Today, Rockstar Games announced the release date for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS. The release date is set for March 17 and 20, 2009 in North America and Europe, respectively

Press Release: Rockstar Games Announces Release Date for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

Nintendo Everything has gotten their hands on a Spanish magazine that has a couple of new details on Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.

- Camera can swivel 360 degrees
- Trains will pass overhead in the city, cars will circle, pedestrians will be walking, etc.
- GPS seen on the touch screen while you move through the city
- PDA allows you to gain access to the map with more details as well as the goals of missions
- You can mark points that you want and the GPS will always tell you the shortest legal route to the destination with yellow or blue arrows
- New discoveries (such as gas stations) are added to the map
- Top screen brings you all the action, while the lower screen will let you control elements like the PDA, GPS, the radio, access to the people on the map, or using Motolov cocktails and grenades.
- Drugs have a big importance in the game
- Drug system can be compared to Drugwars
- You have to control the stock of drugs, buy them in one neighborhood and sell them in another - Good way to make money in the game
- You are given a map so that you know what people demand and at what prices
- Like other GTA games, in Chinatown Wars, you can catch a taxi - whistle into the microphone so the taxi will stop

Thanks to Valay over at Nintendo Power for translating the information in the magazine.

One question on everyone's mind is: "Will Chinatown Wars be using the whole new map of Liberty City, as seen in Grand Theft Auto IV?" Many magazines and websites have speculated so far that it'll only be focused in the Chinatown Area of Liberty City, many more have said it will be the entire map, so we are all left puzzled as to what we can expect. Spanish magazine Hispana (name may not be translated correctly) are however claiming to know the map of the DS version of GTA:

The above picture is in Spanish, roughly translated, it read's:

Aung many believe that Chinatown Wars was to develop only in Chinatown, used almost the entire map that appears in GTA IV. Appear neighborhoods: Dukes (Queens), Bohan (Bronx), Broker (Brooklyn) and Algonquin (Manhattan). The only district that does not appear GTA IV is Alderney (Jersey City).

If that makes any sense to you, well done, if not, the main point is that Chinatown Wars will use the same map used in Grand Theft Auto, most likely using a different engine to combat the graphics on the portable system. Although, it tells us that the island of Alderney is missing. This is a bit odd though, as one of the screenshots featured in Nintendo Power late last month featured the save house from Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. Stay tuned for more details.

If you would like to read the full preview by the Spanish magazine, the scans are included below, note that they are obviously also in Spanish:

Source: GTALimite (currently down) via GTA Revolution.
Thanks to GTA Revolution for contacting us and making us aware of the error we had made. We wrongly credited GTA Crew on finding this while it was actually GTALimite who discovered and reported on the news, we found the article on GTA Crew, and as it turns out they failed to credit GTALimite. So sorry for the mix up there GTALimite, we shall be more cautious next time.

EDGE has revealed some new artwork for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars in this month's issue. Thanks to the blog Liberty City Survivor, we now have our hands on the artwork from the magazine.

Source: Liberty City Survivor

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

Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser talked with Nintendo Power about the new GTA game being on the DS and not the Wii. Many people, including myself, are waiting out for GTA Wii, after seeing what Rockstar can do on the Wii with Bully. Months of speculation has arisen on the issue, and with Chinatown Wars coming to the DS, it was one more step in the right direction. As the relationship between for Rockstar and Nintendo becomes stronger, we can't rule out a GTA Wii just yet.

Mr. Houser had this to say on the topic at a sit-down with Nintendo Power:

It didn’t feel natural to us, I guess. It really was that the DS felt like it had a lot of interesting challenges that would be totally different from what we’d done in the past. The stylus and the chance to use minigames in that way was really interesting and exciting to us, and we thought we could integrate seamlessly between those two modes. And it would be the chance to make something really good on a handheld with our handheld-focused team. That was really why we went that way. We haven’t really done any concrete, major thinking about the Wii, one way or another. They’re sort of separate issues.

Fingers crossed! We'll keep you up-to-date on any progress on the matter.

Thanks to Nintendo Everything for the information.

Thanks to spyker3292 over at Mac Rumors, we now have all four pages from the November issue of Nintendo Power! All information posted yesterday is available in more detail in the scans, there are also some screenshots and photos as well as information that was skipped over previously:

Nintendo Everything posted twelve screenshots of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars also, they are taken from the above scans.

Thanks Macrumors & Nintendo Everything

Thanks to Nintendo Everything, we now have twelve new screenshots of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.

Source: Nintendo Everything

As we reported earlier, Nintendo Power got a chance to sit down and play Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. Thanks to the good folks over at Gamekyo, we now have the first screens and artwork of Chinatown Wars!

  Screenshots:

Artwork:

Source: Gamekyo

Nintendo Power recently got a chance to sit down and play Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, as we reported earlier this month. They published some details of the game in this month's issue of the magazine. We currently don't have a scan of the magazine, however thanks to botticus over at NeoGAF, we do have the information revealed by the magazine:

• True GTA game - sandbox gameplay, open-world environment, gritty crime narrative.
• M-rating
• Isometric camera angle
• Cel-shaded polygons w/ black borders
• Good touch-screen implementation - "tasteful" minigames, streamlining interface
• UI based on a PDA - hub for email, contacts, map, music player, GPS, stat-tracking
• Stats uploaded to Rockstar Social Club website via Wi-Fi
• Finger-sized icons
• Missions designed for shorter periods of play, arcade quality
• Aiming with control pad, auto targeting with R button
• Subtle auto steer
• If you fail a mission, you can jump back to the action sequence
• Chain gun, flamethrower
• Good portion of Liberty City is modeled in the game (different routes than console games)
• No problems with load times, draw-in or frame rate
• Lots of pedestrians, cars, etc. on screen
• Wanted System - objective is to disable police cars any way possible
• Real-time weather effects, 24-hour day/night cycle
• Lots of radio stations to listen to (more instrumentals than vocals)
• 800,000 lines of hand-optimized source code
• No details yet on multiplayer/Wi-Fi features

If your wondering what an isometric camera angle is, it's the same camera angle used in Rockstar Leed's port of Max Payne to the GameBoy Advance:

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will be hitting your DS sometime this winter.

UPDATE: The screenshots that were in the magazine, have now been posted.

Source: NeoGAF