through the eyes of a retro lover like yourself, Grand Theft Auto must be such a curious franchise. For those truly devoted retroists, the original pair of PlayStation games that started life as Race ‘N’ Chase feel a world away from the massive blockbusters that dominate the gaming industry for a few months each time a new one is released.
Gone is the gouranga and the dedicated fart button and in its place are narrative-driven crime operas with complicated characters, high-stakes missions and cover-based shooting. You could argue that Grand Theft Auto III was the turning point, given the fact that the runaway success of this technical showcase of what the PS2 could do for gaming essentially caused an entire industry to pivot. But ask anyone what their favourite PS2 GTA game is and you perhaps won’t get GTA III as the answer. Vice City, with its unique mix of aesthetics, audio and cinematic feel to the story built on top of the technical achievement of its forebear, and in many cases it’s the one that gamers around the world will remember the most fondly. But interestingly, Vice City wasn’t even planned as a full-blown release at all.
At some point in 2000, the original Dundee office of Rockstar closed, and with it the teams merged into the Edinburgh studio to form Rockstar North. Essentially this was two teams, for the Nintendo 64 and another that had created . “There was no direction from anyone,” says Obbe Vermeij, who was the technical director on all the games from right through to the final expansion pack. “So we started doing our own little prototypes. I worked on a fun little racing game with spheres, and there was a team of a couple of guys that worked on a game. Basically, there was no direction. And at some point, Leslie Benzies and Aaron Garbutt decided, ‘Well, you know, maybe we’ll start working on , because we sort of have that licence.’”
