I really want to get myself a PS3 just for GT5! I do have GT4 with my PS2 and enjoy playing around with it every now and again, but haven't really done anything with the career side apart from most of the Licenses.
But, many years ago was big into GT2 which I was able to play on a PC emulator... :fencelook:
The emulator worked really well and allowed one to create as many "mem" cards as you wanted. So easy to start a career and keep a good overall progress. So was able to "finish" the game in terms of race challenge stats being 100% complete, and win ratio was also 100%. Most of the licenses were gold or silver with a few bronze. Garage had maximum of 100 cars and my credit built up was some astronomical number - used to race and win high "car prize" races and then sell off that car to make tons of money for mods and buying other cars. My best overall performing car (was a bit of a handful, but potently if driven properly) was the Nissan 390GT car that you could win - it was a reddish or so colour, modified it as mush as possible and it made something like 850hp while being very light, so was good for 400kph plus! Problem was, limited aerodynamics that could be applied, so tons of power but very little down-force, and of course rear wheel drive, so had to keep that tail end under control. But it was insane - you would launch with wheels spinning through 1st, 2nd and 3rd gears, then by the time you hit 4th you are already belting past the pack, almost felt like cheating most of the time! :rollsmile:
Of course, manual gear changing, auto was actually slower I found in terms of not being able to make the best of the engine characteristics and rev limiters etc. Also since throttle and brakes were simply on/off switches to control traction I used the gear changes - so short shift out of a corner when I know it will most likely lose grip! Another epic car of course was the Pikes Peak Suzuki, and then the Toyota GT-ONE - there were others that I can recall at this stage... But really enjoyed this at the time - now it's just torture for my eyes by comparison to GT4 and above! :rollsmile: