Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec

The third game of the Gran Turismo series, released the year 2001.

Acknowledgements

Just because this site has a ton of information doesn't mean that everything that comes from this site originated from our incredible minds! Here we make sure that every piece of information/resource that has been taken from somewhere else it is being credited properly. (It's important to know that if any of these users credit anybody else for their work, it will be only shown on their project pages for simplication's sake)

Arcade mode

If you're tired of just playing GT mode for a bit, then arcade mode is the perfect option for you. Even though at first glance it might seem that this is just your average quick race mode where you simply pick a car and off you go, you'd be wrong.

This mode will net you some unlockable cars for this mode, and also it will help you complete even more the game, but let's not get ahead of ourselves already.


How this mode works

Once you have selected this mode, you'll be granted a couple of modes for you to choose from.

granturismo3_arcademode_1.jpg

With the exception of Time Attack, all of the modes will simply let you pick a car and a circuit, with the nuances that each mode might bring into the table.

If this is your first time picking this mode, you'll realize something: there's barely any circuits whatsoever to choose from! Not to worry though, as it is not like Polyphony Digital decided to lock out some circuits from this mode in order to incentivize players from skipping this mode, far from it.

granturismo3_arcademode_3.jpg

What have they done is very simple: they added a progression system for this mode. If now you're asking yourself on how this unlocking process works, it is pretty simple. To make it more understandable, going to the "Bonus Items" option will help to make everything more visual.

granturismo3_arcademode_2.jpg

As you can see, there's the entire list of circuits listed in different packs and with some labels for the difficulties. What this means, is that in order to unlock the rest of the circuits locked in this mode you must first win at least one race in each of the circuits unlocked already in single player mode. Said races can be done in any difficulty one may wish to do them, but doing those in harder difficulties will grant you access to new cars to choose from (check the "Walkthrough of this mode" section for more information on the matter).


Walkthrough of this mode

Like we stated in the first section of this page, the progression system is pretty simple. Beat a series of races in some specific courses, and you'll unlock the next set of races to race on.

Down here you have the list of each block of circuits that the game will throw at you alongside the rewards given for winning those races in each difficulty.

Area A
Circuit
 Direction
Super Speedway
 Normal
Mid-Field Raceway
 Normal
Smokey Mountain Normal
Swiss Alps
 Normal
Trial Montain Circuit
 Normal
Mid-Field Raceway
 Reverse
Area B
Circuit
 Direction
Smokey Mountain
 Reverse
Tokyo R246
 Normal
Grand Valley Speedway
 Normal
Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca
 Normal
Rome Circuit
 Normal
Tahiti Circuit
 Normal
Area C
Circuit
 Direction
Swiss Alps
 Reverse
Trial Mountain Circuit
 Reverse
Deep Forest Raceway
 Normal
Special Stage Route 5
 Normal
Seattle Circuit
 Normal
Test Course
 Normal
Area D
Circuit
 Direction
Tokyo R246
 Reverse
Grand Valley Speedway
 Reverse
Rome Circuit
 Reverse
Tahiti Circuit
 Reverse
Tahiti Maze
 Normal
Apricot Hill Raceway
 Normal
Area E
Circuit
 Direction
Special Stage Route 11
 Normal
Deep Forest Raceway
 Reverse
Special Stage Route 5
 Reverse
Seattle Circuit
 Reverse
Cote d'Azur
 Normal
Complex String
 Normal
Area F
Circuit
 Direction
Special Stage Route 5 (Wet)
 Normal
Apricot Hill Raceway
 Reverse
Special Stage Route 11
 Reverse
Tahiti Maze
 Reverse
Special Stage Route 5 (Wet)
 Reverse
Complex String
 Reverse
Rewards (Easy)
Area
 Reward
A
 -
B
 -
C
 -
D
 -
E
 -
F
 Ending A
Rewards (Medium)
Area
 Reward
A
     Mazda Eunos Roadster (NA) '89 [NTSC-J], Mazda MX-5 (NA) '89 [PAL], Mazda MX-5 Miata (NA) '89 [NTSC-U]
B
 Audi TT Coupe 1.8T quattro '00
C
 Mazda RX-8 Concept (Type-I) '01
D
 Nissan Z Concept
E
 RUF RGT '00, TVR Tuscan Speed 6 '00
F
 Dodge Viper GTS-R Concept '00, TVR Cerbera Speed 12 '00, Ending B
Rewards (Hard)
Area
 Reward
A
 Nissan C-WEST RAZO SILVIA (JGTC) '01
B
 Lancia DELTA HF Integrale Rally Car '92
C
 Gillet Vertigo Race Car '97
D
 Pagani Zonda LM Race Car
E
 Panoz Esperante GTR-1 Race Car '98, Nissan R390 GT1 Race Car '98
F
 Toyota GT-ONE Race Car (TS020) '99, Mazda 787B Race Car '91

