The Polyphony Digital team has marked today’s 30th anniversary of the PlayStation console with an in-office rendition of the iconic Gran Turismo theme song Moon Over the Castle — which made its own debut almost 27 years ago.
PlayStation has been marking the 30th anniversary of its console, first launched in Japan on December 3 1994, with a number of special events over the past few months — including nostalgic console designs for its current crop — and there’s still more to come too.
A recent addition to the celebrations is a temporary UI refresh on the PlayStation 5 console which, from today, allow you to apply themes and sounds from any previous generation of PlayStation to your console.
The Polyphony Digital crew has chosen to first mark the anniversary with a special performance of Moon Over the Castle, originally composed by Masahiro Andoh of Japanese group T-Square as the title theme for the first game, played by the staff.
You might notice that Kazunori Yamauchi himself is on keyboards for the rendition, and it’s far from the first time we’ve seen the Polyphony Digital chief playing MOTC on the ivories. There’s a nod to authenticity too, with one of the team playing an EWI just like T-Square’s saxophonist Masato Honda did on the original track.
Of course this isn’t the most significant part of PD’s activities in connection with the PlayStation 30th anniversary celebrations. That would be the My First Gran Turismo demo, announced back in September — but we’ve heard absolutely nothing on that title since then, despite an expected December launch window.
This weekend’s Gran Turismo World Series climax, at the World Finals in Amsterdam, would seem to be a perfect opportunity for PD to release more information on what MFGT will be all about.
World Finals are usually something of an information-dump. Indeed the event will also see the first appearance of the Hyundai Ioniq 5N in Gran Turismo, ahead of its expected arrival in the public version of the game in January 2025, and we’re expecting that there may be more to come.
GTPlanet will be on-site for the event, and we’ll bring you all the latest as we get it!
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