The Gran Turismo series has long established itself as the ultimate hardcore racing game, regularly pushing the PlayStation hardware to its limits to deliver a true-to-life driving simulation. It’s been almost four years since fans took Gran Turismo 3 for a drive on their PS2s—an agonizing wait to see what game creator Kazunori Yamauchi would come up with next. But now it’s finally here, and Gran Turismo 4 has fulfilled the expectations of gamers with superb graphics, amazing physics, and precise recreations of real-life racetracks and more than 700 cars from throughout automotive history (including the Daimler Motor Carriage from 1886). We were able to ask Taku Imasaki, the game’s U.S. producer at Sony Computer Entertainment, a few questions about this new landmark GT.

Many Gran Turismo fans no doubt wonder: Why did GT4 take so long to produce?

First of all, the massive amount of cars and courses in the game required that we go out to each course to collect data, and we got access to each one of those cars in real life. That meant sending a team of 40-50 people out all over the world to car museums, race tracks, private owners, Jay Leno, all those kinds of things. We take like 300 photos of each car and we record engine sounds, too. For the courses, we actually spent two weeks on some of them, like Nurburing [in Germany], which is a huge course. The creator of the game [Kazunori Yamauchi] practiced like 800 laps on the game and then he went on the course for the first time, and he did pretty good. The Nissan test driver was shocked.

So if you do the math, that adds up to a lot of years. Also, we’re closer to the manufacturers nowadays; we do a lot of projects together with car companies. When they introduce new cars, they want to have a demo next to the car for consumers to play with. There were like 40 of these side projects throughout the past couple years; we value the relationships, so we try to take those requests seriously. That all led to the game finishing late, and we’re very aware we kept the consumers waiting, and we really appreciate them waiting. I’m sure the game lives up to their standards.

What were the main design goals for GT4?

Gran Turismo 1 and 3 came out with the hardware, so it was always about technology, showing off the hardware by being a flagship title. Gran Turismo 2 and 4 basically took 1 and 3 further, making it a bigger, richer game in terms of features. So the first goal was to make it the ultimate Gran Turismo on PlayStation 2 and have as many cars as we could. Our original list exceeded a thousand cars—we basically wanted to make it a car encyclopedia and have a good amount of cars representing each era, starting from the late 1800s. So there are obviously cars that we cut due to time constraints, but we think we did a pretty good job having all those cars in there. And we introduced new modes like the photo mode and the B-spec mode, which addresses the casual gamer or the gamer who doesn’t always to race for the best time—they want to appreciate the great graphics this game has, be more laid back.

Which new GT4 feature excited you the most?

I really dig the photo mode because I’m into photography. I like taking photos and saving them onto my MemoryStick. You can create your own slide show with music in the background, or make your PlayStation act like a computer and show screen savers. We’re always good at introducing great, innovative peripherals, and this new photo mode uses a printer—it lets you print out images from the game. I don’t see any other games that do that on the PS2. It’s also the first PS2 game that supports a high-definition mode, so if you have an HD-ready TV, you can output 1080i.

Was there ever a fear that making the game too realistic might hurt gameplay?

That’s one of the reasons why we introduced modes like B-spec. On one hand, we know that the hardcore gamers will appreciate the reality, but sometimes it’s hard for casual gamers to drive properly in the game. B-spec allows you to appreciate the game in a visual way, but also not screw up. You can start a race and sit back with your drink and operate the game with one hand. You can actually complete the game that way, playing B-spec all the way. Even for hardcore gamers who play A-spec all the time—24-hour endurance races and such—they can switch to B-spec and rest their thumbs a little bit.

What happened to the planned online component of the game?

The original goal was to include the internet mode, but we ended up including the LAN mode of the game where it allows six players to play against each other. We were almost there with internet play, but we couldn’t put it in due to the perfectionism of the creator.

Can you give us any hints for what Gran Turismo might be like on the PlayStation 3?

Our goal has always been to get more realistic with the widest variety of cars possible, and giving the experience of virtual driving to the consumers. That will not change, and it will only improve with the next generation.