Grand Theft Auto (video game)

Grand Theft Auto is an action-adventure video game developed by DMA Design and published by BMG Interactive for Microsoft Windows, MS-DOS and PlayStation. It is the first installment in the Grand Theft Auto series. The Game Boy Color version of the game was developed by Tarantula Studios and published by Rockstar Games, itself a successor to BMG Interactive. The game later got two expansion packs, including Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 and Grand Theft Auto: London 1961, both developed by Rockstar Canada.

Overall

 * 1) It is the first game in the famous Grand Theft Auto series which would later on grow to become one of the most successful franchise in gaming.
 * 2) Multiple missions in the game that can be played in almost any order.
 * 3) Multiple characters to chose to play from, the only game other than Grand Theft Auto V to do so.
 * 4) * Also it is the first and only GTA game (barring the GBC port of GTA 2 and GTA Online) where you play with female protagonists.
 * 5) A very huge world to explore even for its time in 3 different cities.
 * 6) * The 3 cities are Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas, all which would be remade into their own games.
 * 7) You have full freedom in what to do with the game, you can complete the missions, do crimes or just explore the city.
 * 8) There's tons of cars, trains and even bikes to use, the latter wouldn't even be available again in future games until Vice City at least.
 * 9) You can acquire a number of weapons to cause chaos.
 * 10) * Fist - Available from the start. People cannot be killed with this weapon. However, it can immobilize them for a few seconds.
 * 11) * Pistol - Slow firing rate, but kills with one shot. Lots of ammo can be found around the cities. It is always near hospitals and police stations, and is the standard weapon of cops and criminals.
 * 12) * Machine Gun - Rapid rate of fire, but it is only in specified places and it doesn't have much ammo. It is used by police when player has a wanted level of four.
 * 13) * Rocket Launcher - Only used for destroying vehicles, but buildings will also catch fire when shot. It is found only in rare places.
 * 14) * Flamethrower - Can easily blow up a car or catch people on fire. It is most useful for killing groups of enemies, but it is a rare weapon.
 * 15) There are cheats that you can use to modify the game as much as you want such as infinite lives.
 * 16) The Kill Frenzies, where you kill certain amount of pedestrians with a specific gun, if succeeded you get extra money and your wanted levels removed.
 * 17) Making crimes makes you a wanted criminal, prompting police to chase you and add more challenge; it can go it up to 4 wanted levels.
 * 18) There are several radio stations that have cool music to listen to when you enter a vehicle, which is creative and impressive for its time.
 * 19) *Brooklyn Underground FM: Trance
 * 20) *The Fix FM: Techno/Apartment
 * 21) *The Fergus Buckner Show FM: Country
 * 22) *Head Radio FM: Pop/Rock
 * 23) *It's Unleashed FM: Alternative/Hard rock
 * 24) *N-CT FM: Hip hop/Rap
 * 25) *Radio '76 FM: Funk/Retro
 * 26) The PC version was available for free on Rockstar's website as part of the Rockstar Classics (alongside Wild Metal and Grand Theft Auto 2), though sadly they're not available anymore for some reason.
 * 27) The Game Boy Color version was unabridged, which was quite a technical achievement due to the sheer size of the cities, making it one of the largest Game Boy Color games, it can also be played on the Original Gameboy though sacrificing the colors.

Mission Pack #1: London 1969

 * 1) It is the first and so far only Grand Theft Auto game (along with the other expansion for this game) to not be set in the United States. Instead, it's set in England, specifically London.
 * 2) The game has lots of extra missions that can keep you occupied for a while.
 * 3) The weapons HUD icons are changed to be given a retro, somewhat primitive, 1960s aesthetic.
 * 4) In order to fit with the British stereotype it has some cheesy but funny words for what you do, for example when you get arrested instead of saying Busted, instead it says You're Nicked!.
 * 5) The PlayStation version doesn't need the original game to play this game.

Mission Pack #2: London 1961

 * 1) Although shorter, this expansion offers harder missions that focus more on time-related missions which add to the challenge.
 * 2) The expansion is completely free on their website (you still need the original game of course).

