alt.hn

2/8/2026 at 8:34:51 PM

A GTA modder has got the 1997 original working on modern PCs and Steam Deck

 https://gtaforums.com/topic/986492-grand-theft-auto-ready2play-full-game-windows-version/

by HelloUsername

2/8/2026 at 9:03:10 PM

I always feel old when I read Reddit comments by people who say they feel old because they remember when GTA III came out. I played a lot of GTA I and II in the late 90s/early 00s. Admittedly GTA I felt a bit dated at the time but GTA II was great. The top-down view didn't age well I guess but made it feel quite distinctive. I feel like in a lot of people's minds the series only really began at III.

by NoboruWataya

2/8/2026 at 9:50:36 PM

Similar effect with the Fallout series. A whole lot of the fanbase has never played any of the three 2D games (Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics). The series started, for them, with Fallout 3.

I’m kinda that way with Elder Scrolls. My first one was III (Morrowind) and I’ve still never played the first two.

by secretballot

2/9/2026 at 12:43:45 AM

Yeah, for me, Fallout 1 and 2 are the definitive Fallout games (ignoring Tactics as I never played it). I felt like 3 and onward were like Elder Scrolls total conversions, and I always saw them as "spiritual successors" but not exactly cut from the same cloth, or something. Like, same universe, but very different style and feel, and far less memorable or influential to me. Of course I played the first two games at a far more impressionable age, but the actual atmosphere of the games was a lot more gritty and impactful, even comparing the "eras" today.

by amatecha

2/9/2026 at 3:42:49 AM

The worst part about it is that the new games completely miss the irony in the themes. In the original the Vault Boy design that shows up everywhere was in stark contrast to the entire atmosphere and theme of the game, which was dark to the point that it'd probably have trouble being remade in modern times without extensive censorship. It created an amazing and immersive feel to the game somehow, in spite of the graphics being simple to the point of most characters looking literally identical (which can be quite confusing in an RPG where characters also wander).

But the new games are goofy throughout and basically just Skyrim with guns in a post apocalyptic setting, which feels like they just took the Vault Boy meme and turned it into a game. Even things like nuking an entire town has no 'oomph' behind it thanks to the goofy feel of the game, which feels thematically much more like Borderlands than it does Fallout.

by somenameforme

2/9/2026 at 3:38:04 AM

The Bethesda Fallout games are not the same universe. Sure canonically they are but there is a giant aesthetic difference. Fallout 1 was occasionally wacky but was mostly straight. Fallout 2 went a bit more comedic. But the main thing is that these were post apocalyptic societies that were trying to still evolve and move on. Bethesda Fallout leaned too much into the 1950s tropes everywhere and increased the comedic levels to much. It stopped being their own separate societies living in these post apocalyptic societies, and started being just a comical post apocalyptic world full of 1950s references, despite Fallout NOT being based on the 1950s.

by ecshafer

2/9/2026 at 2:45:38 PM

My take is that original Fallout was a post-post apocalyptic setting. Apocalypse was gone and many societies were building up again. Especially when you get to Fallout 2 with Vault City and NCR. Fallout 3 the people had not gone anywhere. It was just set dressing.

Even if 4 had one hyper advanced society that came from in essence nowhere. The rest hadn't done anything much in the time period... Like they had been around for tiny bit. Or living their lives in some weird retro style for some unimaginable reason.

Well Bethesda now builds collections of dioramas, not worlds.

by Ekaros

2/9/2026 at 2:58:21 PM

Total agreement. The one thing that is really annoying in all of the 3d Fallout games, New Vegas included. Is that they are still living in ruins. People's homes are full of burned garbage, broken shelves, and trash on the floors. They don't differentiate a ruined house and a house that people live in. In 1 and 2, people live in shacks, but its their homes. Some people view the past as mythology and they practice shamanism. Some enclaves are advanced but they are view the outside as dangerous and full of barbarians. Even though its not "realistic" its much more believable.

by ecshafer

2/9/2026 at 2:34:57 PM

New Vegas more or less fits the first two IMHO. It's 3 and 4, the proper Bethesda ones, which really shit things up in inexplicably ways. Neither of them even feel like remotely plausible settings, let alone fit in Fallout.

by mikkupikku

2/9/2026 at 1:36:04 AM

It is said Bethesda was kit bashing the initial titles.

