Dear Diary,

Day 1.
So I got this game on my Playstation 2 today called Tourist Trophy. It had a nice cover, so I thought I’d buy it. They say it’s by the makers of Gran Turismo, but it’s got motorbikes in it instead of cars. It should keep me occupied for a while. It says “The Real Riding Simulator” on the cover, so I guess it’s a realistic onroad motorbike racing simulation game.

Day 2.
I got a chance to fire up my PS2 today, and I put in Tourist Trophy. I didn’t have much time so I just tried the arcade mode. It’s hardly arcade mode - I’ve never once seen an arcade racing game that was as hard as this. I think it’s called Arcade mode because you just pick a bike and a track and race, no complications. You can also play against a friend, but all my friends were busy today so I skipped that part. I chose an easy track, and a random bike. They all have names like KVFDS50030 GJE XHJE RM, and you can’t really tell them apart. I’ve never driven a road bike in real life. Maybe I should go out and practice because I spent the whole race crashing into walls and sliding along the grass. At least the bikes are indestructible, like in Gran Turismo. In fact, everything resembles Gran Turismo very closely - I think the menu music is even the same. The graphics are just as good, and a lot of the tracks are recycled here. I think that if this was a PC game they would have called it an expansion pack!

Day 3.
I had a bit more time today, so I started the Tourist Trophy mode, and the first thing I did was try to get my Novice license. The friendly people at Polyphony have set up ten different tests you have to pass to get it, and kindly explained what you need to do in each one - it’s a great way of getting to grips with the controls of the game. After getting my license, I tried to win me a bike or two. All I had to do was choose a bike I wanted and win a challenge against that bike. Only a few bikes are available at first though. It seems I have to get the higher level licenses to be able to challenge the better bikes - but there’s no way I’ll pass my Junior license test just yet. So I challenged a little scooter of some make. All I had to do was pass it and stay ahead of it for ten seconds and it was mine! So I quickly challenged another, and another. Pretty soon I had a whole bunch of bikes in my garage. Now I’m ready for a race, I think.