Reviving the Classics: Gran Turismo’s Free Demo Nostalgic Trip

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The original PlayStation launched in Japan on December 3, 1994, which means we’re just a few months away from the 30th anniversary of Sony’s foray into the gaming world. To celebrate, Polyphony Digital, the developers behind Gran Turismo, are releasing a “free trial version” of Gran Turismo 7 that’s designed to evoke the nostalgia of the very first GT experience. It’s called My First GT, and it’s coming to both PS4 and PS5 this holiday season.

Details are scarce, but Sony announced the title in a blog post showcasing some of the ways it’s celebrating three decades of PlayStation. According to the post, My First GT is a free trial version designed to attract players of all skill levels to GT7. It’ll include some of the favorite cars, tracks, and race events that evoke the nostalgia and excitement of the first GT experience.

So, what do we know? It’s free, it’s a demo, its content will be inspired by the first game, and it’s releasing on both PS4 and PS5. There’s a slight disconnect between the title “My First GT” and the copy, which makes it clear they’re specifically talking about GT1.

GT7 already has plenty of content referencing GT1, from tracks like High Speed Ring and Trial Mountain to cars like the Castrol Tom’s Supra and Dodge Viper GTS. If Polyphony wants to venture into the franchise’s PS2 heyday, there’s also Laguna Seca and the Mazda 787B to consider. We can easily predict the sort of car/track combos this release will be looking to recreate.

Personally, I’m hoping the demo will showcase the music and graphic design of that first title – black backgrounds, yellow buttons, and plenty of Isamu Ohira jazz. (The option to choose Jason Page’s western soundtrack would be the ultimate nostalgia play, but that’s never happening.) We can only wait and see how Polyphony attempts to tap into the vibe. The oldest-school GT fans will recall creator Kazunori Yamauchi’s desire to create a “Gran Turismo for Boys” targeting a younger audience, and in one sense, the title My First GT almost sounds like the final form of that idea.

Oh, and one more thing: A cut-down, free version of GT7 would present the perfect opportunity for Kaz and co. to introduce Gran Turismo to a PC audience. This was the tack Turn 10 Studios actually took with Forza Motorsport 6: Apex, an abbreviated PC port of FM6 that predated FM7’s full arrival on Windows. The big Nvidia leak of late 2021, colloquially known as “Jensen’s Prophecy,” indicated a GT7 PC port was in the works, and Yamauchi himself hasn’t exactly shot down the idea since.

Alas, Sony’s message here couldn’t be clearer: This is a PS4- and PS5-only affair. Perhaps that’s fitting, given that this is PlayStation’s big 3-0, after all. I’ve put more than 500 hours into GT7 since it launched two and a half years ago, and I’m still excited to see how My First GT pays tribute to The Real Driving Simulator’s influential past.

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