Griefers don't get mad... we all know it is true =3

by Joel_Mckay

2/9/2026 at 2:13:31 PM

Um.

Could someone please tell me what these phrases mean in old-people English?

> Bethesda was kit bashing the initial titles.

And

> Griefers don't get mad...

And in context...

> we all know it is true

And this emoji?

> =3

This comment and having to ask makes me feel 116 instead of 58. Jeez.

by lproven

2/9/2026 at 4:32:06 PM

In general, people expect to see someone at least tried to find details/definitions on their own. Then to ask other people to take time to clarify subjects. In this case, LMGTFY:

By the time later Game releases were in production, world assets were already being heavily recycled. It doesn't describe the popularity of expansion/add-on packs, but rather the quality of the content discussed by the parent thread. Jokes like "learn to shoot, while walking backwards..." are still meme truisms from the Games design.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_(franchise)#Games

"Kitbashing" is a term originally from film/TV/model-builders for visual effects models with heavily recycled parts from multiple kits (see red dwarf or star wars set documentaries for details.) Accordingly, many modern games also mix generic re-skinned asset packs rather than hire fussy artists. The joke meme about "if you see barrels, than you know the game developers were out of ideas..." highlights how process people try to build products hoping people won't care about the drop in content quality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitbashing

YC has a population of folks that bury anything that doesn't fit personal opinions. It is a poorly structured interface in some ways, as people tend to interpret context based on whatever they were doing 30 seconds beforehand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griefer

Don't worry about it... =3

“Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.” (E.B. White)

by Joel_Mckay

2/9/2026 at 10:33:31 AM

Morrowind was my first TES too and I recently tried Daggerfall Unity. In 20 hours, I learned that I don't like shallow vast sea games at all. I don't want to "reolplay" and grind computer generated quests. Even Starfield was better as it at least had modern quest lines, although with awful writing.

by Klaster_1

2/8/2026 at 11:25:32 PM

Daggerfall is a must!!! You'll get to see how it shaped Bethesda and the Elder Scrolls games that came after (including Morrowind)

by reactordev

2/9/2026 at 12:10:48 AM

Yeah, Daggerfall really holds up well today. The game can be downloaded completely for free (truly gratis; no DLC, no ads) on Steam. Then using the official data files you'll get the best experience playing with Daggerfall Unity [2] which is a fanmade rewrite of the game engine on Unity. DFU fixes/avoids a lot of longstanding bugs in the base game, runs in high resolution, and has a long draw distance (which is a big deal since the in-game distances are VAST).

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1812390/The_Elder_Scrolls...

[2] https://www.dfworkshop.net/daggerfall-unity-1-0-release/

by chongli

2/9/2026 at 2:03:01 AM

Thank you for this. I feel i missed this title as a youth but it was of the era i loved. Modern games have somewhat spoilt old input and controls for me but a modernisation is just what i need

by bloqs

2/9/2026 at 2:53:43 AM

Daggerfall by default has some pretty weird controls but even the original game lets you customize them enough to play with WASD movement and strafing and full mouse-look. It's very smooth. DFU makes the frame rate even smoother so that it really has a great feel!

by chongli

2/9/2026 at 12:01:00 AM

Yeah, it’s on the list for when I can put 20+ hours a week into video games again without constant interruptions (kids, man, hahaha, I appreciate pick-up-and-put-down sorts of games so much more than I used to)

by secretballot

2/9/2026 at 12:35:46 PM

The world is surprisingly huge for a game that came out in 1996.

