IGN has posted a detailed 8-page article on the 16 years of Grand Theft Auto mayhem. From the early days of DMA Design in the late '80s to now, with Grand Theft Auto V on the now-not-too-distant horizon. There is plenty to be excited about, and even more to reminisce on...
"It's all about the American Dream. You start at the bottom, put in effort and time, and you make it to the top...no matter who you have to kill. Any stone player can get known and get paid if they take what they want, and survive the day. And see the next guy lining up to take what's yours and make it his. That's what makes this country great.
Gamers live the life Rockstar's built for them, 50 million of them, doing what they want and getting ahead one drive-by, one stolen ride, one felony at a time. It's a funhouse mirror on our sliding culture, envisioned by a Scot and a pair of Brits. Imitators come and go. None come close to Grand Theft Auto's excesses, successes, consequences, and stepping outside the lines. The franchise is big-time. Stocks jump at the mention of its name. So do giant-killers, lawyers, mothers, and politicians – all stepping up to take their shot at a game that turned controversy into fame, and then infamy.
A life of crime ain't easy, baby." - IGN
Summarizing this mammoth article would simply not do it justice; IGN has put in a solid effort curating the history of the biggest gaming series, be sure to check it out.
Great news for Kubrick and GTA fans: Rockstar has, for the first time, made the extremely rare San Andreas Kubrick collection available for purchase from their Warehouse.
The San Andreas Kubrick collection includes Carl “CJ” Johnson, Officer Tenpenny, Big Smoke, Ryder and The Truth. For only US$39.99 you can own one of the rarest Kubrick collectibles in existence. Given how sought-after this particular collection is online - some have doubted it's existence, others have hunted eBay for years for one - I can't see it being long before stock runs out.
Furthermore, the previously sold out Vice City Kubrick collection has been re-stocked and reissued in commemeration of the games' 10th anniversary. The collection includes Tommy Vercetti, Candi Suxx, Lance Vance, Ricardo Diaz and Ken Rosenberg.
Plus, if you've not purchased one of the limited-run 3,000 copies of the GTA III Kubrick collection, best be quick about it! Less than 200 copies remain of this iconic collection featuring 8-Ball, Claude, Donald Love, Misty and Salvatore Leone.
And one more thing... Rockstar is slashing 15% off anything you purchase in the same transaction as any one of these Kubrick collections until April 12th, 2013. Pre-orders of GTA V are not included, however a free Rockstar keychain - similar to that which was included with the GTA IV Special Edition - is included. Don't miss out on these limited-run collections.
Steam has discounted all Grand Theft Auto titles by 75% over the weekend.
- GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas are STEAMPLAY enabled; so Mac users out there can still get in on the killer deals!
- Grand Theft Auto IV: Complete Edition contains both GTA IV and Episodes from Liberty City, for 25% cheaper than buying both separately.
- 'The Complete Pack' bundle is currently unavailable in Australia; as GTA 1 and 2 can only be acquired through the bundle, neither are available to Australians. The US and UK - plus possibly others I was unable to check - still have access to both the bundle and classic games. That being said, as is well known, GTA 1 and 2 are available free from Rockstar, along with Wild Metal, through their Classics webpage: rockstargames.com/classics/
The sale ends April 2nd, so be sure to complete your collection if you haven't already.
Rockstar has officially made Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas available on the PlayStation Network (previously only available on Xbox LIVE). To celebrate, they've also re-released "The Introduction" prologue which was originally only bundled with the Official Soundtrack and Special Edition of the game.
"The Introduction" is the original 20-minute prologue video that highlights the action in the days before the story in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas begins. The Introduction is told from various characters' viewpoints, which are intertwined together to reveal the network of organized crime forces operating throughout the state of San Andreas. Tension builds as threats are carried out, stakes are raised and communication breaks down. In Los Santos, a drive-by shooting in Grove Street Family's territory ignites a series of events to be further explored in the game.
Last week we mentioned via Twitter that we seen the OSX port of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas being tested on Steam. Today, without any sort of official announcement, the Mac OSX versions of San Andreas along with Vice City and GTAIII have been released on Steam. The best part of this is that all three titles utilize SteamPlay. This means that if you already have a Windows copy of the game on Steam, you'll automatically gain access to the OSX version, and vice versa. Previously, the OSX ports were only available via GameTree and the Mac App Store. To celebrate the Steam release, all three games are currently 25% off. No word on how long the deal will last so if you still don't have these three classics on Steam, now is a great time to pick 'em up!
Source: Steam
It's been awhile since we've seen a release of a new version of Multi Theft Auto San Andreas, but that wait is finally over. The MTASA team has just released version 1.1 and to say that it's a jammed packed updated is an understatement. Some of the new key features pointed out by the team are:
- Custom Handling: It is now possible to modify controls, steering and behaviour of your favourite cars and bikes through our elaborate handling scripting support.
