Grand Theft Auto III turns 10

iMuse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1r3CYEyUgI

Hard to believe its been 10 years, I can still remember playing it for the first time and been amazed. Vice city was a much better game but this started it all. Anyone else have fond memories of playing it?

AnamGlas

Anyone else use that hover cheat to clear the bridge with a tank?

Icyseanfitz

youd think now would be a great time to announce the new gta its been so long since 4

iMuse

Good Interview Here with Dan Houser, One of the brothers behind the GTA games

DarkJager

iMuse wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1r3CYEyUgI

Hard to believe its been 10 years, I can still remember playing it for the first time and been amazed. Vice city was a much better game but this started it all. Anyone else have fond memories of playing it?

I remember the sheer excitement of even reading it's manual and looking at the map on the bus home after buying it. Loaded it up and was just blown away by it, it must have robbed 2 straight days of my life. An all time fav of mine only outdone by Vice City and the even better San Andreas.

Asmodean

Oh you b**tard I now officialy feel ancient I have3 many, many happy memories of this! Coming in from school in the evenings and just spending hours getting stuck in. Ah simpler times.

super_furry

I had a Dreamcast and hadn't seen a single reason why I should own a PS2. Then spend 20 minutes playing GTAIII on my brother's machine and bought one the next day.

krudler

first game I bought with my ps2, along with Tony Hawks 3 (another awesome game) and Smackdown Just Bring It, ahhh, that was a fun evening,remember it liek yesterday.

chin_grin

Ten years? Jaysus. It's been ten years since they (bravely) ditched the classic top-down view and went third person.

It stopped me from playing it to be honest.

Potential-Monke

Got an email about that, was kinda hoping it was an announcement of GTA 5 or a HD re-release of 3, Vice CIty and San Andreas. I would give a testicle to have Vice City done in HD.

I do remember picking this up on launch, and like Asmodean, reading the booklet and looking at the map on the way home, dreaming what it was going to be like when i first loaded it up, laughing at the extremely well put together "manual", and picking my jaw off the floor when i first started it. I can't recount how many hours i spent just driving around in the Patriot at full speed and crashing/launching!!! Oh good times.

dreamers75

Jaysis i had to double check it was 10 years

Only came out on PC 2 years ago tho :pac:

Jerichoholic

krudler wrote: »

first game I bought with my ps2, along with Tony Hawks 3 (another awesome game) and Smackdown Just Bring It, ahhh, that was a fun evening,remember it liek yesterday.

Weird, they are the exact same games I bought along with it.

B0X

dreamers75 wrote: »

Only came out on PC 2 years ago tho :pac:

Maybe on Mac? Came out 9 years ago on PC!

Gi joe!

Whichever way you look at it GTA 3 changed the gaming landscape for the better.

It was also amazing how little hype there was in the run-up to the release.
I remember reading a preview in a magazine, couldn't have been more than 10 lines. The writer speculated that while it was very ambitious that it probably wouldn't work and that he wasn't holding out much hope for it.

I'd say he ate his words.

dreamers75

B0X wrote: »

Maybe on Mac? Came out 9 years ago on PC!

:pac: <<<

Took fooking ages to come out on PC at the time.

Krusader

chin_grin wrote: »

Ten years? Jaysus. It's been ten years since they (bravely) ditched the classic top-down view and went third person.

It stopped me from playing it to be honest.

Best part was the Gouranga bonus for running all over the Hare Krishnas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn7NzBrxYtw

J. Marston

I played that game so much, I can remember large parts of the map straight off the top of my head. Brilliant game.

Twilightning

I'm pretty sure I spent a large portion of my gametime with this sitting in the menu and listening to Chatterbox FM. Oh Lazlow.

Dyr

Kjah turned me onto the scientist "dancing vampires laugh"..i remember standing down around some abandoned part of the docks with papers blowing past and the sound of the city behind and thinking how awesome this game is...a whole city created

Zero-Cool

GTA 3>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>GTA 4

TheTosh

Michael Hunt is a legend

Glico Man

Crosáidí wrote: »

Best part was the Gouranga bonus for running all over the Hare Krishnas

Or running over the Elvis impersonators from GTA 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNHK01hQpe4

Retr0gamer

I remember this game came out of absolutely no where. There was no hype, everyone thought it would be average. The PS2 at the time was a trainwreck with not even one good game on it and Zone of the Enders becoming one of the best selling games on the system due to a MGS2 demo. It was laughable. GTA3 came out of no where and made me take notice. It was a genuinely new experience, nothing else quite like it. When DMC rolled out a few weeks later I knew I had to have a PS2.