I recall looking over the shoulder of my friend who was playing it religiously and seeing all those dots on the continent map, asking my him if those are all navigable locations, to which he replied: "yeah, I haven't even visited all of them yet".

by Tade0

2/9/2026 at 12:04:08 AM

They recently remastered it for modern systems, it will be there when the kids ask “What’s that?” And you get to open Pandora’s box for them. “Oh this? This… is Elder Scrolls”.

I had a similar moment in my life when my daughter asked me about D&D late 2010s. They’re grown now but boy did I bombard them with nerddom.

by reactordev

2/9/2026 at 2:06:43 AM

Did you deliberately leave out Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, or did you just forget it exists?

by tmtvl

2/9/2026 at 2:57:13 AM

Console only fallout game? Fake. Can’t be real.

[edit] but really, I was like “man, I feel like there’s another one…” but figured I must have just been thinking of the never-made sequel that got as far as some planning (Van Buren).

by secretballot

2/9/2026 at 9:42:54 AM

> the series only really began

It ended with the new GTA, with the new one obviously being III ;) I spent so much time playing I and especially II, then was very disappointed with III.

GTA II also had one of my favorite bugs (that kinda required cheating): As long as you were throwing grenades, you wouldn’t move on the z-axis. So if you had unlimited grenades (or I guess just a lot of them without cheating), you could fly from one skyscraper to where ever else as long as you kept throwing those grenades. Just needed to remember to be on something as high when you stop throwing, or you’d still splat :D

by Semaphor

2/9/2026 at 12:11:01 PM

Nice, love a good grenade glitch! I owned and played a bit of GTA II, but never knew about this. I like the grenade glitches in the Command & Conquer series where, if you click again to retarget during the grenadier's windup animation, they will ignore the range check and can throw arbitrarily far.

by mohn

2/9/2026 at 3:43:38 PM

Similarly, if you place enough cars near each other - you can start jumping over one and then just float around those cars indefinitely without ever touching ground and risking off getting arrested.

However, if cops or anyone else start shooting at cars - they will eventually explode and thus get you WASTED.

by imcritic

2/9/2026 at 9:38:09 PM

IIRC you didn't even have to throw them? I think if you tapped the button quickly enough you would initiate the throwing motion but not actually throw the grenade, and that would be enough to keep you in the air.

by NoboruWataya

2/9/2026 at 12:55:22 PM

Same! I mentioned this in another comment but I really loved GTA1+2 and played them a lot, and was disappointed that 3 lost a lot of the charm and humour that I felt was there in 1+2. It was so serious and dark and I didn't connect with it at all.

by bananaboy

2/9/2026 at 7:07:03 AM

I remember the mission in GTAII where you had to first steal and then drive a bus to collect people. You bring the people to some sausage factory where you see how they are driven onto a conveyor belt. Then you have to drive a hot dog car to sell it before the mission is finished.

by randomNumber7

2/9/2026 at 7:33:54 AM

Not just that, but they came out skin-coloured so they had been stripped. A few wanted to make a run and got shot.

In another mission (early in the game iirc) you have to steal a car parked at that same restaurant and one of the radio hosts makes a stink about it on air.

by tosti

2/8/2026 at 10:12:38 PM

My first time playing anything in the GTA series was the GameBoy Color version of GTA 2. I borrowed it from a friend for a week or two, and enjoyed it quite a lot. My parents were pretty against me playing any kind of “violent” video games. So secretly playing GTA 2 on the GBC was kind of exciting due to that as well. Even though the “violence” in GTA 2 on GBC is of course very tame in terms of any kind of graphic realism or anything.

A few years later one of my friends was playing GTA III on the PS2 at his home. I also had a PS2, but there was no chance of my parents letting me play that, and I didn’t even play it at his house either.

Later still, Rockstar was giving away GTA 2 for PC for free on their website. So I played GTA 2 a little bit on PC too, after GTA III (and probably Vice City) was already out.

