September 24th, 2008

Chinatown Wars to feature drug dealing mini-game

Published at 6:22 AM PST

In Nintendo Power's first look at Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the DS last week they said that the game would feature "tasteful" mini-games. However, tasteful doesn't mean "family-friendly", and Rockstar aren't going to turn the series into a child's toy just because the DS is classed as a "family-friendly" console. Dan Houser discussed this with Edge Magazine recently, and said that Sam Houser made it clear to everyone that GTA: Chinatown Wars was to remain at an M-rated level, just like all past and present GTA games, he added...

“It can’t be softened to make it family-friendly – that’s not the game we’re making. We’ve never not done well by sticking to our guns.”

The media has already, within only a few short hours, gotten wind of this and has been eating it up. As always, Grand Theft Auto doesn't need much money spent on advertising, it receives enough from some of the confused news sources that only see the negative side to a story about the series. Needless to say, Rockstar has hardly any need to worry, hell even Nintendo was in approval of the series staying the way it is, as Dan continues...

“Nintendo wanted us to make GTA, and we wanted to make a game on their platform. They didn’t want us to make a GTA for kids, and we weren’t interested in making a game we wouldn’t normally make.”

So how mature is the game? Well Rockstar have finally implement a feature that they have been wanting to place in a GTA game for years, drug dealing. Ever since Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, it has been evident that drug dealing was something Rockstar have worked on for their games, only to be abandoned at the last minute, most likely to do with media uproar and game ratings.

The drug dealing mini-game will allow the you to peddle six types of drugs around the city. You will be able to make a profile from this, and there is some brains involved, the profit you make will depend on market conditions which will be based on the area you deal and the amount of service this area receives from you regularly.

It will be terrific to finally see this over-waited, over-abandoned and over-requested feature finally implemented into a Grand Theft Auto game. There will be more information in Edge Magazine this month, so we'll keep an eye out for it and let you know what additional information is revealed.

Update: Thanks to T3 we now have two screens of the mini-game being played, and we can also tell you that the six drug types you can deal are:

  • Heroin
  • Coke
  • Ecstasy
  • Acid
  • Weed
  • and; Downers

Source: Edge-Online