Grand Theft Auto (video game)

Grand Theft Auto, abbreviated GTA, is a sandbox video game > open, developed by the Scottish company DMA Design and published by BMG Interactive in October 1997 for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. It is the first game in the Grand Theft Auto series. The gameplay consists of a mix of action-adventure, driving, and the occasional RPG mode, with elements of stealth and racing, and has generated controversy for its adult nature and violent undertone.

Originally, GTA was going to be published on the Sega Saturn console and for the Nintendo 64, but like many other projects, it was canceled and brought to the PlayStation.

Gameplay

The player can choose between eight characters at the beginning of the game, these are: Travis, Katy, Nikki, Divine, Bubba, Troy, Kivlov, Ulrika and Kelly (the latter exclusive to the GameBoy Color version). The character that is chosen will not affect the appearance of the protagonist, since he will always be the same character with a yellow jersey. The player can also enter a name. This will also serve to activate the cheats, entering the corresponding codes.

The protagonist of the game is free to do whatever he wants in each of the three cities that make up the three game levels. Thus, he can steal cars, sell them, and so on. Anything to get points, also usable as money; Gathering a set amount of those points is the ultimate goal for each city. He can also do different office jobs among other things.

The protagonist starts the game with five lives, which he can lose if he is attacked.

Earn points

There are several ways you can get the points needed to complete each level.

Some points can be earned by committing various crimes, such as collisions (10 points each), or killing a policeman (1000 points each). The more serious and serious the crime, the more the amount of points obtained, but also the greater the attention of the police towards the player. Another way to earn money is to steal cars and then sell them at the different docks around the city, usually getting several thousand points.

These activities can give the player a lot of points but these will not be enough to earn the millions of points needed to complete each level (unless the player has a lot of patience), so it is necessary to complete the missions to complete level. Upon successful completion of a mission, the player is paid a large number of points. The most common payout is around 50,000 points.

Also when completing a mission, the point multiplier increases by one. The points multiplier is the one that multiplies the normal point by the determined number of the multiplier, to obtain the extra points. For example, a multiplier of 3 will mean that you will get 3 x 10 = 30 points for colliding, instead of the normal 10 points. This multiplier is applied to any points earned in the game, including the payout for successfully completing a mission.

On the Game Boy Color, the score multiplier is handled differently. The player can collect several "X" hidden in each city, this automatically includes a multiplier to the point counter. The first time one of these is collected, the "X" next to the counter will say "x2", the second time it will say "x3" and so on. This only affects points earned after the multiplier is earned. The points that the player already has at the moment will not be affected, so it is in the interest of the player to look for the "X" as soon as possible.

Locations

The three cities in which the game takes place were created based on real cities, in terms of landscapes and style. The cities are Liberty City (based on New York), Vice City (based on Miami), and San Andreas (based on California.

Those three cities later became the cities where Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City would take place. Liberty City Stories, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, Grand Theft Auto IV, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and < i>Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, although in the latter it is a state that contains three cities: Los Santos (based on Los Angeles), San Fierro (based on San Francisco), and Las Venturas (based on Las Vegas).

Missions

In most cases, missions are given via payphones, though some missions are assigned on the ground, or activated by getting into certain vehicles. Once a phone is taken, the player is forced to perform that mission until they either successfully complete it or fail it, but with cars it's different. The player is warned by someone with the message: "I have a new job for you, if you want it. If not, get out of my car." In the latter case, the player must exit after a few seconds before the mission begins.

Phones stop ringing when the player accepts a "phone" mission, but vehicle missions are still available. By accepting a vehicle mission while the player is performing another mission obtained via phones, the player can delete said mission (however, no notice is displayed that the mission has been failed) and instead perform the mission activated by get into said vehicles, but a phone mission cannot remove a vehicle mission as the phones stop ringing.

At the start of each mission, the player will be given a set of instructions to follow. Instructions are given in stages, so the objectives may change in a given situation.

Many of the missions involve tasks that can be completed depending on the "pace" of the player, so the player can take it easy, and respect traffic signs for example, although there is always a temptation to do it as fast as possible. fast possible. However, there are times when the game imposes time limits to complete the mission, or you may find yourself in a chase situation, being chased by enemy gangsters or police, forcing the player to do it quickly or get to a destination on time. determined and/or evade those who pursue him. This means running red lights, driving on the sidewalk (risking hitting pedestrians), and using shortcuts.

