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''Grand Theft Auto'' is an
action-adventure The action-adventure genre is a video game hybrid genre that combines core elements from both the action game and adventure game genres. Typically, pure adventure games have situational problems for the player to solve to complete a storyli ...
video game developed by
DMA Design Rockstar North Limited (formerly DMA Design Limited) is a British video game development company and a studio of Rockstar Games based in Edinburgh. The company was founded as DMA Design in Dundee in 1987 by David Jones (video game developer), D ...
and published by BMG Interactive. It is the first title of the ''
Grand Theft Auto ''Grand Theft Auto'' (''GTA'') is a series of action-adventure games created by David Jones (video game developer), David Jones and Mike Dailly (game designer), Mike Dailly. Later titles were developed under the oversight of brothers Dan Hous ...
'' series and was released in November 1997 for
MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
and
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
, in December 1997 for the
PlayStation is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a divisi ...
and in October 1999 for the
Game Boy Color The (commonly abbreviated as GBC) is a handheld game console, manufactured by Nintendo, which was released in Japan on October 21, 1998 and to international markets that November. It is the successor to the Game Boy and is part of the Game ...
. The game's narrative follows a criminal who climbs in status within the criminal underworld across three fictional cities, inspired by real-life locations. The gameplay is presented from a top-down perspective and takes place within an open-world environment in which the player is not required to perform missions, although they are necessary to progress through the levels. ''Grand Theft Auto'' began development as a game titled ''Race 'n' Chase'', in which the player controlled a police officer pursuing criminals. However, the game was considered dull, and the concept of playing as a criminal was adopted. The development team worked to ensure that the player would have the freedom to play however they intend. ''Grand Theft Auto'' created a great deal of controversy even before its launch due to its violent content, with discussions taking place in the British
House of Lords The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...
about banning its sale. The game's marketing campaign, organized by publicist
Max Clifford Maxwell Frank Clifford (6 April 1943 – 10 December 2017) was an English publicist who was particularly associated with promoting " kiss and tell" stories in tabloid newspapers. In December 2012, as part of Operation Yewtree, Clifford was arr ...
, exploited this stirring of controversy as free promotion. ''Grand Theft Auto'' was met with mixed reviews upon release, but was a commercial success. While the graphics and controls were criticised, the entertainment value, sound design and freedom of the gameplay were praised. Over time, it has been recognised as one of the
greatest video games This is a list of video games that multiple reputable video game journalists or magazines have considered to be among the best of all time. The games listed here are included on at least six separate "best/greatest of all time" lists from differ ...
. Two expansions taking place in 1960s England, '' Grand Theft Auto: London 1969'' and ''Grand Theft Auto: London 1961'', were launched in 1999. The success of ''Grand Theft Auto'' spawned a series of games which built upon the original's gameplay and themes; the ''Grand Theft Auto'' series has since become one of the most popular and best-selling video game franchises of all time. The first sequel in the series, ''
Grand Theft Auto 2 ''Grand Theft Auto 2'' is an action-adventure game, developed by DMA Design and published by Rockstar Games in October 1999, for Microsoft Windows and the PlayStation, and the Dreamcast and Game Boy Color in 2000. It is the sequel to 1997's ' ...
'', was released in October 1999.


