Grand Theft Auto

aka: GTA, Race 'n' Chase
Moby ID: 417
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

In Grand Theft Auto, the player takes the role of a small-time criminal trying to make it big with the mob. Stealing cars, doing jobs for the gangsters and behaving generally anti-social are the way to success.

The action moves through six levels spread over three different cities, each based on a real US city: Liberty City (based on New York City), San Andreas (based on San Francisco) and Vice City (based on Miami). To finish a level, a certain score must be reached. Stealing cars and crashing into traffic, driving over pedestrians and killing cops all raise the score, but the big points are made through jobs. Answering phones or entering special cars brings mission assignments, from simple "ditch-a-hot-car" jobs to supporting bank robberies or carrying out assassinations. Completing a mission will raise the score substantially and also increase the score multiplier, so that completing the next felony will gain even more points.

Criminal behavior comes with a price of course: if policemen witness a crime, the player's wanted level rises. At the lowest level, a single police car might give chase, whereas at the highest level whole car squads hunt the player, the police set up roadblocks and shoot to kill. The only way to evade the cops is to find a respray shop and get a new paint job with new license plates. This costs money which is deducted from the score, however. But even dying or being arrested are not the end. The player has several lives, and ending up in jail simply results in being stripped of all weapons and armor and the score multiplier being lowered.

The entire action is viewed from a top-down perspective, which zooms out while driving a car, for a better overview at high speeds. The cities are many screens large and can be freely explored. Crates are scattered over the cities, which might include weapons (from pistols to rocket launchers), armor or other bonus items: extra lives, police bribes (used to reduce the wanted level to zero) and get-out-of-jail-free cards (used to retain score multiplier and weapons when busted). Dozens of different vehicles are available for the taking, each with unique characteristics: a bus will handle very differently than a sports car.

Spellings

  • 侠盗车手 - simplified Chinese spelling
  • 俠盜獵車手 - traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

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Team Leader
Lead Programmer
Lead Artist
Programming
Artwork
Map Design and Mission Programming
Writers
Music Written, Produced and Performed by
Audio Programming
Sound Effects
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 75% (based on 52 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 277 ratings with 13 reviews)

Freedom... so much freedom

The Good
Near the end of my high school years, an old friend of mine installed a computer game that was all the rage at the time. It was known as Grand Theft Auto, and when he started a new game to show me how it worked, he moved his character around for a bit before deciding that it wasn't the game for him. The thing is, he didn't get very far into the game before reaching his decision, as the game's blocky graphics put him off despite his system meeting the requirements.

This year, playing the original game from 1997/98 is my first foray into the GTA world. The game is spread across three fictional cities (based on New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami, respectively) with two levels each. The game involves you doing anything you like in three fictional cities based on the real-life US counterparts. You can, for example, walk around the three cities in the game, steal a car and drive around, go on a killing spree, and other stuff (with all your actions likely attracting the police). However, the highlight of this game is taking on a set of missions, most of them involving stealing cars, killing or following gang members, bombing their hideouts, and other stuff. You don't have to successfully complete each and every mission, just enough to reach your target score and advance through the game.

A huge variety of cars are on offer, ranging from the useless-as-shit Beetle to the super-fast Beast GTS. You can steal any car you like, but a faster car is recommended if you are on missions with strict time limits. Then, you can drive like a hoon, risking people's lives and smashing up the car you are driving to the point where it is about to explode, in which case you can steal another one. I like the Beast GTS as it helps me get to destinations quicker, while smashing into heaps of cars and mowing down a few pedestrians. Steal too many cars, and the police will be onto you.

Grand Theft Auto uses CD audio tracks but doesn't play them constantly throughout the entire game. Instead, they play only when you get in your car and start driving around. You see, each car is tuned into its own radio station, with only two of the worth listening to. The radio stations pause as soon as you get out of the car (unless you change the music mode to "constant") and continue when you get back in. The tracks can be accessed outside the game, meaning that if you enjoyed listening to a particular station, you can load up the track and start listening it as many times as you like without any interference.

Scattered through each city are crates, containing something that will help you get through the missions, and it is either a weapon or a power-up. There are four weapons to choose from, with the most effective ones being the rocket launcher and the flame-thrower. I found the power-ups quite useful as well.

