Last Sunday and Wednesday, we brought you the first two parts of this rather large Grand Theft Auto series retrospective. It's certainly been a learning experience for me; I've learnt a lot about the behind the scenes stuff, the foundation of DMA and how it got to be where it is today, but I also learnt a thing or two about planning and scheduling articles, keeping to word limits and so on. It took a lot longer to complete the task than I had intended, and damned if I just didn't want to pack it in and rediscover Vice City, or fly a Harrier Jet through the high rise buildings in San Fierro. After seeing a few videos that have snuck their way onto the web in the last few days, I have to say that I have not been this excited for a new game for quite a long time.

The first part of our feature looked at the early days of Grand Theft Auto, while the second part covered the three most successful entries into the series. The final part of the feature will look at the portable GTA games, Hot Coffee, and ask a few questions about the future of the series.

GTA In Your Pocket – A Grand Theft Auto Retrospective Part III

After the release of GTAIII, there was a little anomaly sitting on the Take-Two release schedule: Grand Theft Auto for Game Boy Advance. Nobody knew what the game was going to be; Rockstar said nothing, yet it remained on the release schedules for many years. Then in 2004, Grand Theft Auto Advance was revealed. It was to be the first GTA title completely developed outside of Rockstar, with American studio Digital Eclipse doing the work. The game was set to launch day and date with GTA San Andreas.

Grand Theft Auto Advance

GTA briefly flirted with 2D again

GTA Advance is set in Liberty City, roughly a year before the events of GTAIII. Players control Mike, a small time crook who works for the Mafia-connected Vinnie. Vinnie and Mike have been planning to leave Liberty City for some time, to retire from crime and settle someplace nice. Vinnie decides they need to take on a few last jobs for the Mafia before leaving. Predictably, Vinnie is killed with a car bomb on one of these last jobs; Mike swears revenge, and sets about finding out who killed his best friend. Along the way, players will meet a variety of characters including some from GTAIII like 8-Ball, and others who were created for the game, such as Cisco, the boss of the Columbian gang. The story is told before each mission using the comic art style seen in the GTAIII load screens.

Due to the technical limitations of the Game Boy Advance, GTA Advance reverts to the old top down perspective featured in the early games in the series. It also stylises certain aspects of the game's visuals, going for a slightly more cartoony approach to reflect the platform's demographics; blood is toned down, and characters' physical attacks are exaggerated. The game plays very much like the first GTA, but follows the structure of GTAIII, with a major reliance on story missions, as well the inclusion of hideouts and hidden package, though it lacked the variety of side missions the console games offered. There are a few features unique to GTA Advance, like being able to flip cars over.

GTA Advance received a very mixed reception from critics, with an average score under 70%. The main complaints about the game were a lack of variety, small number of missions and a distinct blandness. It was largely ignored by fans at retail; as such it is the series' worst selling original title. Despite being a high profile third-party title on a widely owned system, GTA Advance had trouble competing against the Nintendo first-party lineup on the GBA that holiday, which included Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 and Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green, not to mention the newly released Nintendo DS.

Warm Caffeine-laden Beverage

When does coffee ever mean coffee?

Things remained quiet on the GTA front until May 2005, when Rockstar announced that they would be developing their first 3D portable GTA title for the PlayStation Portable, entitled Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. The game would be co-developed by Rockstar North and Rockstar Leeds and feature a story based in Liberty City in the late 1990s, three years before the events of GTAIII. Liberty City Stories would also see the return of multiplayer action. They wanted to squeeze a fully fledged GTA title into a portable format, and the PSP was the platform of choice.

The crusade against the evils of GTA would receive a big boost in June of 2005. Just after the release of the PC version of the game, a Dutch modder named Patrick Wildenborg discovered some unused code in San Andreas called "Hot Coffee". In the regular edition of the game, a couple of successful dates with one of the girlfriends would result in CJ being invited in for "coffee", which would result in implied sex. Wildenborg's patch revealed that the developers had intended for players to have access to a sex mini-game, complete with rapid thrusting, multiple positions and facial expressions.

Initially, Rockstar denied knowledge of the Hot Coffee mini-game, insisting it was the creation of hackers, but when Wildenborg revealed that the code was left over in the game, and all he did was change a single bit in the game code to reactivate it, the proverbial hit the fan. The hysteria exploded when another modder, Jay Philbrook, discovered Action Replay codes to unlock the mini-game in the console versions of the game. Politicians and conservatives came out in droves to condemn the game, forcing the ESRB in America to re-rate it from M to Adults Only. The console manufacturers refuse to allow AO rated games on their machines, and many stores will not sell them, effectively removing San Andreas from circulation. Locally, the OFLC reviewed the game's classification, temporarily giving San Andreas refused classification status. Hot Coffee hurt Take-Two's financial guidance for the latter half of 2005, resulting in the company posting losses in its third and fourth quarters.