Once you have completed all of the races in hard mode, congratulations! Now you can go back to GT mode and finish the game once and for all! (unless you also want to do the time trials)


Time attack

Putting the other modes aside, there's also the Time attack challenges, which is basically its own set of time trials on some specific courses with some preset cars. The times set for those trials are done by members of the Gran Turismo 3's development team; in fact, the best time for the 10th time trial is done Kazunori Yamauchi himself, the president of Polyphony Digital.

granturismo3_arcademode_4.jpg

As for how this mode unfolds, it is as basic as it can be: beat the best times on all of the courses. The particularity of this mode though, is that the reward is for the GT mode, and not the arcade one, in this case being a Panoz Esperante GTR-1 Race Car '98 and an increase of percentage of in-game completion.

Cheats, Modifications & Secrets

Wanna try discover all of the secrets this game may offer to you, or even better, modify it a little bit in order to improve its experience as much as possible? Then follow along this page, and maybe you'll pick up some goodies here and there.


Cheats


Line-up reset (only in Gran Turismo mode)

Is the race you're doing way too hard because of that pesky car that it is simply way too powerful? Not to worry, since you can make your life easier depending on your circumstances.

Steps to follow:

  1. Select any race you wish to race
  2. When seeing the race line-up, exit the race
  3. Enter said race again, and repeat steps 2 and 3 until the desired results are obtained

Notes:


Prize car resetting

Everybody enjoys roulettes, said every Gran Turismo 7 player. Thankfully here, the roulettes are not rigged and we have the chance of winning great vehicles without having to grind a lot. Even then, a roulette is a system that is designed around luck, and not skill, so you might end up getting a car that you do not want. Here we will explain how to get that car you really want more easily.

Prerequisites:

Steps to follow:

  1. Finish all of the races except for the last one, while making sure that you have at least 11 points more than the every driver from the competition
  2. Save the game in the post-race menu
  3. Enter the last race of the championship, and immediately exit out from it
  4. Check the prize car you receive for your championship win, and if the car obtained is not the one that you want, exit the game, and reload the save file so that you can repeat step number 3

Notes:


Reverse shifting

Are you stuck in a specific race because you can't afford a custom gearbox to make your car go faster? Or even worse, there's a pesky license test that you can't manage to get a gold no matter how much you try? Well then, reverse shifting is what you need. If the car goes into neutral gear while driving, the car will slowly lose speed until it stops and then enters reverse gear.

If you don't wait for the car to stop, the car may gear up or down depending of its current RPM. If the car is at a high RPM and the reverse button is pressed and immediately released, the car will automatically shift into the next gear while the RPM needle slowly glides down to where is should be.

While the needle is gliding, the game thinks that the car's RPM is higher than it actually is. If the car has its power band in the high-RPM range, the car will accelerate faster than if you had geared up normally. In addition, if the clutch was not upgraded, the clutch stall will be shorter than normal and the car will begin accelerating much sooner.