Overall

 * 1) The game has aged badly compared to later entries in the series. It's noticeably wackier and "video game"-esque than the more realistic 3D games that would follow. Also, along with its sequel, this game has limited lives, unlike later games' infinite ones; the player would get a literal Game Over text after losing all lives.
 * 2) * Cheats were activated not through inputs, but by your character's name. This also meant that you could only have one cheat active per run, or only have every cheat active at once if you were playing on the PlayStation version. It wasn't until the second game when you could activate them in the middle of gameplay.
 * 3) * Running a red light is enough to get you a 1-star wanted rating. Thankfully, this was dropped in the following games.
 * 4) *Unlike the later games, the radio stations don't have any licensed music, but instead audio tracks that continuously loop and cannot be changed.
 * 5) Money in the game is only for ranks and scores, which is useless and can make the missions not worth the hassle sometimes.
 * 6) The game has tank controls, which are awkward even for their time.
 * 7) The graphics feel a bit blurry.
 * 8) Recycling: Head Radio's countdown theme is recycled from the music for the Tyne Tees Station Ident at the time.
 * 9) There are some game breaking bugs.
 * 10) * Police cruisers sometimes become stuck to the player's car during a pursuit, racking up a high collision count and exploding, killing you and them instantly. This is somewhat mitigated by sticking to the side roads and avoiding 8-lane highways when your wanted level is high.
 * 11) * In the PC version, there was a bug where entering a garage on certain missions would crash the game when the camera focused on it. A common workaround was to drive away from it, causing the camera to refocus on the player and drive back into the garage.
 * 12) There's no way to save your progress so if you want to unlock the other cities you have to play in one playthrough or use cheats, the PS1 version lets you save at least.
 * 13) Despite having the ability to chose any character, they all play the same and no difference other than their sprite color and what you see in your high score at the end.
 * 14) The console ports have their issues:
 * 15) * The PlayStation version while more colorful but the graphics are less detailed and the trains have been completely removed, which also led to two missions being removed since they're train related.
 * 16) * The PlayStation Classic re-release runs slower.
 * 17) * The Game Boy Color version while unabridged, it still has downgrades like pedestrians rarely appear unless you're in a vehicle and the Police A.I. is very inferior.

Mission Pack #1 & #2: London 1961/1969

 * 1) These packs barely improves upon the original game.
 * 2) The pedestrians make an irritating sound whenever you hit or kill them.
 * 3) Rockstar didn't bother marketing the second expansion in any way which made it the least popular game in the series and not many people know about it.
 * 4) The final mission. Your instructions are to blow up a car, but the directional arrow only points you to where the car was previously parked. You're given no description of what the car looks like, either. (It's a green Crapi, the most commonplace heap of junk in the game.)
 * 5) The London 1961 expansion pack is heinously difficult, due to its timed missions.

Reception
Grand Theft Auto was met with mixed-to-positive reviews upon release and was a commercial success. While the graphics and controls were criticized, the entertainment value, sound design and freedom of the gameplay were praised.

Over time however, the game's reception became less positive due to the game aging badly.

Trivia

 * The game resulted from a glitch in an earlier DMA Design game, Race'n'Chase, a game where one plays as a cop while the other plays as a criminal. The glitch made the police attempt to run the player's car off the road rather than pulling them over; it was so popular with playtesters that the game was reworked to focus on the behavior.
 * The game, with its violent subject matter, generated a great deal of controversy. However, this was deemed to be intentional, and was the first game known to have been publicized in such a way.
 * The game was supposed to be on the Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 (The latter had its port called Grand Theft Auto 64) but both were never released, with the former's port being finished but never released due the the Saturn's decline in popularity, while the latter is most likely due to the console's limitations as well as Nintendo leaning more towards family friendly games at the time.
 * The second expansion London 1961 is the least popular game in the Grand Theft Auto series, due to it being released only on PC and not having any marketing made for it.