A patch dubbed "Cold Coffee" was released for the PC version in August, while copies of the unmodified version of the game were recalled. A class action suit was filed by a New York grandmother who had bought the game for her 14 year old grandson, while the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation to determine if Rockstar had undermined the ESRB. Senators Hillary Clinton and Joseph Lieberman attempted to draft a bill called the Family Entertainment Protection Act, though the bill failed to gain traction in Congress. In early 2006, the City of Los Angeles would launch another lawsuit against Take-Two Interactive for failing to disclose the game's sexual content

A version of the game with the Hot Coffee content removed was released back into stores in September of 2005. Rockstar, Take-Two and the FTC settled their case in June 2006, with the FTC threatening a fine should the publisher not adequately disclose the content of its games to the ESRB. The class action law suits were finally settled in November 2007. Consumers who bought the unmodified version of San Andreas could receive a $US35 refund if they presented their original receipt and signed a statement declaring they were "offended and upset by the ability of consumers to modify and alter the game's content using the third-party Hot Coffee modification, would not have bought the game had they known that consumers could modify and alter the game's content using the third-party Hot Coffee modification, and would have returned the game, upon learning the game could be modified and altered, if they thought this possible."

The Hot Coffee scandal was limited to conservative territories such as the United States and Australia. No action was taken against Hot Coffee in Europe or Japan, where unmodified copies of San Andreas are still freely available. This is because many European countries had already issued the game with their highest possible rating, not to mention the differences in culture.

Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories

A fully fledged GTA game in the palm of your hand

GTA: Liberty City Stories was released in October 2005 in the USA, and November 2005 elsewhere, just after the Hot Coffee issue started to cool. The game takes place in 1998, with players taking control of Toni Cipriani, one of the Mafia guys Claude did jobs for in GTAIII. Toni was forced to lay low for a couple of years after performing a hit on a hired man for Salvatore Leone. In his absence, the mob has changed, and he has trouble reintegrating. Don Leone puts Toni under the command of Vincent Cilli; Toni hates his new superior, but remains fiercely loyal to the family. Much of the game's story focuses on Toni's actions to prevent a full scale mob war between the Leones, Yakuza, Sindaccos and Forellis breaking out in Liberty City.

The major difference between Liberty City Stories and its 3D predecessors is that the portable game is the first one not to use Renderware. Instead, it uses an in-house engine which runs much more efficiently, allowing for better data streaming, draw distance and graphical fidelity without rapidly draining the PSP's battery. Being set three years before GTAIII allowed Rockstar Leeds to make a few minor changes to Liberty City to make it seem fresh. A few buildings and the tunnel are not yet complete, there are a few small new areas, missions and vehicles, including motorcycles. New side missions include working for a car dealership, becoming a garbage man, and serving as a tour guide. Beyond that, Liberty City Stories is essentially a GTA game with the technical capabilities of Vice City, set in Liberty City. The radio station line-up is much the same as GTAIII with the addition of Radio Del Munda, a world music station and The Liberty Jam, a hip hop station, which was replaced by Game Radio in GTAIII.

The main new feature of Liberty City Stories is the reintroduction of multiplayer. Up to six players can play together using the ad-hoc wireless capability of the PSP. Multiplayer gives players the full run of one of the games three islands, complete with all of the weapons, vehicles and pedestrians in the single player game. Seven different multiplayer modes are on offer, from the basic "Liberty City Survivor" Deathmatch mode to the "Tanks for the Memories" mode, which has players fighting for control of a tank.

Liberty City Stories was met with wide acclaim upon its release on the PSP, receiving an average review score of just over 87%. A PlayStation 2 port of Liberty City Stories was released in March of 2006, though the multiplayer modes had been removed, and the graphics were noticeably poorer when compared to even GTAIII. It received a less favourable 77% average review score. Sales of both versions combined are in excess of 8 million units worldwide.

