Gran Turismo 1 - Playthrough Part 16 - Hard-Tuned Cup

Gran Turismo 7 might be coming out at the end of the year with the release of the PS5, so I want to try to do a full playthrough of all the previous Gran Turismo games until then. Here you can see me completing the Hard-Tuned Cup in the simulation mode of Gran Turismo 1.

Timeline:
0:07 Tuning my car for the Hard-Tuned Cup
3:01 Hard-Tuned Cup Starting Lineup
3:19 Hard-Tuned Cup - High Speed Ring Reverse with Nismo 400R
9:08 Hard-Tuned Cup - Grand Valley Speedway Reverse with Nismo 400R
19:00 Hard-Tuned Cup - Clubman Stage Route 5 Reverse with Nismo 400R
24:09 Hard-Tuned Cup - Autumn Ring Reverse with Nismo 400R
31:33 Hard-Tuned Cup - Special Stage Route 11 Reverse with Nismo 400R
42:44 Hard-Tuned Cup Reward Car

Gran Turismo has always been one of my favorite racing game franchises and I played the first 3 games of the series when they first came out. After that I moved to PC though, so I never got to play GT 4-6. This year I want to try to revisit GT 1-3 and also play through GT 4-6 for the first time. I am not sure if I will manage to get all of it done but I will see how far I can get.

In this video I am doing the Hard-Tuned Cup, where racing models are not allowed. I am using the rare Nismo 400R that we got from the IA license. As usual I am only upgrading the car just far enough to be able to win all of the races. I am also leaving out weight reduction, so I can still enter the Normal Car Cup with this car in the future.

The cups in GT1 usually have 2-3 possible lineups of opponents that you can get. In this one you can get a lineup with a Supra, which can be tough to beat on some tracks with these parts. In this attempt I got the slightly easier lineup with the NSX though. With both opponent lineups I saw some weird AI balancing, where on Clubman Stage the Nissan and Mitsubishi were suddenly a lot faster and on Autumn Ring the RX-7.

As a reward car I got a special color R32 here. The other possibility would have been an AE86.

In the next video I might do one of the endurance races, so that I can leave the GT World Cup for the end of the playthrough.