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Hybrid in Gran Turismo 4 is something that always dreamed by many of it’s fans. Hybrid is a term usually used by Gran Turismo’s fans about modification to a car outside of what the original allowed to do. They make 1000hp Civic, big wheel TVR, shinny car, Elise with Skyline engine, Supra with MR2 body, etc. With hybrid, they love Gran Turismo even more.

In previous version of Gran Turismo, GT1, GT2 and GT3, hybrid can be done relatively easy by editing the gamesave with available gamesave editor. The other thing needed is an application to transfer from console to PC and vice versa. After the emulator for Play Station 1 and cheat device become mature, people can also make hybrid through cheat device like gameshark or PEC (for the emulator) as well for GT1 and GT2.

In GT4, it’s a different story. Even when GT4 gamesave can be transferred to computer, there is no application available to edit the gamesave. The effort to make an application for this purpose got stopped because unlike the previous versions, the gamesave in GT4 is encrypted. Because of this, GT4′s fans can only dream about hybrid in GT4.

Thankfully, there is some progress that can help achieve hybrid in GT4. The first one, PS2 emulator. PS2 emulator, PCSX2, now get mature enough to be able to play GT4 to actually enter the race. Even though the frame rate of the emulation make it unplayable (can be as slow as 1 frame per second!), this is enough to use it to do some experiments on GT4 hybrid.

Second, the success on decrypting GT4 file encryption. This is mostly done by the people who try to make a backup of their precious GT4. Even though the gamesave encryption is not decrypted yet, the information from GT4 disc proof to be very valuable to aid the process of creating GT4 hybrid.

Two things above made it possible to create hybrid in GT4. The process of creating GT4 hybrid can be done in two ways:

1. Using PCSX2.

This require you to play GT4 in PC with PCSX2 PS2 emulator. We then create the hybrid in here by modifying the game with special PCSX2 cheater, Phaste, or many available PC game cheater. Currently, it is possible to transfer your console game save from or to PCSX2 internal memory card. If you are able to do this method, you can make GT4 hybrid faster.

2. Using cheat device, like Action Replay Max, Code Breaker, Game Shark, etc.

This method still untested yet, but should be possible. Its proccess takes more time and passion since it takes a lot of time to just enter single line of code.

Both method need a lot of work, but the best thing is, it works. In the future when GT4 gamesave encryption successfully decoded, we can hope that the application to make hybrid in GT4 easier will be available.

I would like to thanks anyone who helps me either directly or indirectly making GT4 hybrid. And I hope Polyphony Digital would welcome this change since this will make an already loved GT4 would be more loved by it’s fan.

You can find the example of GT4 hybrid gamesave here and here. Currently only available for PAL version of GT4.

About the author:

Sucahyo is a Grand Turismo enthusiasts who spend much time tuning and testing GT2 and GT4 cars. He is an active member of gtplanet’s GT2 and GT4 forum. You can check out his experiments in his Gran Turismo site.