And the muppets at Edge gave one of the most innovative and influential games of the decade a 7/10 :rolleyes:

jeddie20

This was brilliant, remember playing it at a friends house and couldnt believe it! Told my brother about it and got a PS2 with it as soon as we could, even my father couldnt bevieve how real it looked at the time! Can still remember the map, and driving over the dam in the blue gangster jeep, cant remember who they were tho :P or the sentinel's car that you picked up at their house, and the Diablo with the flames on the side and who can forget trying to fly the dodo eh! Ah good times, think its time to have a look for it B-)

tallaghtmick

Ill never forget pissing myself laughing at the mission where you beat the ho's with the baseball bat i'd never seen anything like that before.

J. Marston

jeddie20 wrote: »

This was brilliant, remember playing it at a friends house and couldnt believe it! Told my brother about it and got a PS2 with it as soon as we could, even my father couldnt bevieve how real it looked at the time! Can still remember the map, and driving over the dam in the blue gangster jeep, cant remember who they were tho :P or the sentinel's car that you picked up at their house, and the Diablo with the flames on the side and who can forget trying to fly the dodo eh! Ah good times, think its time to have a look for it B-)

That fúckin' plane :mad:.

qz

I didn't have a PS2 when GTA III and Vice City were first out but my mate did. I used to sleep over in his and wake up 'accidentally' at around 6am to play it. The skin under my nails started to get red raw cause I'd be using the joysticks on the controller so much!

Josey Wales

I remember when this game came out I bought a PS2 so I could play it. I was totally blown away by it. I had always wanted to play a game that you could freely roam around in a city that looked realistic. This was the first game to achieve that.

I remember spending hours trying to fly the Dodo plane but never quite mastering it. I remember driving the tank around everywhere destroying as many cars as I could.

Penn

J. Marston wrote: »

That fúckin' plane :mad:.

It was awesome when you learnt to fly it though. I got into the football stadium, onto the top of Kenji's Casino and around to the Ghost Town around the back of Shoreside Vale.

Best bit of that game for me was going to the car park in the centre of Staunton Island. Standing on the roof using cheats to cause mayhem below by refilling health (due to police helicopters) and weapons. Then, I'd have a fast car and jump off the top of the car park and see how long I could last in just a car against the Army.

Or another of my favourite memories was searching for Hidden Packages. There was a big alley with car parking across from Donald Love's apartment where there was always a Banshee. Looking for hidden packages, I thought there might be one behind a wall I couldn't get to, so after about half an hour of carefully jumping and walking slowly over thin walls to try and get into this area, I finally got in. This is the site I was greeted with:



I laughed about that for weeks

Chairman Meow

Gi joe! wrote: »

Whichever way you look at it GTA 3 changed the gaming landscape for the better.

It was also amazing how little hype there was in the run-up to the release.
I remember reading a preview in a magazine, couldn't have been more than 10 lines. The writer speculated that while it was very ambitious that it probably wouldn't work and that he wasn't holding out much hope for it.

I'd say he ate his words.

Previews and reviews in general were lukewarm. Edge gave it a ****ing SIX!
I mean come on.
I loved GTA 1, so i was totally hyped for 3, even tho i knew nothing about it really. I had one copy of OPSM2, with a preview, and i spent aged poring over that preview. Ran out and bought the game on launch day, and promptly had my mind blown.
To me its still the best, and most important GTA game, and possibly one of the most important games of the last 10 years. All the other GTA's jsut added bells and whistles, but GTA 3 changed the game completely.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

****ing amazing game at the time though I haven't played it in manys the year

my favourite thing about it was being able to throw your own mp3s into the music folder and making your own radio station. yeah I could have just run winamp in the background, but that wouldnt have been as fun

god... so many hours sunk into that game. kinda scared to install it again in case it looks truly awful

Penn

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

****ing amazing game at the time though I haven't played it in manys the year

my favourite thing about it was being able to throw your own mp3s into the music folder and making your own radio station. yeah I could have just run winamp in the background, but that wouldnt have been as fun

god... so many hours sunk into that game. kinda scared to install it again in case it looks truly awful

Tried playing Vice City on a 42" telly this time last year. Didn't get very far. After GTA4, everything in Vice City just felt too clunky, and I don't just mean the graphics. I know GTA4 was a bit of a disappointment, but it did improve a lot of things. Driving and running in Vice City just felt so wrong and controlled really poorly. Might give it another try soon though