It took many years before I finally had a chance to play GTA III, GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas. My first time playing GTA III and GTA Vice City was when I was an adult with an iPhone and they sold iOS ports of those games in the App Store. I ended up completing GTA III and GTA Vice City on the iPhone and have played a bit of GTA San Andreas on the iPhone as well, including completing the famous train mission.

by QuantumNomad_

2/9/2026 at 2:28:52 AM

I remember one of my brother’s friends bringing over gta 3 and, after having played gta 2 and the 1960s London version, having my early teenage mind absolutely blown. One of my older brothers had a job and had copped a ps2, and let me play it when he was at work or with friends.

I must’ve crashed the dodo hundreds of times, trying to figure it out in a pre YouTube world, where the best I could do is exchange tips with my friends at school.

by 7thpower

2/8/2026 at 11:17:18 PM

That mission's not very hard... All you have to do is follow the damn train, CJ!

by arcanemachiner

2/9/2026 at 7:03:59 AM

I remember playing GTA I with a 3DFX card. Man that was smooth. When I later played at a friends house, I was disappointed about how choppy it was.

by torh

2/9/2026 at 4:13:35 AM

I haven't played GTA 2 much, but the first one was certainly pretty violent narratively speaking. I remember a mission where you have to drive a truck full of explosives into a building and blow it up, for instance.

by int_19h

2/9/2026 at 7:10:14 AM

Oh, GTA 2 had one where you had to steal a bus, go through its route stopping at stops, picking people and then you had to drive the bus to the sausage factory…

by garretraziel

2/9/2026 at 10:08:55 AM

GTAII was really weird for me, it ran at 0.5x speed. Later realised it wasn't any sort of GPU limitation but was due to some quirk with how it was tied to CPU. I had an off-brand CPU (a Transmeta if I recall) running on an old Mc Donalds workstation ripped out of an old office when they upgraded. It 'ran' just very, very weirdly. It wasn't until I saw a friend playing it on their computer that I realised that it wasn't in fact supposed to work like that!

by esskay

2/8/2026 at 9:22:01 PM

I remember the DOS (?) GTA demo that came on a PC Gaming magazine demo disk. I think it had a ten minute time limit?

Tons of fun on a friends dark green Acer Aspire.

by bluedino

2/8/2026 at 9:51:40 PM

And you could reach 1 million $ on those 10 mins, just had to put a bomb car south to the start point, get the orange guys to follow you, get inside the car, trigger the bomb and wait for detonation inside the car.

Additionally, you could go under the fences if you parked a heavy vehicle next to them and crawled below it.

Don't forget walking below the city entering the spot where the water was solid on northwest pier.

And finally, if you left the train in the precise spot, you could exit the train on top of the (eletrified) tracks and would not die.

by user2722

2/8/2026 at 11:01:28 PM

It's fascinating how often it is really the tension against the unintended boundaries of virtual worlds that's the thing we remember most.

by scyzoryk_xyz

2/9/2026 at 3:29:52 AM

My friends in I would spend entire weekends in high school "hiking" in Halo: finding spots on campaign levels to clip out of bounds, and then exploring the exterior geometry until we hit a spot that dropped us to our deaths.

by Talanes

2/9/2026 at 8:17:44 AM

I played the GTA I demo to death after hours at school... 320x240 without any hardware acceleration, but I drove those streets err'y day for what feels like years but probably was months. I think adults did not really realize what kind of game it was. Me neither.

by brnt

2/8/2026 at 9:48:57 PM

Oh yes! I remember playing that at a friend's house when I was 5 years old and having my little mind blown. I couldn't believe you could just take any car and go anywhere you wanted.

I later got my hands on a copy of GTA2 and played that a lot, behind my parents' back of course

by barbs

2/8/2026 at 9:42:36 PM

Yes! I remember it, it was around 1997/98, I was a kid and couldn't believe a game like that could exist lol! it was so crazy for that time

by boredemployee

2/9/2026 at 12:11:55 AM

Check out Rustler Grand Theft Horse on the Epic Games Store, it's the same top-down format, very GTA-like but set in medieval times, yet has all of the modern banter. It's so great.

by antidamage

2/9/2026 at 4:51:31 AM

GTA II is still my favourite GTA.

by m-schuetz

2/9/2026 at 5:11:48 AM

Used to play it with my siblings after dinner in multiplayer. I loved getting invisibility and trying to sneak up behind them with a flamethrower.

by glenstein

2/9/2026 at 12:36:59 AM

One of my favorite Easter eggs that I discovered on my own was the "Elvis has left the building" message you get when you ran over the entire line of Elvis impersonators walking down the street. I Can't remember off the top of my head if it was GTA 2 or 3.