- Custom Fonts: At long last, you’re no longer stuck with the default fonts that ship with MTA. You can now import and create text for any .ttf through Lua.
- Unicode support: After heavy demand, we are excited to bring Unicode support. Along with it comes natural support for Chinese, Russian, Indic, Arabic texts and many more. This applies to chat, and to GUI.
- Cutscene player skins: Big Smoke? Ryder? Sweet? Wu Zi Mu? They all join the cast of player skins available along with other familiar faces.
- New BASS sound library: Shoutcast radio - yes please! You can now stream music from the web as part of your server, and can apply special sound affects to a wider range of sound file formats.
- Custom shaders: Enhance your visual experience with ENB-like scripts.
- Voice Chat: Servers with voice enabled will allow you to communicate with other players using the Z key.
- Increased player count: Increased cap of 1024 players.
- Synchronised traffic lights: Traffic lights are synced between players.
- Diverse weather effects
- GUI revamp
That's not all. The new version also includes hundreds of bug fixes and improvements to security and gameplay. A more complete change log is available at the MTA wiki.
Official Site: Multi Theft Auto
One of the most anticipated mods for Grand Theft Auto IV and Episodes from Liberty City has just released its first public beta! This first beta of the mod includes the map and an number of basic work in progress things from San Andreas such as CJ, audio, weapons and vehicles. The next beta version of the mod the team has planned aims to improve on a number of things such as animations in the world, traffic/peds, more audio and a number of other things the team is still working on. Since this is beta, things can go wrong and there will be bugs that will need to be sorted out however the mod is already extremely stable. If you're feeling adventurous, you can download the mod from the official website..
Official Website: GTAIV San Andreas
Six years after the release of the hugely successful Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, another person wants part of the insatiable money pie. This time the backup singer for Cypress Hill, Michael “Shagg” Washington, wants 250 million from Rockstar...that's about 25% of the games total sales. The reason? He claims that back in 2003 he was introduced to Rockstar Games by a friend and they asked him about his life. He told them how in his teenage years he and his gang used to ride around on bicyles, unlike many teenagers in that era. In July of this year, after seeing images of CJ, Shaggy knew then that the likeness of his bicycle riding teenage years was "stolen". Using San Andreas, we were able to recreate Shaggy's teenage years and they were very interesting to say the least. In 1992, he got a call from his brother, also known as Sweet, while he was car-jacking his way through Liberty City New York. His brother broke the news that "moms" was dead. CJ Shaggy quickly flew home to Los Santos Los Angeles. Later in his life he met up with a hippy named The Truth. The Truth set him on a mission to invade Area 69 Area 53 and steal a 60 million dollar jet pack. He then later used that jet pack to steal green goo from the back of a train. We could go more in-depth about his story, but according to him it's all in the game he's never played...oops.
Source: Courthouse News Service
Back in July, we reported that the ESRB added OSX as a platform to three Grand Theft Auto titles and the first Max Payne. In the latest edition of Rockstar's "Asked & Answered" series, Rockstar has confirmed that Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will all be coming to OSX later this year. Max Payne was sadly not mentioned in the article so it could be an error on ESRB's part or Rockstar forgot to mention it. More information and an proper announcement will be coming soon.
Source: Rockstar Newswire
UPDATE: VG247 has been in contact with Rockstar regarding the OFLC modification for Vice City, and it appears that Rockstar had the game re-rated as part of "ongoing work with history products". What this means for Vice City, and the three other games listed above, is still unclear. We'll let you know of any updates.
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According to the ESRB's website, Grand Theft Auto III, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas and Max Payne will all soon be making the jump over to the Mac OSX platform. While Rockstar has not announced nor shown any signs of taking this step, it all makes sense considering the recent push to support both Windows PC and Macintosh, most specifically by Valve who have made both their Steam service and their games available on the Mac OSX. Since this hasn't officially been announced by Rockstar, we don't know more than these subtle hints, so whether the ports will be native or emulated is anyone's guess at the moment (though it does seem unlikely Rockstar would port an engine it no longer uses). It is possible that, if the games are available through Steam, they may be listed under Steam Play, meaning those who currently own the PC versions will be able to play on both the PC and Mac without requiring any re-purchase.
Additionally, Australia's OFLC ratings board has mysteriously modified their rating of GTA Vice City, updating it to newer guide terms ("Strong Violence", compared to "Medium level animated violence"). At the moment it is unknown why this change has been made, and whether it was on request from Rockstar, or something the OFLC has taken upon themselves.
