Gran Turismo 2 Any% No Licence Prize Cars (Emu/PAL) in

My very first full speedrun for any game, after only practicing for a week or so. Played on Mednafen. Some major driving mistakes in the second half, which I'll get into later, but nothing that killed the run thankfully. I mainly intended this run to be a proof of concept for a new any% no licence prize cars strategy I have devised.
Last week, I did some research into Gran Turismo 2's any% no licence prize car category, and noticed that the route used by both console and emulator players was unoptimized. The WR's for both console and emulator used NTSC-U, and while it has more stable physics than PAL due to 30 FPS vs. 25 FPS, it suffers greatly in one area: the used car lot.
Up to now, all the top runs (both NTSC-U and PAL) bought the '93 Miata after completing licences, did four national races, bought the stage 2 turbo for a huge power boost along with sports suspension, did more national races, then bought super soft racing tyres and a bunch more upgrades. While the Miata is perhaps the best starter car option for this category on NTSC-U, its core issue is its extremely low starting power of 129hp. The stage 2 turbo needs to be bought early for it to be competitive, sacrificing tyre upgrades.
While the Silvia is heavier, its starting power is much higher with 171hp, whil also only costing 4,098 credits, enabling an early driveshaft upgrade. Using only the starting 10,000 credits, it's barely competitive enough to win Japan race 3, for an early 7,000 credits boost for the first wave of upgrades. This sacrifices 20 seconds compared to the Miata route that does this race way later in the run, but it allows the route to buy medium racing tyres in the first wave.
France 1 is also done before the first wave of upgrades, so the semi-racing suspension can be bought instead of the sports kit. This is due to the ride height trick: low front height and a high rear height makes the car point downwards, tricking the game into thinking it's going downhill and boosting acceleration. The effect is only slight with the semi-racing kit, but it definitely helps, while camber improves the car's overall grip. With the exception of these two races, the Silvia is substantially faster than the Miata before and after the first wave.
The Silvia does have a couple downsides though: the stage 1 and 2 turbo are both bought in different waves, while the Miata only needs to upgrade the turbo once. After the second wave, the Miata route has super softs, while the Silvia only has mediums. The two cars are still roughly even, but the Silvia's lack of grip is quite noticeable at points. This especially cost me in Pacific race 2, as the car spun out entering the first hairpin and cost 9-10 seconds.
As mentioned prior, one big downside of playing on PAL is jankier physics. NTSC-U runs used a 'bouncy' car setup on race cars that involved setting the front and rear springs as stiff as possible (while leaving the dampers at their default stiffness at 7), causing the car to oscillate rapidly and have abnormal grip and turning ability. This effect is even more extreme on PAL, to the point where the car can lose stability easily.
I did a few things to conteract this: I never set the rear springs higher than 18.0, I maxed out the rear LSD Initial for reduced loss of grip, and I maxed out the rear damper bound while softening the other damper settings. This allowed the car to oscillate without being extremely jittery and unstable. LSD Accel and Decel were adjusted based on how much stability I wanted while accelerating or braking. In retrospect, I should have raised the GT-One's LSD Accel more.
I had two major accidents in the world championship: a bad corkscrew entry, and a spin-out at Rome. Trial Mountain, Apricot Hill and Midfield were fine for the most part. For the GT-One on Trial Mountain specifically, I softened the rear springs to 5.0 so it wasn't at risk of instability over bumps. I lost a lot of time resetting the springs afterwards though, due to nerves. It was probably still worth it for safety though.
I borrowed a technique from Sough's console any% run where you can pause immediately as the car crosses the line in licence tests to skip the prize animation. It's quite risky, as doing it too early can cost half a second at best, or kill the run at worst. I have no idea how I managed to get it in IC-10. I didn't get as many as I would have liked overall, but some is better than none. It's better to do them too late, than too early. One big mistake in IA-4 where the car spun out almost immediately, but I was still able to make bronze without losing too much time.
Menuing was fine for the most part, I mainly lost time due to driver error. A 2:41 or 2:40 is definitely possible. As mentioned before, this was mainly a proof of concept run, and I'm a very inexperienced speedrunner. Took over 25 runs to finally get one run that finished all licences without issue.

[@neiliosTM]

I just came from the gt2 ultimate guide and now see you have speedrun content! Epic

[@glaceontheiciest4374]

Now this is some upper echelon content. I didn't even know there were leaderboards for GT2, I might try a run myself.

[@TeaKanji]

Yeah, I didn't realize either until last week that there was a separate leaderboard for no licence prize cars. Greatly lowers the barrier of entry, it's a pretty approachable speedrun despite a couple of difficulty spikes. Worth a try for sure!

[@markcolt1114]

Darn I just downloaded GT2 for Duckstation so I was copying some of the stuff from your guide. Nice run man. Btw, I bought an '82 starlet as a first car. Quite challenging. You should give it a try one of these days.

[@TeaKanji]

Thank you! Ah, hehe, yeah, I've considered using one of those old 80's hatchbacks for a challenge, just haven't decided which race to use them in. One day, I'm sure.

[@mazdanoff]

Random nit-pick: L1/R1/L2/R2 buttons let you move the cursor diagonally in city menus. Would save a few presses, especially noticable on navigating to Nissan dealership. Congrats on WR! Hopefully there's more excellence coming. This is such good content from a great classic game. Thanks for sharing.

[@TeaKanji]

Ah, oops, I completely forgot about that. I'll practice it if/when I'm doing runs in the future, thanks for that. Edit: sorry, just saw your edit now, thank you! Hopefully better runs to come in the future.

