Used to be kids hung Lamborghini posters on their walls and dreamed of someday touching, maybe even owning, the real thing. Some could even recite the specs—horsepower, 0-60-mph time, top speed—thanks to the internet or, going way back, a magazine. TVs are now poster-size, and for the past 20 years, any kid with a Sony PlayStation game console has been able to admire, study and virtually drive vehicles they could only dream of a generation ago. It’s changed the way top racing drivers are found, how companies decide which vehicles to sell and even the way designers think about the cars we’ll see 10, 20 and 50 years in the future. This is a radically different way of experiencing car culture, and more than anyone else, one man—and one video game title—is responsible for making it happen.

Kazunori Yamauchi is the CEO of Polyphony Digital, and his creation, “Gran Turismo,” is the most popular video game racing simulator series in the world. There would be no “Forza,” “Project Cars” or “F1” without them (those are all video games, by the way). Racing games that came before “GT” looked like jokes, and racing games that came after were always playing catchup. There have been seven main titles in the series, including “Gran Turismo Sport,” which went on sale in October for PlayStation 4. The first six sold more than 76 million copies around the world, totaling more than $1 billion. That’s in an industry worth $90 billion worldwide—bigger than the movie or music industry. How’s that for reach? Yamauchi, 50, grew up in rural Chiba Prefecture, near Tokyo. He was a bug nerd and a bookworm, collecting butterflies and devouring books from his local library. In junior high, he started making video games; at 14, inspired by heroes like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, he founded his own movie production club. His love of that craft is obvious in the first moments of any “Gran Turismo” game. The cinematic intros feature real and virtual race footage from all eras, animated engine internals, moving assembly lines and smelting plants, all set to a rousing score. The intro for “GT4” used a mix of classical music and Van Halen’s “Panama.”

Here's an in-game shot of the new Gran Turismo Sport.

But before all of that, it was cars. “Video games first appeared when I was in third grade or so, but I could name off all the cars on the road when I was 3,” says Yamauchi. In the 2014 documentary “Kaz: Pushing the Virtual Divide,” Yamauchi said, “The first time I got into a car, it felt like I grew wings.” Kaz, as he’s commonly known, started his career in 1992 at Sony’s small yet growing video game department, where he created “Motor Toon Grand Prix.” A cartoony, go-kart take on racing, it nevertheless contained the bones of the future series. In 1997, the first “Gran Turismo” was released for PlayStation. 10 million copies later, Sony suggested he start his own company; in 1998, Polyphony Digital was born. “Gran Turismo 2” came out a year later, featuring 650 carefully rendered road and race cars and 27 tracks. But it wasn’t until 2007’s “Gran Turismo 5 Prologue” that things began to get interesting. With it came the Nissan GT Academy, a competition that turns gamers into real race car drivers. “I was sure of the program’s success from the start,” Yamauchi says.

All that time Kaz—a proficient race car driver—spent perfecting the simulated handling model and digital track layouts paid off. Then-head of Nissan Motorsports Darren Cox puts it succinctly: “If you’re a good gamer in ‘Gran Turismo,’ we can make you a good racing driver.” The first Academy winner, Spaniard Lucas Ordóñez, secured a podium spot in his first racing event, the 2009 GT4 European Cup, on his way to second place in the drivers’ championship. In 2011, he was second in class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. At the 24 Hours of Nürburgring in 2012, he, along with Yamauchi, finished first in class. In 2011, Jann Mardenborough became the youngest GT Academy winner at 19. He’s since won podiums in the British GT Championship, as well as the 24 Hours of Dubai and 24 Hours of Nürburgring. Nissan tapped Yamauchi and Polyphony Digital to design the head unit for the 2009 GT-R. For the first time, it was bound for the U.S.—thanks in no small part to the car’s “Gran Turismo” presence. “Twenty years ago, I was in charge of the R33 Skyline GT-R and I met (Kaz),” says Hiroshi Tamura, Nissan’s chief GT-R and Z product specialist. “He was a crazy car guy and owned and raced a Skyline GT-R. He said he was going to change the game world on a revolutionary level. ‘‘Gran Turismo’ is not just a game,’ he said. ‘It must be a simulator.’... He did what he said, and the GT-R name was expanded worldwide because of Kaz’s simulator.”

Most of the cars in Gran Tursimo Sport are race cars, but there are still some street cars available to race.

Yamauchi’s game is how a generation (now two) of kids became enthusiasts, bringing in new fans at a time when all we hear about is a culture in decline. “With ‘Gran Turismo,’ we hope to put up a small fight against that trend,” he says. “‘Gran Turismo’ completely changed my perspective on cars,” says Jordan Greer, 31, who founded the website GTPlanet 17 years ago. “Before the internet completely took over, it introduced many of us to a world we had never seen before and ultimately help set the course for many of our lives. I’ve had the opportunity to talk to people in the automotive industry. Almost every one of them in my generation credits the ‘GT’ series for sparking their interest in cars.” After “GT5,” manufacturers were all in. Chevrolet gave Polyphony Digital early access to the C7 Stingray Corvette to digitize it, complete with camo body cladding. The covers were pulled off simultaneously in the game and at the Detroit auto show. To commemorate the 15th anniversary of the series, Yamauchi penned a letter to automakers: “Would you design a rendition of the ideal grand tourer for our game?” Mercedes was the first to join in, followed by BMW, Mitsubishi, Volkswagen, Nissan, Aston Martin, Toyota, Chevy and more. Some of those carmakers took the real-life leap and built one or two. Real sheetmetal, designed first for a video game. Real race car drivers, who learned to win in front of a TV. Generations of kids who know what kei car racing is. Kaz changed the game, virtually and literally. So the next time you see a teenager who can recite names and specs of cars that never landed in the U.S., ask them where that knowledge comes from. We’ll bet they’ll have “Gran Turismo”—and Yamauchi—to thank.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io