After we got our first PS2 a few years ago and I discovered GT4 for the first time, I was hooked. I had an insatiable urge to drive - to race – to humiliate those artificially intelligent opponents that show up race after race to mete out their own form of humiliation in some “impossible to win” 200 A-spec point races. Koalaty got her S-Class license and raced a little but never really got into it; but not so her compulsive, obsessive racing fanatic spouse.
First, I had to run EVERYTHING in A-Spec; no AI Bob is going to get the credit for any of my masterful driving – not one stinking B-Spec point. I literally raced a 24-hour race in 24 hours (plus a couple of rest stops). I completed all 34 challenges, spending days to get the Gold in the all-but-impossible Challenge 34. After I achieved a 100% complete game, then the REAL challenges started. Next, I went back and to make all of my licenses Gold – that is right; 80 Gold, no Silver, no Bronze! Nothing obsessive about that!
You’d think that would be enough, but I started racing each race in a less competitive car until I got each race up to 200 A-Spec points (the maximum) – some of them are just impossible. Right now, my A-Spec score stands at 94,346 – still no B-Spec; nada; nil; nix; ZERO! Still no compulsion here.
I was on a quest (still am) to reach 100,000 A-Spec points when GT5 prologue was introduced. I was driven – I was truly obsessed.
This was the best thing to hit the market since sliced bread. I never took the time to try racing on line until I after I got all of the events to Gold. My first online experience was less than satisfying – punters. After that I got into some good races and it wasn’t long before I took on the GTP_ Registry, then the piece-de-resistance, was invited to join Teamspeak (by FatLeadFoot). I recruited my friends (especially my best friend Kartracer) and best drivers I knew to join us there to keep the competition as tight as possible. I had no worries, the Teamspeak guys and the TPRA (Tuner’s Pit Racing Association) made sure the racing competition and events are nothing but top notch. And an added bonus: punters BEWARE!
I forgot about my quest for a while and was immersed in GT5p. I raced against anybody, with everybody at all hours of the night and into the early morning. After racers in the US signed off early in the morning, I put my Japanese version in the old PS3 and logged in on the Asian servers for more early morning racing – I say there is NOTHING obsessive or compulsive about me.
Koalaty had not yet taken a big interest in GT5p at that point, but she paid attention to my interest. For my 61st birthday (yes, I really am that old – stop snickering), she and my daughters bought me an afternoon in real race cars on the road course at the Las Vegas Speedway (but that is another story and yes, the cars in GT5p really DO match the physics of the real cars – everything except the seat-of-the-pants G-forces). After she video taped my last session, she rode around the track in a NASCAR Sprint Cup car with a professional driver. After she got out of the car, she said, “I’ve got to do that myself. That was great! Next time we do this, I’ve got to drive one myself.”
“Great. I’ll tell you what. You need to start driving and racing in Gran Turismo to get yourself ready for this kind of racing.”
She was enthusiastic in her reply, “Sure, I’m ready for that. I think I could really get into this.”
What have I done? I’ve just committed my PS3 time to her to get her ready to go out on a track day. I’ll never be able to get on line again!
Fortunately, that was just before Christmas, so guess what she got from Santa? A new PS3 with 80 GB (mine has only 20GB). I set her up with my Driving Force GT and a large screen TV to get her started. Before her birthday, she had upgraded to a Logitech G25 and a High Definition 32 inch LCD TV (I still have the Driving Force GT and only a 26 inch HiDef LCD monitor). Hers is bigger than mine!!!
So now, picture this. We log on line side by side, hook into Teamspeak together (under SeniorL8R) and we go racing together – well not quite together; I’m at the front and she is at the back (snickering). She does very well – she didn’t go on line until she had completed all of the off-line races (S-Class Events). She is not the fastest on the track, but she is competitive. It is an extension of the auto racing that we have always enjoyed, but this gets us into the cars on some of the world’s best track (real or imaginary).