Gameplay

''Grand Theft Auto'' is made up of six levels split between three main cities; each locale is based on a real-life city in the United States, with an alternative name: Liberty City (
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
), San Andreas (
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
), and Vice City (
Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
). The progression is linear, as each level completed automatically unlocks the next one in the chain. Players begin a game choosing a character from amongst eight—four in the PlayStation version—and naming them, though the choice is purely aesthetic, and doesn't affect the overall gameplay. In each level, the player's ultimate objective is to reach a target number of points, which starts at $1,000,000 but becomes higher in the later levels, and then reach the level's "goal" to complete the stage. The player is free to do whatever they want, but have limited lives upon doing so. Points can be gained from anything, such as causing death and destruction amid the traffic in the city, completing special challenges, or stealing and selling cars for profit. However, the more typical means to achieve their target is to perform tasks for the level's local crime syndicate. Jobs can be initiated by visiting and touching a ringing
telephone box A telephone booth, telephone kiosk, telephone call box, telephone box or public call box is a tiny structure furnished with a payphone and designed for a telephone user's convenience; usually the user steps into the booth and closes the booth ...
, with each level's set of jobs on offer being unique. Jobs can be completed in any order, and each has some level of freedom to how it is successfully completed, though destinations in each are fixed. Successful completion of a job awards the player points, unlocks harder missions with greater rewards, and provides a "multiplier"—a bonus that increases the value of points earned from completing jobs and actions. Failing a job by not completing objectives, being arrested or dying, secures no points and can seal off other tasks in the chain. Players can find equipment across the level's map to help them with jobs and making points, including weapons and body armour, the latter increasing the player's survival against attacks from enemies. If the player is killed (referred to in the game as "Wasted"), they lose a life, lose all their current equipment, and have their multiplier bonus reset; losing all their lives will result in players having to restart a level. Law enforcement is present in each level, and doing criminal actions will cause the player to raise their notoriety with police; the higher the level, the tougher the response. If the player is arrested, they forfeit all equipment, and have their multiplier bonus halved. PC versions of the game were released with networked multiplayer gameplay using the IPX protocol.


Development

The development of ''Grand Theft Auto'' began on 4 April 1995 at
DMA Design Rockstar North Limited (formerly DMA Design Limited) is a British video game development company and a studio of Rockstar Games based in Edinburgh. The company was founded as DMA Design in Dundee in 1987 by David Jones (video game developer), D ...
in
Dundee Dundee (; sco, Dundee; gd, Dùn Dè or ) is Scotland's fourth-largest city and the 51st-most-populous built-up area in the United Kingdom. The mid-year population estimate for 2016 was , giving Dundee a population density of 2,478/km2 or ...
. It originally had a protracted four-year development, which included a title change and numerous attempts to halt development. The game was originally titled ''Race'n'Chase''. It was originally planned to be released on MS-DOS, Windows 95, PlayStation,
Sega Saturn The is a home video game console developed by Sega and released on November 22, 1994, in Japan, May 11, 1995, in North America, and July 8, 1995, in Europe. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it was the successor to the succ ...
and the
Nintendo 64 The (N64) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo. The successor to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, it was released on June 23, 1996, in Japan, on September 29, 1996, in North America, and on March 1, 1997, in Europe and Au ...
. However, it was never released for the two latter consoles. During the development of ''Grand Theft Auto'', many people overseeing the game's progress attempted to halt the development, which led the crew at DMA Design to have to convince them to allow them to continue. There were specific milestones planned for ''Grand Theft Auto'', none of which were met: * Development begins: 4 April 1995 * Complete game design: 31 May 1995 * Engine: 3 July 1995 * Look and feel: 2 October 1995 * First play: 3 January 1996 * Alpha: 1 April 1996 * End of production: 1 July 1996 An original
design document A software design description (a.k.a. software design document or SDD; just design document; also Software Design Specification) is a representation of a software design that is to be used for recording design information, addressing various des ...
, dated 22 March 1995, was posted online by Mike Dailly on 22 March 2011. The credited author of the document is K.R. Hamilton, and the released version is 1.05. It contained information about elements of the game discussed in various meetings held from 23 January 1995 to the writing of the document. According to the original design document, the introduction to ''Grand Theft Auto'' is a pre-drawn/rendered animation. The Windows 95 version was developed using Visual C++ v2.0. The DOS version was developed using Watcom C/C++ v10, Microsoft MASM 6.1 and Rational Systems DOS extender (DOS4GW) v 1.97. The program used to make ''Grand Theft Auto'' was said to produce "a 3D array which can eused by both the perspective and the isometric engines". It was said to consist of "a grid editor which is used to place blocks on a grid, with a eparategrid for each level", and "allow any block to be placed at any level". It was said that the world may have had to be 256×256×6 blocks. The original concept of ''Grand Theft Auto'' was "to produce a fun, addictive and fast multi-player car racing and crashing game which uses a novel graphics method". David Jones, the game's producer, cited ''
Pac-Man originally called ''Puck Man'' in Japan, is a 1980 maze action video game developed and released by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. Th ...
'' as an influence. He noted that the player runs over pedestrians and gets chased by police in a similar manner to ''Pac-Man''.
Gary Penn Gary Penn is a former British games reviewer who wrote for Zzap!64 in the 1980s and is a video game industry veteran. He later was editor of The One from 1988 to 1990 and was Creative Director at DMA Design where he supervised the release of the ...
, creative director of DMA at the time, cited ''
Elite In political and sociological theory, the elite (french: élite, from la, eligere, to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. D ...
'' as a major influence, "But I'd been working on Frontier, which is very different and there were definitely other people on the team who had things like Syndicate, Mercenary and Elite very much in their minds as well. That combination definitely led to the more open plan structure there is now. The game as it stands now is basically ''Elite'' in a city, but without quite the same sense of taking on the jobs. You take on the jobs in a slightly different way, but incredibly similar structurally. It's just a much more acceptable real world setting. The game was cops and robbers and then that evolved fairly quickly—nobody wants to be the cop, it's more fun to be bad. And then that evolved into ''Grand Theft Auto''". In an early 1997 interview, project leader Keith Hamilton commented, "''GTA'' was harder than we thought. We're rewriting the handling of the cars at the moment. We've got the time as we're changing the graphics to 24-bit."


