The Best Gran Turismo Alternative on PC – Super Woden GP 2
That one, right? That many of us have been waiting for, like 25 years… It’s that smooth jazz background that didn’t deserve to slap that hard. It’s the satisfaction of having 10,000 credits… a fortune, you think. And then gazing at a list of hundreds of autos and realizing you can’t buy any of them!! It’s the walk of shame to the garage, not in a supercar, but in some used-up Mazda Demio… not because you wanted it, but because it was that, or an empty wallet. That was the whole promise with Gran Turismo 2!!! It wasn’t merely a racing game -> it was a Car-PG.
The game in reality was not on the course -> it was in the menus, in the garage, in that agonized choice between a new air filter and a slightly cooler-sounding exhaust tip. And listen I’m here to tell you I found it again!. Stunningly well-preserved in a top-down, pixel art indie game on Steam. This is Super Woden GP 2. And on paper this whole idea does sound completely barmy!! How can a game that looks like Micro Machines on steroids somehow capture the spirit of the “…Real Driving Simulator…”? Because the designer knows. They know that the magic of GT was never about the polygons. It was about the odyssey.
Rags to Riches
So you know how new games start?!? You get to sit through a 20-minute unskippable cutscene about the fervor of the drive or something, then a tutorial where this disembodied British guy explains to you how to press the “go-forward” button in a borrowed hypercar. This game?? It doesn’t do any of that. It just spits you out to the main menu like it’s handing you the keys to a car & yelling “DON’T SCRATCH IT!”
Here’s a little walking-around money. Here’s a world map full of dealerships. Good luck. I pick Japan, scroll past the out-of-my-budget rally icons and track-day monsters, and end up on the few small front-wheel-drive hatchbacks I can afford. And this, right here, is genius. Modern racing games don’t like you being slow. Forza will just airdrop a Corvette onto your head inside the first ten minutes. Super Woden GP 2 is brave enough to make you earn it. It reminds you of a ton of car history, pats your back, and tells you, “The fun’s in the climb.”
My own car is a wheezy, pathetic box. I attend the first championship and am beaten ruthlessly, scientifically. I am fighting for my life to grab 3rd place, scraping together just enough credits to haul myself back to the garage. I don’t even look at new cars. I can’t!! I only buy one performance upgrade. Just one. And then I get back on the track. I can feel it! Suddenly you’re not just surviving the corners; you’re kinda attacking them. You’re catching the draft instead of just watching taillights fade into the distance. This is the loop. This is that good stuff, that feedback cycle an entire generation of us grew up on.
The grind is the reward. Every credit matters because it’s a real step toward making your dorky beginner car something that doesn’t completely get embarrassed on the straights! And the next thing you know you’re mopping up that first championship, winning a new (and equally slow) prize car, and looking forward to your next event. Maybe a rally stage that calls for an entirely different car. And the whole glorious, painful, wonderful cycle all begins again.
A True Automotive Universe
The racing itself is great—a snug, grippy combination of finding the perfect line and having exactly the right instinct for just chucking it sideways and hoping. But presentation-wise, a game really hits the atmosphere. The menus are simple, competent, no-nonsense. They read like a 90s car brochure, with a regard for the machinery you just don’t get when a game’s UI is pounding you in the face 24/7. The sheer scope of it all is what gets you. That world map is A BIG one! Dozens of events. Street courses, endurance races, point-to-point rallies on gravel, snow, and asphalt. Name it, it’s probably in there. The number of cars is enormous… it doesn’t seem like it’s just a racing game : it seems like a whole pastime that you can lose yourself in.
Super Woden GP 2 proves that the essence of a game is not in the graphics -> but in the sensation. It’s a game made by someone who didn’t merely play Gran Turismo : they understood it… They recognized the humble pride of a garage slowly filled with cars you actually earned, and the sheer excitement of at last being able to afford that next step-up car.
And yeah that next step up is probably just another slightly less sluggish hatchback. But hey progress is progress… If you’ve got one good memory of grinding out the Sunday Cup for hours just to finally buy that FTO or Skyline—you owe it to yourself to play this game. It’s a love letter to the past, a shot of pure nostalgia and a damn fine racing game in & of itself… it’s the best Gran Turismo game on PC, and it ain’t even close.