GT 64: Championship Edition

Racing games that go for “realism” really don’t age as well as sillier and more arcade-style racing games, and GT 64 when it came out was already just a cheap cash-in to make itself look like Gran Turismo on the N64. Due to this, GT 64 is a truly horrid experience without a single redeeming feature.

Before each race, you need to qualify for starting position. The default is a 3 lap time trial which sounded horrible, so I selected “special stage”. This is a 1 lap time trial, but with a warm up lap before it. The racing itself is very stiff and janky, and the CPU racers feel more like obstacles than rivals. There’s also no music, with the only sound a really horrible engine noise – I ended up muting the game.

You race across three tracks, and then race across slightly different versions of those three tracks – with the difference between “shot and long” feeling less unique than the different routes in their previous game, Multi-Racing Championship. Then you can play the three tracks two more times in mirror mode.

Cruis’n USA had some mild bouts of enjoyment, this is just pure tedium all the time and the worst racer on the N64 so far.

So in making GT 64, what have developers Genki done? Um, well, changed the handling, worsened the visuals and cunningly made it look like they’ve upped the number of tracks to 12 (when, in fact, they’ve only really kept it to three). Whoops.

Tim Weaver, N64 Magazine #17

Remake or Remaster?

Nothing for this one.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play GT 64

N64 racing