Roar

Twilightning wrote: »

I'm pretty sure I spent a large portion of my gametime with this sitting in the menu and listening to Chatterbox FM. Oh Lazlow.

i actually recorded all of chatterbox FM on to a tape! simpler times really!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bPUNR_-vtg

Fernando's new beginnings FTW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAbfaHE_T4w

"you change diapers and then you are a french maid? Fernando thinks not. Fernando knows not"

Benzino

I loved the GTA 1 & 2 so I couldn't wait to get my hands on this. When people talk about 9/11 and what they were doing etc at the time, I always remember GTA 3 been delayed for a couple of weeks as a result of it (due to that mission where you had to shoot down a plane with a rocket launcher). Was gutted at the time!

cherryghost

Ah yeah Chatterbox! The best radio of all GTA games.

weiland79

Penn wrote: »

Driving and running in Vice City just felt so wrong and controlled really poorly.

Funny you say that because i was just thinking, how did they get the driving so wrong in GTA4. I tried playing it there last month and it is sheite to control (PS3) I remember zipping around in 3/vice city and san andreas and it being a joy (rose tinted glasses perhaps)

moomooman

Amazing game, a real breakthrough at the time. I had it on PC, bit jerky on my GeForce2 MX, but an upgrade to a Radeon 8500LE had it zipping along.

Night driving in the rain, listening to some great tunes

Who can forget Donald Love and his "Morgue Parties" :eek:

Retr0gamer

weiland79 wrote: »

Funny you say that because i was just thinking, how did they get the driving so wrong in GTA4. I tried playing it there last month and it is sheite to control (PS3) I remember zipping around in 3/vice city and san andreas and it being a joy (rose tinted glasses perhaps)

They made everything in GTA 4 physics based, even the driving and this changed the car controls. They tried to make it more realistic but it ended up less fun.

The Sparrow

This was the first game I absolutely loved. I had a PS2 for a few months and was pretty bored with it after getting sick of Gran Turismo. Then one day in town at lunchtime from work I wandered into Game on Dawson St. for quick gander. I saw GTA 3 on the second hand shelf for a tenner and remembered vaguely hearing something about it. So I figured, sure why not... I may as well give it a bash for a tenner and give the PS2 another chance as it was literally collecting dust.

I had absolutely no idea what to expect having never heard or played the other GTA games and having never really played anything other than Mario/ Sonic games in friends houses or football or driving games. I was completely blown away by it and I must have lost weeks to the game. So many great hours spent staying up until 4 or 5 in the morning tearing around the map.

My favourite memory was the mission towards the end where you had to drive to the airport and shoot down the plane and collect the packages of drugs and get them back to the other side of the island. I tried it so many times and failed because my car would blow up due to damage from the cops chasing me on the way back. So I decided that the only way I would ever be able to clear that mission was to learn to fly the dodo. It took me ages to master it but it was so sweet finally collecting all the packages and flying back to the other island. Oh, what bliss to fly over all of the cops!!:D

By the way, for anyone who wants to relive the nostalgia, the full GTA collection if available on sale here for a tenner or so.

Retr0gamer

The Sparrow wrote: »

My favourite memory was the mission towards the end where you had to drive to the airport and shoot down the plane and collect the packages of drugs and get them back to the other side of the island. I tried it so many times and failed because my car would blow up due to damage from the cops chasing me on the way back. So I decided that the only way I would ever be able to clear that mission was to learn to fly the dodo. It took me ages to master it but it was so sweet finally collecting all the packages and flying back to the other island. Oh, what bliss to fly over all of the cops!!:D

This is what I miss about the old GTA games. You could do any mission any way you want to, even in the craziest of manner. The missions in the new game are preset and scripted. When you begin a mission the game world resets. I know a friend of mine was having trouble chasing down a guy in a mission so before it started he parked a barricade of cars across the path the guy was taking and blocked him off. In the newer GTAs the world would reset and become scripted and these cars would disappear.

Penn

weiland79 wrote: »

Funny you say that because i was just thinking, how did they get the driving so wrong in GTA4. I tried playing it there last month and it is sheite to control (PS3) I remember zipping around in 3/vice city and san andreas and it being a joy (rose tinted glasses perhaps)

When I replayed VC (or tried to), everything just moved too fast. The smallest nudge of the stick and I'd swerve wildly across the road. So hard to just inch past cars without crashing. Maybe just out of practice. I'd completed the main GTA4 game about 3 times, and both DLCs twice before replaying Vice City, I'm sure I'd get used to it again, but I find the driving easier in GTA4.