[@FlyingDutchy]

Subbed :)

[@zwabTheRealOne]

Pretty sure you got through the first corner on midfield during the 2nd lap faster in that barely modified silvia than I can in the Shelby '67 Cobra I started playing around with/tuning yesterday.

[@PLWhisky]

i KNEW you would make a speedrun some day. im so glad you did, maybe it will spark some competition

[@muaminhugsy4964]

Awesome run Watching the license runs it’s funny seeing what I struggled with getting a bronze in as a kid be so trivial looking 😂 practice goes far Also as I was watching the license tests I couldn’t help but notice this game had some awesome engine sounds for the time (tbh even for now) 😮 Amazing run, definitely gonna be trying to copy this some time for funzies love it

[@zwingler]

Id love to see what other games you can destroy.

[@harizotoh7]

Oh man, more or less proves the Silvia k 88 is the best starter car.

[@TheListern]

Congrats, and good luck on the future runs

[@TeaKanji]

Thank you!

[@SatanasJack]

gz man.... i really like your videos congratz

[@TeaKanji]

Thank you, glad you enjoy them!

[@KingLich451]

Awesomee

[@ashz9991]

congrats on the great run!

[@TeaKanji]

Thank you! Hope you're doing well.

[@jatho7544]

Congrats on the run, can you get loading times like the PS2’s fast disc speed mode on emulator?

[@TeaKanji]

Thank you! On other emulators, definitely yeah (especially DuckStation with overclocking and increased disc read/seek speed), but the speedrun.com moderators enforced Mednafen as it's the most accurate to original PS1 load times.

[@jatho7544]

@@TeaKanji Alright, yeah the rules are tight. For the PS2 games the 80GB and PAL 60GB BC PS3s are banned in speedrunning because their PS2 mode is basically an emulator with a GS and therefore some games are not compatible. Much like the PS2 running PS1 games, all launch PS3 models with BC do have faster disc loading, but then the PS2 is able to load games faster using the internal HDD. In GT4 you get speedruns for either the disc or hard drive.

[@jeeves_uk]

Great run! This reminds me I still need to go get WR for Epic Turismo the RNG has been killing me though.

[@imaneuy]

my first car was a cheap supra. it's difficult to ride it. easy slip

[@TeaKanji]

Yeah, need to be careful not to accelerate too early when exiting corners. Save up for some super soft racing tyres and it'll feel much, much better to drive.

[@imaneuy]

@@TeaKanji thx for the advice!

[@Joojoogame]

Good.

[@five12man]

Wow, I am here for this license content! Just discovered you and I'm stunned....

[@TeaKanji]

Hehe, licences are far from my area of expertise, but I guess I'm okay enough at them to get speedruns off the ground. Glad you're enjoying the content!

[@Super787B]

Why did you sell all of those cars for the Tigra? Does it have some sort of benefit over the other cars in this run? Or do you just prefer driving it?

[@TeaKanji]

The RX-7 LM (and all of the European league prize cars) are too powerful to do the two Pacific league races, and it's faster to buy the Tigra than to do them with the Silvia. While its gearbox is slightly too short for Midfield (and it doesn't save time to change it), its acceleration is pretty insane, especially off the line.

[@QOTSAPT]

Congrats. Still rather play gt1 and 2 than all the others, also is it just me or is the gt3 pal better than the ntsc, I feel like the camera on gt3 pal is more like gt2, just looks better on pal. Almost thought the spin in IA-4 was intended.

[@TeaKanji]

Thank you! Hmm, can't say I noticed much difference between PAL and NTSC camera-wise. Was one set to 16:9 and the other to 4:3, maybe? The screen size changes the chase camera position slightly. The crash into the wall was intended (it's faster than braking, and it gives you a good angle to floor it out), the spin-out wasn't. Thankfully the bronze time is extremely forgiving on that test so it didn't kill the run.

[@QOTSAPT]

@@TeaKanji I took 2 screenshots on the emulator on 4:3 the ntsc version looks a little wider, I don't know if it is fov or something else, pal resolution is a little different, there's a ruf race menu shot that also looks different on pal and ntsc.

[@Mwapaca]

I take the turn at 1:45:25 at 150 km/h and you're over 200 x)

[@TeaKanji]

Ah, yeah, that corner has a bunch of small elevation changes, and combined with PAL 25 FPS and stiff springs and stabilisers, you can carry a lot of speed through the corner as the car bounces around it. The bouncy suspension setup is quite risky though, especially in the chicane where the car can randomly lose grip or spin out.

[@Whyteeford]

Hey Tea...is there any mod out there for GT2 with a hood cam? Never liked the bumper cam

[@TeaKanji]

At the moment, I don't think there is no. I've never tested it for GT2, but I know for GT1 at least, it's possible using Gameshark codes to force a camera angle that's close to the hood/roof (it's how I recorded the backgrounds for the GT1 guide). The issue, however, is that it's a loose camera, so it takes a while for the camera to center after turning. There's probably a way to make the camera extremely stiff though, I just never looked into it. Someone like Silent or submaniac93 would be much more qualified to get a set of codes up and running that won't cause any side-effects elsewhere in the game.

[@Whyteeford]

@@TeaKanji thanks for getting back to me. Ya I've looked everywhere and can't find anything. Keep up the great videos brother...love your stuff

[@TeaKanji]

It'd be nice to have for sure, I find GT4's roof cam much better to drive with than bumper and chase cam, and I'm sure it'd help in the PS1 GT's also. Glad you're enjoying the videos!

[@Banks231]

for speed run, considering reduce the resolution for fast loading