Prerequisites:

Steps to follow:

  1. Accelerate your car enough to be at a high RPM
  2. Immediately after completing the previous step, now tap the reverse button

Notes:


Series manipulation

Want to get that pesky reward car that you want so badly but you don't wanna to put up with that long championship again? Lucky you, since there's a method to avoid repeating entire championships and still getting their respective rewards. How this trick does work is pretty simple: everytime that you skip a race, you'll get no points whatsoever, and the AI the ones that they get depending on their position. What does that mean? This implies that if you exit a race in first position, none of the other drivers will be able to snack 10 points, and that will make you be able to limit the AI's capability of racking up points.

Steps to follow:

  1. Enter a championship, and before starting the races, decide which races are you going to complete
  2. Complete the races that you want to win, and when the first race that you want to skip comes up, analyze the championship's positions, and look for who is a possible threat for your championship win
  3. Start the race, and by any means possible (that includes brake-checking, ramming...) make sure that the 2nd racer in the championship's leaderboard is in last position, and once you've done that, run into first position quickly and then exit the race
  4. Repeat the second and third steps of this trick until the championship is over

Notes:


Trade trick

Wanna upgrade your cars for cheaper? Well, thankfully, thanks to the Trade feature integrated in the garage, it is possible to buy the cars from another save game. The perk? Is that the prices for the cars are always the same, no matter how much you modify the cars, meaning that you can save up a lot of money by repeating this track for as long as your budget allows.

Prerequisites:

Steps to follow:

  1. Save the game on slot 1
  2. Get upgrades for your car until you run out of money
  3. Save the game, this time on slot 2
  4. Load the original savegame located on slot number 1
  5. Go to the garage and select the Trade option
  6. On the Trade menu, select the savegame located on slot 2 and buy the upgraded car
  7. Repeat all steps except the first one until the car has all of the upgrades that you can afford/wish to have

Notes:


Wheelie trick

Test track. Do I need to say anything else? If you don't know what I mean by that, just watch a video for the Like a Wind event and you'll get an idea of what we are talking about. So, follow along this little tutorial on how to tune your car in an unique fashion in order to make those annoying Test track races dissappear in a whim.

Prerequisites:

Steps to follow:

  1. Set the damper bounds to 1 and the damper rebounds to 10
  2. Lower the car's height to the minimum that the game allows
  3. Adjust the front and rear springs to be as soft as possible

Notes:


Modifications


Changing the music

Are you sick and tired of hearing the same songs over and over again? If so, you're in luck, since that is something that can be done pretty easily.

Prerequisites:

Steps to follow:

  1. Extract the file gt3.vol from the game, which is located on the root folder of the game
  2. Using a Command Prompt instance, extract the files from the gt3.vol file with GT3VOLExtractor
  3. Change the frequency of the new song you want to use to 44.1 kHz
  4. Open PSound, and select the directory where the songs are, in this case the folder it is called bgm
  5. Now that you have all of the songs loaded, listen to them in order to know the file name of the song that you want to replace
  6. With the use of MFAudio, press the Open button to select the .wav file of the song that you want to use as a replacement
  7. Make sure that the interleave is set to 400 bytes and the frequency to 44100 Hz
  8. As for the output goes, select the file format to be "SS2 - Sony PS2 Sound - Compressed ADPCM" and the name to be the same as the one that you want to output
  9. Convert the .wav file onto .ss2 by pressing the Process! button
  10. Now rename the newly obtained .ss2 file to the EXACT same filename to the file of the song you want to replace, including the extension
  11. Replace the old .ads file with the new one
  12. Repackage all of the game files onto a new gt3.vol file with the use of GT3VOLExtractor
  13. Replace the old gt3.vol file from the game with the new one with a program that is capable of editing .iso files

Notes:

speed song fix.png

Secrets


Engine and oil wear

Did you know that the mileage of your car does not serve only as a way to know which cars do you use more? As it turns out, the mileage of your car can determine the total horsepower that your car will have at that instance. This table will give you a general idea on how the engine wear works exactly.