Same with the walking, just seemed to be moving too fast, though it may be the screen size amplifying that. But felt like a harder game to control

Icyseanfitz

Retr0gamer wrote: »

They made everything in GTA 4 physics based, even the driving and this changed the car controls. They tried to make it more realistic but it ended up less fun.

i actually loved the car physics in gta 4, it actually took time to get good at driving unlike the other gta's, gta 4 was my favorite game on consoles this gen without a doubt, people didnt like it because it took on a more serious tone compared to other gta's, although i think the two dlc's did a good job in bringing back some of the silliness.

gta 3 wasnt as nuts as SA and VC either sure, really cant wait to see what the next gta is like now that they have their new game engine properly tested and working

Agricola

One of the few games that I can clearly remember buying. First year in college and I believe it was the last day before the mid-term break. Headed up to the local Xtravision after skipping the last lecture, just couldnt wait any longer!

I'd been following the coverage in magazines and just thought if the game delivered on even a fraction of the hype, it would be amazing. My only knowledge of the GTA series up to then was watching a friend playing the original game on an old PC back in '97 or so.
Playing it that first weekend, it blew me away. I had always been a console gamer up to then and didnt have the breath of experience of others with big RPG's etc so after coming from a fairly constant diet of linear shooters, platformers, racing games and sports sims, this was jaw dropping stuff.

Another reason I can so vividly remember it was because 2 friends arrived at my house on the Saturday evening to check it out before we were due to head out. This was around 8pm. We were still saying "one quick blast for the road" at 7am the next morning! It was just so addictive, there was always something new to try, somewhere new to go, someone else to run over or club to death with a bat!

It was such a huge leap forward. Nowadays gaming just seems to be a graphical arms race. I hope it wont be too long before another mould breaker like GTA3 comes along.

Penn

I'd owned the three GTA games before (London 1969), but I didn't think GTA3 would be that good, especially because I was skeptical of how it'd work in 3D, although the two Driver games made me think it might be alright. Holy hell, still hands down one of the most amazing gaming experiences of my life, and probably still the game I've played the most. Had to have sunk at least 200 hours into it, as I rarely had the money for new games and had more free time. Every hour was a joy though

TiGeR KiNgS

My save file corrupted on PS2 right before I got to the 3rd island. 3 years I started the game again and completed it.

Great memories........twice

Glico Man

Anyone else make the same mistake as I did by trying to fly the dodo under one of the bridges?

For anyone that didn't, the bridges may look like actual bridges that you can fly under but they are in fact completely solid objects...

Retr0gamer

Two over my friends got into a really stupid argument and decided to settle it with a 50 euro bet decided by who could fly the dodo the longest. First friend put in a really good effort, staying up for about 3 minutes before hitting a building. My other firend then took his go. At about 2 and a half minutes in he was heading straight for a building and the other guy was getting really excited about it until the dodo just past right through the building The programmers didnt bother butting collision detection that far up the building. Anyway that started a bigger argument.

RobertFoster

I think I managed 23 minutes or so in the Dodo. You had to make sure you didn't fly over a Unique Stunt Jump or you'd end up in infinite slow-mo. I'm sure I still have the save on my memory card -- it tells you the Dodo flying time in the stats doesn't it?

Such a great game. I remember literally just driving around a trying out stuff. Trying to speed over a jump, fluffing the landing and ending up drowning, and coming right back and trying again and again.

All this talk of GTAIII makes me want to dig it out and play it again... the graphics might crack my rose-tinted glasses though!

grimm2005

Rockstar are re-releasing GTA3 on iOS/Android:

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/10/13/grand-theft-auto-3-coming-to-ios-android-for-10th-anniversary/

Can't see it working very well with touch screen controls, would have much rather a HD re-release on XBLA tbh

J. Marston

grimm2005 wrote: »

Rockstar are re-releasing GTA3 on iOS/Android:

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/10/13/grand-theft-auto-3-coming-to-ios-android-for-10th-anniversary/

Can't see it working very well with touch screen controls, would have much rather a HD re-release on XBLA tbh

The action figure is cool...



Even if he does remind me of Max Payne.

jill_valentine

Dude, that's what he was supposed to look like?!?!