Retro|Spective 102R: Grand Theft Auto

[Neon Ignition]

Game 06 - Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Staggeringly it was just one year later that the next installment in the GTA3 saga released. Moving the action to the entirely new 1980's era Vice City, the game shifted to its Miami themed setting and expanded the range of vehicle types beyond what was in its predecessor such as airborne vehicles and motorbikes. The game was a bold gamble, entering development in the latter stages of GTA3's own development rather than waiting to see if that predecessor failed.







The Vice of Life?

[QualityChimp]

Apart from the last few loser nerd posts, it's been fascinating to read your impressions on a game that many of us experienced before we became digital chums on here.

Genuinely interesting to hear about the snowball effect of sales. Can't think of many word-of-mouth success games these days.

Got vague memories from my time with this game. First time playing was at a friend's house and the intro mission, escaping from a prison van was OK, but didn't wow me, but straight after, they let go of the reigns and you're free to do what you want.
I remember listening to the radio and seeing shops like TW@ internet café and I loved the naughty schoolboy humour.
As others have said, the freedom to tackle missions in unusual ways was really refreshing.

Driver was amazing, but limited and the ability to get out of a car in videogames was really rare by this point, so I have clear memories of being wowed by this game that felt like it was the culmination of many genres finally coming together on hardware that could cope. Similar to MGS2 that came out a month later in Nov 2001, where you could stuff bad guys into lockers, it felt like you were playing the movies.

One of my fave memories was stealing a car from the showroom near the beach, losing the cops, then parking on the beach in FPV view, listening to the classical music station and watching the sun rise over the ocean. Magical.

I was only joking about the loser nerd thing, but I've got to retain my street cool for all the chicks on the forum.

[Atticus]

Grand Theft Auto III was my jumping on point. Local importer got the US ver in and I gave it a go with only a small amount of enthusiasm. I think it's the first time I'd been presented with a gaming world with the freedom to do stuff that has an effect or reaction. Mission objectives feel like they go down how you decide ... but can be affected by random factors too. It's also a game that's just fun to be in, even when you're not doing any missions or anything, just driving around, flicking around the radio stations. I remember a mate coming over and playing it and then buying a PS2. Absolutely amazing game.

[Asura]

Apart from the last few loser nerd posts,

I aim to please

[QualityChimp]

It's interesting that this seems to be a game series conjures up memories of where you were at the time as much as the actual game.

GTA I remember being sat on the floor in our lounge with mates doing the carnage challenge on the demo.
GTAIII I remember visiting a friend and playing.
Vice City, I remember playing it at another friend's house whilst his other half tried (unsuccessfully) to sleep whilst sirens wailed and we cackled with our adventures.
GTAIV I remember playing at my parents' house on my old portable telly.

I asked my friends their memories and they also instantly remembered where they were when they played.

[QualityChimp]

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[QualityChimp]

One thing I've struggled with is in this series, is being the bad guy.

Sleeping Dogs and Driver, you're undercover and that excuses your city-wide carnage, but in GTA, I had these weird codes of honour, like I'd try to avoid running innocent pedestrians over, but if I accidentally did, I'd stop, go back and pick up their dropped money, so that their death wasn't meaningless - I appreciated their sacrifice.

Also, I never ever did the thing where you kill a prostitute to get your money back afterwards.
I don't think I even used one, it just felt wrong!
I was gutted in GTAV when, after hours of playing and avoiding the strip club, a mission forced me to visit!

EDIT: I hated that GTAIV encouraged you to have multiple girlfriends!

[QualityChimp]

Vice City.
Main memories are racing along on a motorbike at night, past the neon-lit beachfront, Hawaiian shirt flapping as Billie Jean blared out.
Spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get the Dodo to fly so that I could explore the movie studio, only to find it opens up in a later mission.

[wakka]

I like that you larp GTA as some sort of Victorian school marm.

[Asura]

I asked my friends their memories and they also instantly remembered where they were when they played.

To be fair, as people might've realised, I'm like this for nearly every game. Isn't everyone?

I remember Virtual On because I remember riding a bike through the snow late at night, because I knew the local supermarket had gotten their delivery which had the demo disc for Sega Saturn Magazine. I recall doing a full 180 skid on my bike as I stopped at the door

I remember Daytona USA because I came home after getting it to see my dad had taken the afternoon off, and was sitting there playing the mode which had 80 laps, and he said he'd sat down to play it for 10 minutes and had found himself still there 3 hours later.

Aren't pretty much all videogames like that?

[QualityChimp]

Aren't pretty much all videogames like that?

Not for me, no.

[Asura]

Not for me, no.

Maybe it's because I've never been a big music fan. Don't hate music, just was never one of those people who bought albums, and I always hear people talking about how they were doing when they bought a certain music album.

[QualityChimp]

Yeah, maybe that's it.
For me, it's just that certain albums and games take you back to a certain time and place.

Like I remember playing Hokuto No Ken: Ken's Rage with my newborn son on my lap in the spare room that is now his bedroom.

I couldn't really tell you where I was when I played Gears of War, for intstance, but know I played it.
I'd have to look at the release date to work out where I was living at the time, but have no instant flashbacks to where, just that I played it co-op with my friend, also called Dom, like the character.

[Cassius_Smoke]

I remember getting Vice City, going to my friends and being blown away with the soundtrack. Probably the best one yet.
I loved the neon style it was given too. It had more weapons and crazy antics, bikes, planes and other parts.
It was early Rockstar at its playful best.

[Asura]

Oh I should follow-up about Vice City, considering what I said before.

This was totally the opposite situation. Vice City absolutely exploded on release. Prior, we had hundreds of paid-up pre-orders, so many that we actually had to stop taking them as we weren't certain we could fulfil the supply; I can't remember exactly how it worked but I think we started doing pre-orders for free, but you had to buy a £5 voucher to do it. If the order wasn't filled, you could either wait, or spend that voucher on something else - but this was needed because we'd had pre-orders of an earlier game, I think MGS2? Where we ended up having many copies unsold due to no-shows.

I still remember the wall we built of boxes of the game in the stock-room. Judging from my memory of that, I think we had around 600 copies. We didn't even bother putting it on the shelf, we just put a sign up to come to the counter.

It had a pretty long tail too, not quite as long as GTAIII, so copies would remain on the shelf for a bit much sooner, though it had a resurgence at Christmas.