Range of mileage (in kilometers)
 Effect towards the HP
0 - 300
 Slow increase up to a 3%
300 - 800
 Nothing
800 - 900
 Slow decrease up to a 2%
900 - ∞
 Nothing

On a not total unrelated point, it is also important to mention that oil also plays a factor in the total horsepower that your cars have. The next table will explain the cycle of horsepower that you car will have every time that your oil gets changed.

Range of mileage (in kilometers)
 Effect towards the HP
0
 Immediate increase of 5%
0 - 200
 Nothing
200 - 300
 Slow decrease of 5%

This last table though takes in consideration that you change the oil when the car is brand new or has been driven for at least 300 km, since the oil change will only give you a set amount of horsepower, meaning that if your car was still somewhat being benefited from the maintenance, what will happen is that the car will recover the lost HP due to oil wear (if that was the case) and the cycle shown before will repeat itself again.

Notes:


Unlock the difficulty "Professional" (arcade mode only)

Wanna challenge yourself in arcade mode with an AI that is better than the one offered already? Then this secret difficulty might suit your needs.

Steps to follow:

  1. Select any game mode that includes AI to race against in arcade mode
  2. When prompted for a difficulty selection, hold the L1 and R1 buttons
  3. While you're following the instructions for step number 2, select the "Professional" difficulty (which will replace the "Hard" option)

Notes:

How to tune properly?

One thing is for sure, there will be a moment where you will have to upgrade any of your rides. But like with any proper sim racer, upgrades do mean that your car has to be tuned in order to adapt to its new stats properly. If you don't have too much knowledge on how the game works regarding tuning, you can grasp an idea on how to by either reading the information the game gives to you, or if you want a more concise way to know how to tune your cars, follow along this guide.


Introduction

When getting a new upgrade for a car, it's important to set it up correctly. What does this mean in practice? It means that it's pretty important (although not necessarily mandatory depending on what were the upgrades) to go and set up the car according to its new stats.

But how do we accomplish this? Simple, you just go to several race tracks (mix up the kind of circuits you're choosing, since you'll want to make sure to it drive more or less well in most circuits) and do a couple of laps to feel the car's driving experience.

Once your hands are on the steering wheel, try to look for possible issues you car may have, for example: Does the car suffer from heavy wheelspin while driving on first and/or second gear? The car has trouble at any specific point during the turns? Is it possible to keep a high speed for long stretches?

Then, exit the race and configure the car in order to fix the detected issues, and rinse and repeat until the car feels adequate for your driving style.

Tuning is a pretty subjective matter, what works for someone might not be for someone else, hence why it is important to tune the car by yourself, don't ask anyone else to tune it for you. Last but not least, remember that there's no such thing as the perfect setting, so just try to find what works the best for you.

Suspension


Spring rate

If the front springs are too soft and the rear springs are too stiff, the car will lose stability when entering corners. Meanwhile, if the front is too stiff and the rear is too soft, the car will have trouble to turn around corners.


Ride height
Issue
 Solution
 Negative consequences
Lack of stability
 Low front and high rear
 Worse turning ability
Lack of turning ability
 High front and low rear
 Worse stability
Overall height
 Positive consequences
 Negative consequences
Low
 Increased stability on flat surfaces Reduced stability on bumpy surfaces
High
 Increased stability on bumpy roads
 Reduced stability on flat surfaces

On powerful cars, if the height is pretty low sparks will appear. Not to be worried though, since those are purely cosmetical.