An Unfortunate Side-Effect

Rockstar Games had the best selling PlayStation Portable game to date, and Sony was chuffed with the number of PSPs that Liberty City Stories helped to shift over Christmas 2005. There was just one problem; Liberty City Stories contained a major exploit in the way it handled saved data, which exposed a huge hole in the PSP's security. This made it possible to execute unsigned data on the PSP, leading to a major breakthrough for the homebrew development scene on the console. The security holes also made piracy on the machine very easy, particularly after the release of custom firmwares and the popularity of Liberty City Stories meant that millions of people had access to the exploit. A version of Liberty City Stories without the exploit was issued, though the hole in the PSP's firmware was not fully sealed until mid 2007 – by then, the damage was well and truly done. Though it may have been one of the keys to the PSP's early success, Liberty City Stories could almost be seen as having done the portable more harm than good. The popularity of Liberty City Stories lead Take-Two Interactive to commission a second PSP game. The second PSP title would see players return to Vice City in the 1980's, and would once again be a fully fledged 3D title with dozens of new features and enhancements to the game's multiplayer aspect. Rockstar Leeds wanted to get the most out of the PSP. The game was set for release in October of 2006 for the USA, and November for Australia and Europe.

Liberty City Stories may have inadvertedly harmed the PSP

Grand Theft Auto Vice City Stories

After all of that running around, Vic lasts about 10 seconds in Vice City

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories takes place in 1984, with players controlling Victor Vance. A Marine Corps soldier, Victor is in charge of taking care of his family. After being dishonourably discharged from the marines (for having a prostitute in his room, and trafficking drugs for his superior officer), Victor sets about finding another method to support his family. Victor's brother Lance returns to town, and they start dealing in drugs. The characters in Vice City Stories aren't quite as strong as the previous four 3D games; Victor, for instance, is completely against the concept of doing drugs or anything illegal, yet continues to do so throughout the game. Characters from Vice City return much in the same way characters from GTAIII returned for Liberty City Stories, with a few new additions.

Vice City Stories condenses the original city into handheld form, adding minor new areas and a bunch of new side missions. New side missions include putting out fires with a helicopter and serving as a life-guard on the beach, but the major new feature of the game is empire building. To gain territory around Vice City, the player must open businesses in gang territory, and complete missions associated with them to have those businesses start churning out money and to capture buildings from the opposition. Other minor improvements to pedestrian density, targeting, visual quality and load times were made. The game's water effects were significantly overhauled to allow for the addition of swimming and jet skis. The most profound improvement in the game is possibly the smallest – by paying a fee upon death/capture, Victor can keep all of his weapons, which makes the taxis back to the mission marker useful for the first time. Multiplayer returns in Vice City Stories with a couple of extra modes which incorporate the return of air and sea vehicles, though it's really much the same as Liberty City Stories.

Like its portable predecessor, Vice City Stories received a favourable impression from critics, with an average review score of 86%. The same could not really be said for its sales however – the ease of piracy on the PSP lead to significantly reduced sales of the game. Once again, a PlayStation 2 port followed in early 2007, which eliminated the multiplayer, but added a few extra missions in return. Critics again gave the port less favourable scores, the end result being an average of 76%. Combined worldwide sales of Vice City Stories to date are 4.5 million; the lowest of the 3D GTA games, but still sales that any developer would love.

Crime of the Future

Just two days to go

Rockstar North has been hard at work on Grand Theft Auto IV since 2005. Using a combination of their proprietary RAGE engine (Rockstar Advanced Game Engine) and commercial middleware such as Euphoria NaturalMotion, Rockstar hopes to make the fourth game much more realistic than its predecessors. Rather than approach GTAIV as another homage to gangster movies, Rockstar is bringing alone a more naturalised story of its own. Their commitment to GTAIV's quality is unyielding – the delay from October 2007 to April 2008 is the first time Rockstar has majorly delayed a GTA title. It is without a doubt the most important release for Take-Two Interactive, who has yet to develop other lucrative in-house gaming brands and is currently fighting a hostile takeover from Electronic Arts.

It will be the first time that the GTA series has premiered on both Sony's and Microsoft's formats at the same time. Nobody knows quite which way the flow will go; the GTA series is historically associated with the PlayStation brand, but Microsoft's cash incentive for extra downloadable content could shift the audience in their direction. We'll find out after April 29, but so long as gamers are satisfied with GTAIV, does any of that really matter?

And what is in store for the series after GTAIV? Will we ever see a GTA game for a Nintendo home console? Will they ever do a third game for the PSP? Will the PC version of the game be as moddable as San Andreas? Where will the next GTA game be set? Will a game from another developer ever top GTA? We'll just have to wait and see.

Next Week

The Warp Pipe returns to regular programming with a rant about the things I don't like about Nintendo and two and a half other bits of content.

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The Warp Pipe Grand Theft Auto Retrospective Part 1: Fast Times in Liberty City - Grand Theft Auto / Mission: London 1969 + 1961 / GTA2 Part 2: Adding a New Dimension - GTA III / Controversy / Vice City / Jack Thompson / San Andreas Part 3: GTA In Your Pocket - GTA Advance / Hot Coffee / Liberty City Stories / Vice City Stories / GTA IV