There are a couple of things that I found amusing, if you are on foot. One is encountering the monks with their orange robes and getting in their way on purpose. They follow you no matter where you go, even when you cross the road. Another is deliberately bumping into people so that they curse at you.

You are supplied with three maps - one for each city - which have to be used to make your way around the city, to find out the best route to your target destination. All of the maps are clear and show the complexity of each city. They point out the number of bomb shops and respray shops that you need to go into every now and then. In my opinion, Grand Theft Auto taught me how to read maps properly.

The graphics are excellent, and there are a total of six FMV clips which you only get to see when you have completed a level. These clips have a character having a word with you, and this is the same character who gives you your missions. Some characters congratulate you, some insult you. My favorite is El Burro, the gay Mexican that you get to deal with when you reach San Andreas.

The Bad
Like many games of its time, your progress through the game gets saved. Unfortunately, you can't just go to the menu and choose the "Save Game" option (there is none). Instead, you have to wait until you complete the level. This is a major let-down of the game since levels take ages to complete.

Also, I didn't like the zooming effects as you drive around the city, smashing things up and doing other stuff.



The Bottom Line
I believe Grand Theft Auto is the first game that allows you to do anything. You can, for example, you go on a killing spree in the three cities or complete missions to earn money. The latter option is recommended as you earn more money by doing things that may or may not attract the police. To get around the city, you can steal cars and use the arrows to direct it to your destination, and listen to some great tunes along the way. As I just mentioned, maps of the three cities are supplied with the game, and I recommend that you use them as a reference. There are up to four weapons that you can use, with all of them become useful in certain situations.

GTA is possibly the best game that I have played so far. Right now, I am walking around Liberty City and blowing up police cars as I go along. But I would love to play all the missions again, especially the ones that I missed. I look forward to playing the sequels, especially the games where the view is presented in third-person.

There are several cheats for the game, but I found that some of them make certain missions unplayable. Enabling the "All Weapons" chat, for example, will cause the game to not let you pick up the flame-thrower you need to blow up a limo. The only way I could fix this is by not entering the cheat as one of my names and start the level again.

PlayStation · by Katakis | カタキス (43092) · 2011

The one that started it all. Does it still stand strong after 17 years?

The Good
+ Three cities to explore
+ Full-fledged exploration of each city
+ Decent soundtrack
+ Great variety of cars
+ The "special" button


The Bad
- Questionable control scheme
- Some clunky game mechanics
- Modest graphics and unstable framerate
- Punishing save system
- Clunky camera


The Bottom Line
Presentation: 50/100
The game does not provide an introduction, or a real story, just you being a newbie criminal, climbing up the crime ladder.

Graphics: 70/100
The graphics aren't exactly the greatest looking. The buildings are in 3D and the characters and cars are 2D sprites, and when the camera gets close, these little guys are obviously not meant to be up close. The framerate is okay, but it drops when there are at least 5 cars on screen, and when the camera zoom out, the framerate is a chugging mess. The camera isn't exactly the greatest either. The camera does not always respond as quick as it should; such as when you are making a sharp turn, the camera would end up going too far to where you're turning, which can lead to a top of a building getting in the way of the view.

Audio: 80/100
The sound effects are adequate, and the soundtrack is decent, depending on preference. The radio stations are not very lengthy and a station will be set for each car; for example, a pick-up truck will play country music, while a sports car will play rock music.

Controls: 67/100
The controls are playable at best. X and Triangle moves your character forward and back, Square jack a car, and Circle fires your weapon. L1 and L2 cycles weapons, R2 is special and R1 is the brakes. Driving is a bit clunky to control, because the car physics aren't exactly as fully-fledged, such as the car might not stop completely, it just inches towards where it's facing, and pressing Triangle does not apply the brakes, R1 does. The controls will feel strange at first, but they will probably become second nature as you get into the game. The worst offender for the controls is aiming your gun, especially the pistol. It seems that the hit detection is not as fully-fledged, meaning you have to be pinpoint precise with your shots; if you're one pixel off and your bullets aren't going to hit anyone. If you want to know why I like that "special" button, try it out yourself. You'll laugh. Out loud.

