When you are granted an audience with Kazunori Yamauchi, godfather of Gran Turismo, you take it. We spoke with his excellency in a suite overlooking downtown Los Angeles, where traffic on the twisted freeways below looked nothing at all like the thrilling tracks of that iconic game.

AW: When did you make the first Gran Turismo?

KY: I started in the latter half of 1992.

AW: How hard was it to make that first game?

KY: It took five years. In those five years, we could not see the end. I would wake up at work, go to sleep at work. It was getting cold. so I knew it must be winter. I estimate I was home only four days a year.

AW: With advances in technology, is it easier to make video games now?

KY: It’s more difficult now because it has become more complex. But the scale of the games has changed. The first one took seven people five years. If you were to try and do it today, it would take 10 times that many.

A screenshot of the latest Gran Turismo game.

AW: Do you have 10 times the number working on GT5?

KY: We have 20 times that number.

AW: Would you say you are a perfectionist?

KY: We only do what we believe in. We do not hold ourselves to a time scale. We try to release something that we are satisfied with.

AW: When is Gran Turismo 5 coming?

KY: We made the announcement today that [the handheld game player PSP GO] is coming out Oct. 1 [with Gran Turismo 5 on it]. We will give the release date of the Gran Turismo 5 soon.