Police and other emergency services

Police are spread out throughout the city, constantly patrolling for criminals. Their cars are fast, although not very resistant. When the player commits a crime in the sight of a police officer (if the crime is serious or repeated, the police will still be alerted even if they are not around), they get a wanted level, the maximum being six levels (these are represented by police faces; when a wanted level is activated its corresponding face lights up). At level 1 the policemen will go to arrest the suspect without harming him and with little effort, but as it increases it reaches level 2, in which the policemen will be better armed and try to kill the suspect directly using all means. Level 3 will be difficult as the player will be chased by a helicopter. In level 4 you will be chased by SWAT trucks, and it is almost impossible to survive. At level 5 the citizens will go against the character, especially the Scorpio brothers, two teenagers sometimes armed with rocket launchers, and the FBI will also appear. At level 6, most of the time it is impossible to get to it due to difficulty (although some cheat is usually used), the character will meet Army tanks. He can rarely take refuge under water, because in this level the coast guard will appear, which is also difficult to defeat.

Ambulances arrive at the place where there have been injuries and try to revive them. An ambulance is tough and similar to a small van. Another important vehicle is the fire truck, which puts out fires caused by vehicle explosions or fires produced by weapons or other means.

Whenever a crime, crime or fire is committed, these vehicles will appear to fix it - even kill the character if necessary. They can also be found at their corresponding station (the ambulance at the hospital, etc.). Sometimes when committing a crime in front of the firefighters, they use the water jet to drive the character away. Adult Swim because he saw it made him parody Chicken Robot

Objects

In the game there are a number of items that the player can pick up, these are found in boxes, and in fact these boxes are from the place where the player will get their weapons.

Weapons

• The gun is a little powerful weapon, but it's the easiest to find. Shoot one bullet at a time, it's pretty good against pedestrians, but it's not very useful for older criminals, members of the law (since they usually wear bullet jackets) or destroy vehicles.
• The machine gun is obviously better than the gun because it allows to shoot fast, and can destroy most vehicles in a few seconds. The availability of machine guns is more limited than guns.
• The flamethrower is very destructive and highly effective, but has short scope. If used to destroy cars, it means that greater is the risk of being hit by the explosion due to its short reach. The advantage of the flamethrow is that it triples the points that would normally be granted for killing people or destroying vehicles. With the flamethrowers you can "disarm" through vehicles already destroyed and walls (due to a very common flaw with the range of fire) unlike other weapons, so you can use a vehicle already destroyed and small fences as protection against bullets.
• The rocket launcher is one of the most destructive weapons, as it can destroy most single-impact vehicles, as well as cause a huge explosion that could kill more people than the original target. This can be a disadvantage, as if the rocket hits any object close to the player, such as a pedestrian that walks in the line of fire at the wrong time, the player can be hit by the explosion.
• The fist is the least powerful weapon in the video game and is not very useful for some videogame missions.

Platforms

The original Grand Theft Auto was first released for MS-DOS, and later for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation, and Game Boy Color. In fact, it was initially going to be a dinosaur game for PC, but technology limitations forced a change in direction of the project (the executable for the game on PC is called dino.exe). Surprisingly, the Game Boy Color version is an unabridged version, which is a great technical achievement due to the large size of the cities, converted every detail from the original PC version, making the game larger than most other Game Boy Color titles, considering the limited hardware. To satisfy the goal of reaching a younger generation, the game was heavily censored, with blood and foul language removed.

Controversy

The video game, with its violent themes, generated a great deal of controversy. However, this is considered intentional, and it was the first game to be advertised in such a way. The publishers of Grand Theft Auto hired publicist Max Clifford to create an aura of controversy about the game in the local media. As a result, politicians intervened in the raid. Whatever the impact of censorship on gaming and the perception of gaming, the hype worked - the title was a huge success simply because those trying to ban it inadvertently generated hype for it. This has been a well-known and recognized phenomenon of violent video games ever since.

