audiences and couch play with a controller on Playstation consoles, whereas the typical racing simulator generally appeals to a niche audience with custom hardware. But make no mistake, they were the beginning. The genesis of simulated race tracks, cars, etc. attempting to emulate reality. I’ll always respect the series for that.

Anyway, I wonder what this fella is up to now. Wild to think about how this person probably obsessively played this game to completion a quarter of a century ago.

From the future: thanks ‘90s bro
-K