ive been wasting my time on the jap version. if u have played gt3 and gt4 prologue you get an extra 10000credits or what not. I think the maximum amount u can carry over from gt3 is 100000credits. In any case, i did all of the above and it didnt really get me very far[couldnt understand half the menus to get the money in the first place!]. In theory, you could play about 15% into the game without even buying a car. You now get prize cars just for passing the damn licenses, one of which is a nismo 270R. To be honest, the game is ridiculously easy 90% of the time. With the new B spec mode, you dont even have to be at the television to be racing. The other 10% of the time, you have extremely difficult challenge races- e.g. the final mission- where you drive a mercedes SLR and try and beat the rest of the mercedes stable on the nurbugring, all of whom have a 1 minute head start. Actually, anything on the nurburgring is pretty damn difficult. The AI in the game is terrible, dont believe the crap about how they respond to your racing lines etc, they are all emotionless robots who enjoy hitting the walls and each other. The tuning houses as mentioned before, dont actually achieve anything. All parts are the same both in price and performance as the normal in house tuning menu. It's just there for **** value really. *although apparently in the pal version certain tuning houses have 'original' parts which DO make an improvement. Also in the jap version there is no 2 player memory card battle which absolutely sucks. Ive been told this has been put back in for the pal version. In the good news, * photomode is addictive * there are heaps of older cars * every car handles differently, and some are genuinely fun to drive- any of the MR cars are very entertaining. other than that its a disappointing game for me. but still well worth playing. p.s. u cant mod the mercedes patentwagon thing, nor can u drive it in races with more than one car. ditto for the caterham, or any car where the driver is exposed.