The keys to success

Grand Theft Auto was quite revolutionary in the world of consoles. Its graphics were not the best of the time, however it stood out for the following reasons:

• Total freedom of movement to circulate wherever you want.
• Total freedom of action, contrary to the canon of the time.
• Large cities with hidden objects, and with emergency services.
• Missions to the purest gangster style.
• Reckless driving with the feeling of being truly out of the law.
• Something to keep in mind is that Grand Theft Auto is also given for the first time the opportunity to harm other characters (citizens) and get bonuses for it; before GTA, in video games like System Shock, it could harm the figuratives, but this not only generated no benefit, but was persecuted by the forces of order. In GTA you get score when doing so.

Development

The development of "Grand Theft Auto" started on April 4, 1995 at DMA Design in Dundee. It originally had a lengthy development of four years, which included a title change and numerous attempts to stop development.

The game was originally titled Race'n'Chase. It was originally planned to be released on MS-DOS, Windows 95, PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64. However, never released for the last two consoles. During the development of Grand Theft Auto, many people who were monitoring the game's progress tried to stop development, which led to the DMA Design team having to convince them to allow them to continue.

Specific milestones were planned for Grand Theft Auto, none of which were met:

• Development begins4 April 1995
• Full game design: 31 May 1995
• Motor: 3 July 1995
• Look and feel: 2 October 1995
• First move3 January 1996
• Alpha: 1 April 1996
• End of production: 1 July 1996

An original design document, dated March 22, 1995, was posted online by Mike Dailly on March 22, 2011. The document's credited author is K.R. Hamilton, and the released version is 1.05. It contained information about game elements discussed at various meetings held from January 23, 1995 to the writing of the document which also contains many similarities to the 1986 Commodore 64 Miami Vice.

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 the Rational Systems DOS Extender (DOS4GW) v1.97. The program used to make Grand Theft Auto was said to produce "a 3D matrix that [can be] used by both perspective and isometric engines". It was said to consist of "a grid editor used to place blocks on a grid, with a [separate] grid for each level", and "allow any block to be placed on any level& #3. 4;. It was said that the world might have had to be 256×256×6 blocks.

The original concept of Grand Theft Auto was to "produce a fun, addictive and fast-paced multiplayer racing and crashing game using a novel graphics method".

David Jones, the game's producer, cited Pac-Man as an influence. He noted that the player runs over pedestrians and is chased by the police in a similar way to Pac-Man.

Gary Penn, DMA's creative director at the time, cited Elite as a big influence, "but I had been working on Frontier, which is very different and there were definitely other people in it. team that also had things like Syndicate, Mercenary, and Elite on their minds. That combination definitely led to the most open structure that exists now. The game as it stands now is basically Elite in a city, but without the same take on jobs feel. You make them in a slightly different way, but incredibly similar in structure. It's just a much more acceptable real world scenario. The game was cops and robbers and that evolved pretty quickly: nobody wants to be a cop, it's more fun to be bad. And then that became Grand Theft Auto".

In an interview in early 1997, project leader Keith Hamilton commented: "GTA was harder than we thought. We are rewriting the handling of the cars at the moment. We have time while we change the graphics to 24-bit".

Ports

The original Grand Theft Auto was developed for MS-DOS, but was later ported to Microsoft Windows (using SciTech MGL), PlayStation (developed by Visual Sciences using their "ViSOS" 34;), and Game Boy Color. The Game Boy Color version was technologically intact, which was a great technical achievement due to the sheer size of the cities, rendered tile by tile from the PC original, making them many times larger than most game worlds. games for the Game Boy Color due to the limited hardware of the handheld console. However, to cater to the targeted younger generation, the game was heavily censored, with gore and swearing removed.

The PC version comes in several different executables for DOS and Windows, which use a single set of data files (except the 8-bit color DOS version which uses different but similar graphics). It was previously available as a free download as part of Rockstar Classics (along with Wild Metal and Grand Theft Auto 2), however the free download service is not available.

Grand Theft Auto was to be released on the Sega Saturn, but due to the console's rapid decline in popularity before development was completed, the project was halted and the game was never released. After the successful PlayStation launch, development began on Grand Theft Auto 64, a port of the game for the Nintendo 64, which is rumored to have graphical improvements and new missions. However, the development was canceled without having made a public appearance.

Cover Page

The cover of "Grand Theft Auto" is a photograph of a New York Police Department with a 1980s Plymouth Grand Fury speeding through the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, with Trump Tower in the background of the image. The same cover was also an alternate cover for Grand Theft Auto 2 in select markets. There was also a cover featuring a yellow Buick GSX. There are other covers, but the one shown above is the most common.