Difficulty: Mostly challenging not by the challenge
Grand Theft Auto is overall a challenging game. Sometimes, the challenge isn't even by the challenge, the odd controls make driving weird. The lack of a health bar also adds to the challenge, meaning that you will die in one bullet, and there's a lives counter, so the amount of times you can die is fairly limited. The lack of a health bar and dying in one hit, can be inconvenient at first, but you'll learn how to dodge bullets. In each level, you have to collect a set amount of points to pass a level.

Gameplay: 80/100
Grand Theft Auto is a top-down action game, meaning that the action will be seen in helicopter view. The driving is okay, but could've been better. There are three cities in the game with two levels in each city. In each city, you are given a set score that you must achieve. Such as in the first level, you must garner at least 1,000,000 points to beat the level. In the later levels, the numbers increase, which wouldn't be a problem if the game allowed you to save during a level. You cannot save during a level, you can only save when you are not on a level, which can be a major issue, especially on the PlayStation. On the PC, you couldn't save either, but you could Alt + Tab out of the game and get back to it later. The punishing save system is the biggest offender here, especially considering that the later levels usually take an hour or more to complete. The camera is also sluggish in this game. Generally, the camera does not respond as quickly when you are driving in something like a fast car. The cars also have weird physics, such as how they cannot survive falls. If your car is falling, it will explode in the air. Also, you can only enter and exit from a car at the driver's seat; if your car is parked with its left side against a wall, your car is technically stuck unless if you push it with another car. Despite these flaws, the gameplay is great. The cities are for you to explore and there are no barricaders to block your path. The golden part of Grand Theft Auto itself is to cause destruction to the environment and make the cops go haywire about you. There are hundreds of missions in the game and these missions usually have two tasks; for instance, you must drive an explosive-rigged truck to a police station to blow it up, then when you're done with that, you must get to the guy who will pay you. The guy warns you that a rival gang leader's lawyer is going somewhere, you must follow him, which leads you to a large gang of men with guns. Obviously, your objective here is to kill all of them. While there are decently designed missions, there are missions that are either poorly-designed or borderline difficult.

Overall: 80/100
The game has quite a few flaws, but the game will last if you can overlook these. Grand Theft Auto 1 in general is a mixed bag in the ranks, some people like it, some people hate it. While it was a start of one of the most famous video game franchises, the not-so-fully-fledged driving physics and punishing save system would pop in some questions. The game is still overall great, with full exploration of each city without borders. If the game allowed you to save within a level, GTA would be even more recommended.

Score: 80/100

PlayStation · by StickFigures (167) · 2017

Cool, original, frustrating and unsatisfying at the same time.

The Good
There is one part of GTA, which I think, is really great: The audio. This game has a great soundtrack, with all sorts of music (70's funk, 80's hard rock, gangsta rap etc.) and weird samples all mixed into one great musical melting pot. Each type of music has it's own radio station. By default different cars have their radios tuned into different stations. You'll hear techno music in a sports car and country music in a pick-up. You can switch channels while you are driving. I recommend you listen to the CD in your audio player at least once, so you can hear all those funny samples that have been mixed in between the songs. The sound effects are not bad either, the developers paid a lot of attention to tiny details (police scanner, things people say when you walk around with a gun, the little beeps you'll hear when you put a truck in reverse). Too bad there's so little speech in the game, cause the accents are great.

You have a lot of freedom in this game, you can play the missions or just mess around and do some very, very bad things. You can almost wreak havoc without limitations: slam your car into a police barricade, participate in high-speed car chases with the police, hijack, steal and assassinate.

Some of the missions are really cool (like using radio-controlled cars to assassinate somebody), others seem to be included into the game for the single purpose of making you race from one end of the map to the other. Once you reach San Francisco and Miami the missions become rather difficult and some of them are pretty annoying. Before the real meat of the mission starts you'll first have to make a couple of phone calls... great stuff when you have about 30 seconds to reach a public phone on the other side of the map in order to make the call :-<. Somehow I got the impression that the missions were a bit of an afterthought to the open ended crime simulator idea. Hmm, seems like I'm talking about the bad stuff already.