My #1 favorite was accidentally discovering that if you shoot some missiles at the Statue of Liberty in Twisted Metal 2.

by rigrassm

2/8/2026 at 10:38:44 PM

I like how GTAⅢ is the only 3D GTA game (not 3D-era GTA game, because Chinatown Wars lol) where you can permanently select the oldschool top-down camera. It's kind of a trip to play it that way.

by Lammy

2/9/2026 at 2:12:32 AM

I never knew that.

PS: loved Chinatown Wars. Unfortunate it’s not better known.

by MBCook

2/9/2026 at 5:42:57 PM

I loved GTA II and spent hours playing it when I was about 14 or so. I don't recall keeping up with III's development at all and I remember seeing it popup on Kazaa one day, in an exe not much over 100mb. I was expecting another top down addition to the series and my mind was blown. Not only that it was this massive 3d game, but that someone had managed to compress it all down to such a small package.

by ElCapitanMarkla

2/8/2026 at 10:28:44 PM

A couple of days ago a colleague of mine was talking about very old rts games he still liked to play , and mentioned red alert. It turned out he had never heard of dune 2, Warcraft 1 and 2!

by Agingcoder

2/9/2026 at 12:08:37 AM

Oh my, this is a slap in the face for me too. For me, GTA is the first one. The other ones (III and following) are GTA with 3D and a story line slapped on top. I must have a dislike for 3D because I've tried again the original GTA a few years ago and liked it a lot more than GTA III+. It's just fun without complication.

by vdupras

2/9/2026 at 7:54:20 AM

same here, but didn't like it already at that time, never played 3D versions, GTA 1 was extremely outdated already at time of release in 1997, by that time I was already playing Screamer 2 with pretty great 3D graphics or Need for Speed, heck in 1997 they already released NFS2 (though I least liked this release and take NFS1 or NFS3 any time over NFS2)

was always more UFO: Enemy Unknown, Sim City (2000) or Transport Tycoon guy

but I vividly remember playing my first PC game in father's work on weekends - Crystal Caves https://www.playdosgames.com/play/crystal-caves

by Markoff

2/9/2026 at 8:48:55 AM

Well, I remember watching Asteroids as a kid on the coffee place my parents used to hang around, latter replaced by Kung-Fu Master, and to see DYI build your own computer before the Speccy became widspread, guess how old I feel.

by pjmlp

2/9/2026 at 3:08:58 AM

Played the first "3" on the first PlayStation. Completely different game from where it went since GTA 3.

And while Vice City will always be my favorite, looking back, I think the originals were better and I had more fun. But maybe I was just younger ...

by neocron

2/10/2026 at 8:09:25 AM

GTA2 was the turning point for the entire series. It boggles my mind how many people don't realize that anymore.

by sublinear

2/8/2026 at 9:12:37 PM

I played GTA after I played Carmageddon and I thought the graphics on GTA were kind of retro at the time, but in reflection, it does have some charm, I think.

by MPSimmons

2/8/2026 at 9:35:57 PM

Loved carmageddon, and yes graphics felt far more modern than GTA. Still loved gta eventually though as it was more fun.