Dampers/Shocks
Issue
 Place
 Solution
Understeer
 Corner entry Soft front bound and stiff rear rebound
Oversteer
 Corner entry
 Stiff front bound and soft rear rebound
Understeer
 Corner exit
 Soft rear bound and stiff front rebound
Oversteer
 Corner exit
 Stiff rear bound and soft front rebound


Camber angle

The camber angle helps the car grip better in corners, at the cost of losing traction in straights and uneven tyre wear. It is important to not set up extreme values, since higher tyre wear will be added to the list of consequences of modifying the camber angle.

So in general, you want to have at least 0.5 of camber, but not more than 4.5, because at that point the car's braking distances will be noticeably worse.


Toe angle
Issue
 Solution
 Negative consequences
Lack of stability in straight lines and in corner exits
 Positive toe angle
 Worse turning ability
Bad turning ability
 Negative toe angle
 Worse stability in straight lines and in corner exits

Something worth noting, is that rear toe has a bigger impact on the car than front toe. Regardless of that, if you set up some toe-in or toe-out, the tyre will suffer from some higher wear than without any, so if possible try to remedy the issues discussed below by adjusting the car's height.


Stabilisers
Highest value
 Impact
Front
 Stability
Rear
 Turning response


Brakes


Brakes balance
Drivetrain
 Highest value
RWD
 Front
FF
 Rear
4WD
 Rear


Drivetrain


Limited-slip differential initial

This sets the general severity of the effect of the other LSD values. Make sure to keep this at a value that is adequate for what you're looking for with the other LSD configurations.


Limited-slip differential acceleration
Issue
 Solution
Power oversteer
 Higher value
Difficulty to turn at corner exits
 Lower value


Limited-slip differential decrease
Issue
 Solution
Dive-bombing into corners
 Higher value
Difficulty to turn at corner entries
 Lower value

Remember to set its value alongside the brake balance, since both things are able to fix stability issues while braking.


Gear ratio


Others

Downforce
Circuit
 Value
-
 Maximum
Test course
 Minimum

If you're configuring a car that only has an adjustable downforce for the rear, beware of your configuration, since having a value way too high may impact the car's ability to turn into corners.

AYC controller

This component does not seem to do barely anything good. In fact, a high setting makes the car's handling more unpredictable as it can randomly begin to understeer mid-corner.


ASM

Set it to 0, since this assist does nothing but prevent you from actually driving properly and just bruteforce your way to victory without any kind of effort into your playthrough.


TCS
Type of input
 Value
Analog acceleration
 0
Digital acceleration
 1
Digital steering
 2-3


VCD controller

Setting it to 10% it will make any 4WD car turn like a RWD one. Increasing its value is not necessary unless the car needs extra stability.

Regional differences

The game has been released in 3 different regions, NTSC-U, NTSC-J and PAL. All of them have their own differences between themselves, and we will compare all regions in the instances where any game version differs from the rest.


Cars


Acura RSX
Region
 Sell price (in credits)
NTSC-U/NTSC-J
 7.500
PAL
 75.000

Dodge Viper GTS-R Team Oreca '00
Region
 Purchase price (in credits)
 Dealership brand
 Livery differences
NTSC-U
 1.000.000
 Dodge
 -
NTSC-J
 1.000.000
 Chrysler
 Includes a PlayStation logo in several places
PAL
 - Dodge
 Includes a PlayStation logo in several places

Formula 1 vehicles

The selection of F1 cars between regions is pretty different. While the NTSC versions of the game have 6 cars, PAL only has 2 of them. Not only that but their naming structure and design are completely different.

First we'll start with the NTSC ones, since those are the most complex to understand.

Car
 Cylinders in the engine
 Year of participation
 Driver
Polyphony Digital F090/S
 10
 1990
 Ayrton Senna
Polyphony Digital F094/H 10
 1994
 Damon Hill
Polyphony Digital F094/S 10
 1994
 Ayrton Senna
Polyphony Digital F686/M 6
 1986
 Nigel Mansel
Polyphony Digital F687/S 6
 1987 Ayrton Senna
Polyphony Digital F688/S 6
 1988
 Ayrton Senna

If you can't figure out the naming for these cars, here it goes: the first number equals to the number of cylinders of the engine that car has, the last two numbers are the last two digits in the year those cars were driven by the specific driver they wanted to pay homage to. The letter in the end represents the first letter in the last name of the drivers whose real counterpart of those cars were being driven by.