The Bad
Well, like Tomer says, the graphics are really bad. Of course great graphics are nice but I don't consider GTA's lack of graphic polish as a major problem. However there are some other things that took some of fun away from playing this game. I think I would have really enjoyed this game if:

  • You could save your game. I think you should have been able to save your game after completing, for example, three missions. It can take you a couple of hours to reach the multi million score you need to progress. Moreover, sometimes you have to complete a pair of missions (up to 5 or 6 missions) before some other missions become available. It's frustrating to play those first five missions over and over again, but you'll have to, if you want to see what the other missions are like.
  • There was a background story. Games like Star Control 2 offer a lot of freedom to the gamer, but you have the feeling something big is going on in the background. GTA has no background story. Consequently there is no build up of suspense, no "working towards a higher goal". You're just playing for the sake of collecting points. The levels and missions don't really seem to be tied together. I think it would be a great idea to add some RPG aspects to the game and let the player rise to the top of a crime syndicate (I've always liked big, over-ambitious games). But hey, Rockstar fixed that with the release of Vice City.


**The Bottom Line**
A highly explosive piece of software with more f***s per minute than a Tarantino movie. The use of cheat codes doesn't spoil the satisfaction you'll get from this game and saves you from a lot of frustration. It's the open-ended nature of the game that makes it great, not the missions.

Windows · by Roedie (5239) · 2004

[ View all 13 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Weird bug: Endless chases Daniel Saner (3503) Oct 27, 2008

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Grand Theft Auto appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Banned

Grand Theft Auto was banned from stores in Brazil.

Cities

The game takes place in the cities Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas. These cities are also the showplaces of the following 3D games of the series.

Cover

When Take2 bought BMG Interactive, they re-released Grand Theft Auto in Europe with another box-cover, which looked more attractive than the previous one, which was quite boring.

Development

The original concept for GTA was that the player was supposed to be the police and he had to go around catching car looters, robbers, gang members and so on. In the late design stages, the team argued among themselves that it would be better if the players role be reserved. After a heated battle they all agreed on reversing the players role.

Doubled Player Glitch

Go to a bike, without weapons.

Press "ENTER" and hold "Ctrl" at the same time.

Take the car behind and smash the bike.

Now you will see a copy of your self.

Dont drive over him, you'll just die :)

Freeware Release

As a way of saying thank you to the many fans of the series, Rockstar released a freeware version of GTA on its website, http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/, updated to support the latest operating systems and Direct X software.

German version

When playing the game with German language settings, it is not possible to choose the female protagonists.

Police Trick

The streets of GTA maintain a finite supply of police cars in the face of escalating crime levels (largely thanks to the singlehanded effort of the player); an ex-roommate discovered that if you can put aside the gratification at delivering the coup de grace, blowing up their vehicles, and instead leave the coppers with barely-functional, heavily-damaged wagons, you can move through traffic largely with impunity -- whenever a police presence would be triggered, instead of dashing to the scene of the crime in powerful cruisers they would stagger on to the screen in the same fleet of dented Chitty-Chitty Bang Bangs you mercifully spared.

Should the police cars blow up, the department appears to instantaneously replace the exploded car with a brand new one with everything in top condition; cultivate their deprivation, however, and you can cause the entire force to limp along while you cruise by in the fastest ride that you can grab.

References

  • In Vice City, you often see clothes that have been hung out to dry above alleyways and roads. Some of the blankets say "GTA" or "CM" - the initials of artist Craig Moore who worked on the game's textures.
  • In San Andreas, one of the missions assigned to the player by Uncle Fu's crime syndicate is the killing of mob boss Don Traegeri. This is most certainly a reference to Don Traeger, who was involved in establishing publisher BMG Interactive in 1995.

References to the Game

The cover of heavy metal band Megadeth's album Rude Awakening features vehicles from Grand Theft Auto.

Awards

  • PC Gamer
  • April 2000 - #50 (tied with Caesar III) in the Reader's All-Time Top 50 Games Poll

Information also contributed by Daniel Saner, Itay Shahar, Kartanym, Karthik KANE, PCGamer77, Pseudo_Intellectual, Steve . and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by robotriot.

Game Boy Color added by Brolin Empey. PlayStation added by Grant McLellan.

Additional contributors: Erwin Bergervoet, Unicorn Lynx, Apogee IV, Paranoid Opressor, Sciere, Havoc Crow, DreinIX, Paulus18950, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, Victor Vance, FatherJack.

Game added November 12, 1999. Last modified March 6, 2024.