Ports

The original ''Grand Theft Auto'' was developed for
MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
, but then later ported to
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
(using SciTech MGL),
PlayStation is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a divisi ...
(developed by Visual Sciences using their "ViSOS" framework), and
Game Boy Color The (commonly abbreviated as GBC) is a handheld game console, manufactured by Nintendo, which was released in Japan on October 21, 1998 and to international markets that November. It is the successor to the Game Boy and is part of the Game ...
. The Game Boy Color version was technologically unabridged, which was quite a technical achievement due to the sheer size of the cities, converted tile-for-tile from the PC original, making them many times larger than most Game Boy Color game worlds were because of the handheld's limited hardware. To cater for the target younger generation, however, the game was heavily censored, with gore and swearing removed. The PC version comes in several different executables for DOS and MS-Windows, which use a single set of data files (except for the 8-bit colour DOS version which uses different but similar graphics). It was previously available as a free download as part of the Rockstar Classics (alongside '' Wild Metal'' and ''
Grand Theft Auto 2 ''Grand Theft Auto 2'' is an action-adventure game, developed by DMA Design and published by Rockstar Games in October 1999, for Microsoft Windows and the PlayStation, and the Dreamcast and Game Boy Color in 2000. It is the sequel to 1997's ' ...
''), however the free download service is currently unavailable. ''Grand Theft Auto'' was to be released on the
Sega Saturn The is a home video game console developed by Sega and released on November 22, 1994, in Japan, May 11, 1995, in North America, and July 8, 1995, in Europe. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it was the successor to the succ ...
, but due to the console's rapid decline in popularity before development was finished, the project was halted and the game was never released. After the PlayStation's successful release, development began on ''Grand Theft Auto 64'', a port of the game for the
Nintendo 64 The (N64) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo. The successor to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, it was released on June 23, 1996, in Japan, on September 29, 1996, in North America, and on March 1, 1997, in Europe and Au ...
, rumoured to have graphical enhancements and new missions. However, development was cancelled without ever having a public appearance.


