Tourist Trophy not only creates a good motorcycle experience, but it's also Gran Turismo on motorcycles.
Tourist Trophy is a motorcycle racing game that puts you on a motorcycle of 10 manufacturers: Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Yamaha, BMW, Triumph, Aprilia, Ducati, MV Augusta and Buell. The bike selection is a mix of Street and Racing bikes. The bad news is that you can only race against 3 opponents at a time while racing in a single event or a championship, which means the game could have had at least 7 opponents in a race. Each racing bike has a number, but you only choose numbers 5-99, and you could only use 1 as a special number and the game should have let players pick numbers 1-99. There isn't a money system, but i'm glad I don't need to win 20 races over again on the bike i've been watching. You are instead required to participate in Challenge Modes to win that bike.
There are license tests like Gran Turismo 4, but there are a few recycled from that game. There are 4 types of licenses: Novice, Junior, Expert and Super. By completing each license test on time, you will earn 3 trophy colors: Bronze, Silver and Gold. You can only do one with a passenger, however, and it's stupid I can't do a race with a passenger even in a championship. In order to participate in some challenge modes with bikes you want to win, you first need to do some license tests in order to participate in that challenge.
The second major difference is the customization between Tourist Trophy bikes and Gran Turismo cars. In Gran Turismo, you can install spoilers, pick different paint jobs, and install better parts, but in Tourist Trophy, you can only install exhaust upgrades and that is it for the bike customization. The limited customization sucks.
There are a total of 37 courses in Tourist Trophy, which are World, Original and City courses all in one. There's no Dirt or Snow courses, but that's not a criticism. The reason for the lack of Dirt or Snow courses is that the bikes can jump too high and the rider would fall of his bike very often. Most of courses are real-life, and I agree with that, but I also like to run on fantasy courses, but you always feel like you want to win a single race and championship in Tourist Trophy mode. However, all but one road tracks are recycled from Gran Turismo 4 - this map pack sucks, and TT could have included all road tracks that were in GT4.
In the end, Tourist Trophy is awarding off of Polyphony's superb record and this horse armor is the best. Whenever you feel like you're going to buy a motorcycle riding sim like MotoGP, Tourist Trophy is definitely worth the wait even if you've often played the MotoGP games, but it would have been a lot better if it sold 4 million copies worldwide and if Polyphony and Sony announced a sequel for the PlayStation 3, Tourist Trophy 2 at TGS 2006 for release in fall 2007 to include 215 bikes, 50 courses and online play.