As for the PAL vehicles go, there's simply no structure to follow, even though they are simply reusing two of the NTSC vehicles (with some minor changes and some extra liveries).

Car
 NTSC counterpart
Polyphony001
 Polyphony Digital F094/S
Polyphony002 Polyphony Digital F688/S


Honda S2000 '99
Region
 Purchase price (in credits)
 Differences
NTSC-U/NTSC-J
 33.800
 -
PAL
 - The front bumper has two black bars, and its title thumbnail is missing when viewing the car from the garage

Initial credit funds

Region
 Amount of credits
PAL/NTSC-U 18.000
NTSC-J 15.000

NTSC-J is basically a harder NTSC-U version, and here's one of the reasons why that's the case: the credits you get upon starting the game. If we take into account the Mazda MX-5 '93's price, we can see that the best initial car cannot be bought, meaning that your initial car must be another one by force.


Language differences

Between regions, some elements are called different due to some nuances between regions, even if the language is the same. Considering that english is the only language that gets repeated between regions, we'll stick to only this one (with an exception). The following table will compare the names used for the same terms between regions.

NTSC-U
 NTSC-J
 PAL
 PAL (not in english)
Hard racing tyres
 -
 Slick tyres
 -
HP
 PS (slightly higher value than HP and BHP)
 BHP
 -
ft.lb
 kgf.m kgf.m -

Take into consideration that this list could also include car names changes, but it is kinda unnecessary since the name differences are pretty minor all things considered.


License tests

B license
Region
 Differences
NTSC-U/NTSC-J
 -
PAL
 Stricter times overall
A license
Region
 Differences
NTSC-U/NTSC-J
 -
PAL
 Stricter times overall
IB license
Region
 Differences
NTSC-U/NTSC-J
 Harder IB-6 gold time requirement
PAL
 -
IA license
Region
 Differences
NTSC-U/NTSC-J
 Harder IA-4 gold time requirement
PAL
 Stricter times overall
S license
Region
 Differences
NTSC-U/NTSC-J
 -
PAL
 Stricter times overall
R license
Region
 Differences
NTSC-U/NTSC-J
 -
PAL
 Easier times overall


Events prizes

Region
 Differences
PAL/NTSC-U -
NTSC-J Less credits given per victory overall

Like we just mentioned in the "Initial credits fund" section, NTSC-J is basically a harder version of NTSC-U. In this case we will omit listing all of the events, but to make it clear, the japanese version of the game gives you way less money for every event completed, meaning that you must be more conservative with your purchases, specially during the early and mid-game.

It is also worth pointing out that some events also have different car prize pools between regions.


Time trials

Circuit
 NTSC-U/NTSC-J
 PAL
Midfield Raceway 1:25.533 1:24.993
Trial Mountain 1:47.968 1:49.025
Tokyo Route 246 2:02.270 2:02.330
Deep Forest Raceway 1:25.350 1:26.360
Laguna Seca 1:22.716 1:23.178
Apricot Hill Raceway 1:17.447 1:18.558
Grand Valley Speedway 1:48.795 1:49.453
Swiss Alps 1:23.104 1:23.703
Tahiti Maze 1:59.459 1:59.964
Complex String
 4:52.716 4:49.869

As we can see, for the most part, PAL times tend to be easier than the NTSC counterpart, with a big exception, Complex String. This actually makes the time trials way easier to complete in NTSC, since the last time trial is considered to be the harder one to beat by a long stretch.

It's important to mention that in every NTSC version of the game, disabling the assists in the options menu does not disable them in this mode, unlike in PAL.