Cover art

The cover art for ''Grand Theft Auto'' is a photograph of a
New York Police Department The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest in ...
1980s
Plymouth Gran Fury The Plymouth Gran Fury is a full-sized automobile that was manufactured by Plymouth (automobile), Plymouth from 1975 to 1989. The nameplate would be used on successive Downsize (automobile), downsizings, first in 1980, and again in 1982, through ...
rushing through the intersection of
Fifth Avenue Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping stre ...
and 56th Street, with
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in the background of the picture. The same cover art was also an alternative cover for ''
Grand Theft Auto 2 ''Grand Theft Auto 2'' is an action-adventure game, developed by DMA Design and published by Rockstar Games in October 1999, for Microsoft Windows and the PlayStation, and the Dreamcast and Game Boy Color in 2000. It is the sequel to 1997's ' ...
'' in selected markets. There was also a cover featuring a yellow
Buick GSX The Gran Sport name has been used on several high-performance cars built by General Motors for its Buick brand since 1965. In the GM brands hierarchy, Buick was surpassed in luxury and comfort appointments only by Cadillac, which did not produ ...
. There are other covers, but the one shown above is the most common.


Soundtrack

The freedom of the game's world led the DMA team to believe that gamers would like to listen to different music while driving around the city, and so came up with the idea of several radio stations that would play music from various genres. Three DMA members – Colin Anderson, Craig Conner, and Grant Middleton – composed the radio tracks and recorded them at night in the company's offices. ''Grand Theft Auto'' features seven radio stations and a police band track. All can be heard when the player enters a vehicle; however, each vehicle only receives a limited number of stations. Players can remove the game's CD when it has finished loading and replace it with another one with their own music. When the character enters a car, the game randomly plays music from the CD. The game's main theme is "Gangster Friday", a song composed by Conner and credited to the fictional band Slumpussy. With the exception of Head Radio, the names of songs and radio stations are never mentioned within the game.


Reception

The game was a best-seller in the UK. By November 1998, global shipments to retailers of ''Grand Theft Auto'' computer and PlayStation versions had surpassed 1 million units combined. At the 1999 Milia festival in
Cannes Cannes ( , , ; oc, Canas) is a city located on the French Riviera. It is a communes of France, commune located in the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department, and host city of the annual Cannes Film Festival, Midem, and Cannes Lions I ...
, it took home a "Gold" prize for revenues above €17 million in the European Union during 1998. The game was a commercial success, though it received mixed reviews upon release. ''
GameSpot ''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...
'' 1998 review for ''Grand Theft Auto'' said that, although the graphics may look "a little plain", the music and sound effects are the opposite, praising the radio stations and the sound effects used to open and close vehicles. They also praised the freedom of the game, favouring it over other games that make the player follow a specific rule set and complete specific missions in a specific order. ''
IGN ''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa distri ...
'' were critical of the graphics which were said to be "really quite shoddy" and dated. They were also unimpressed by the "fast-food programming and careless design", including the controls. Overall the game was considered to be fun but with problems which could have been fixed. '' Next Generation'' reviewed the PC version of the game, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "It is quite easy to accuse ''Grand Theft Auto'' of being all style and no substance, but the charge doesn't stick. Of course, we don't condone the acts within, but there is no denying that the game itself is well-executed and quite enjoyable."


Legacy

''Grand Theft Auto'' has been recognised as one of the
greatest video games This is a list of video games that multiple reputable video game journalists or magazines have considered to be among the best of all time. The games listed here are included on at least six separate "best/greatest of all time" lists from differ ...
by several publications.


References


Notes


Citations


Bibliography

* *


External links

*
''Race'n'Chase'' design document
dated 22 March 1995

on Mike Dailly's homepage * {{DEFAULTSORT:Grand Theft Auto 01 1997 video games Action-adventure games ASC Games games BMG Interactive games Cancelled Nintendo 64 games Cancelled Sega Saturn games Censored video games Cultural depictions of the Mafia DOS games Freeware games Game Boy Color games Game engine recreations Grand Theft Auto Obscenity controversies in video games Open-world video games Organized crime video games PlayStation (console) games Rockstar Games games Top-down video games Video games developed in the United Kingdom Video games featuring female protagonists Video games featuring protagonists of selectable gender Video games set in 1997 Video games set in the United States Video games with expansion packs Windows games