Dropped out of gaming before GTA3 came out, but was given a PlayStation and gta V last year, very disappointed there was no “gouranga”

by hdgvhicv

2/9/2026 at 7:59:03 AM

it was definitely retro, by the time of GTA1 release there was already Screamer 2 released year ago and Need for speed 3 years prior, though you are right unlike Carmageddon they didnt have pedestrians

by Markoff

2/9/2026 at 6:20:14 AM

I also played a lot of GTA I and remember wishing it could be an FPV game like Carmageddon was. I eventually got my wish!

by theodric

2/9/2026 at 3:06:41 AM

I'm old (ish?), was an avid gamer and grew up on DOS, playing games like GORILLA.BAS, Alley Cat, Dangerous Dave etc. Yet somehow I never played GTA I and II. I did hear about them but none of my friends played it, no one I knew had it in fact, so was never compelled to try it.

GTA III was my first GTA game so for me and my mates, that's when the series began. Not really sure why I and II were so low-key where I lived.

by d3Xt3r

2/9/2026 at 3:48:04 AM

https://www.npr.org/2002/07/09/1146385/grand-theft-auto-iii

If I had heard of GTA games previously, I hadn't really considered playing them because stealing cars just didn't seem interesting. But I remember hearing about GTA3 on NPR and the review made it sound so amazing that I purchased it.

by SapporoChris

2/8/2026 at 9:50:32 PM

I'm more than old enough to remember the original GTA and GTA II, and I have friends who played and loved both of them. For me, I thought the first GTA had graphics from the past (I'd got too used to playing 3D shooters on PC - along with Wipeout on the Playstation - so struggled to get past the top down presentation), and just felt janky to play. GTA II was more polished, but I still didn't love it. Yet people raved about them.

Anyway, the negative associations I had with GTA I and GTA II stopped me from playing any other GTA game until 4 came out in 2008, at which point I was like, OK, FFS, people won't stop banging on about this so I suppose I'll try it again. I ended up really liking it but, because I only played it on friends' consoles, and I started the game several times over, I never played it all the way through until 2018. I then played through both the expansions, along with GTA V in 2019. I've subsequently gone back to play III and Vice City, both of which I also like - as well as Vice City Stories on the PSP. I've barely touched San Andreas, but the few minutes I have played suggest that I'll also enjoy it.

I've even fired up GTA and GTA II again... but still don't really get on with either of them. I presume there must be others out there who were put off enough by them that it meant they've never touched the rest of the series, or only got into again several games later, but it doesn't seem to be a particularly common experience.

by bartread

2/9/2026 at 7:12:32 AM

GTA I was so much fun with friends on LAN despite looking basic at the time.

by sedatk

2/9/2026 at 1:05:29 AM

GTA II is still fun for me, I try it about every third year for a week.

by colechristensen

2/9/2026 at 5:47:15 AM

An interesting fact about the early GTA games is that they owe their success to a bug. The cop cars were supposed to behave nicely like in every other game, but due to a bug in pathfinding they just drive straight into the players car. So at least to some extend the whole billion dollar franchise owes its success to a bug: https://medium.com/@bdunn313/the-psycho-cop-bug-de9121335cf9

by growt

2/9/2026 at 7:54:57 AM

It's true while also hiding a lot of the truth.

It's a bug... That happened during development, and when they saw it decided to keep it and make it normal behavior.

It's not like they released the game without noticing the cop cars were super aggressive.

by nolok

2/9/2026 at 9:56:09 AM

I used to play GTA on my 133 mhz Pentium, running windows 95. I distinctly remember the game running smooth and at a reasonably high resolution! My memory must have betrayed me because playing this now is hard to stomach. I just can't get over the jaggy motion of the hardlocked framerate (especially while driving at high speeds).

by rolfus

2/9/2026 at 10:01:56 AM

Going back to arrow keys from WASD to emulate old games is an upgrade path I didn't realize I took without looking back

by conorcleary

2/9/2026 at 12:25:14 PM

I played GTA III at like 14-16 fps. After a while you brain get used to it and feels a like a smooth experience. Maybe we have frame generation integrated in our brains? or just happens when we are kids? idk.

by pezgrande

2/8/2026 at 8:49:42 PM

You might want to add [2022] in the title

by etrvic

2/8/2026 at 10:43:10 PM

Crap, you're right. But I can't edit anymore. Also that would exceed the character limit.

by HelloUsername

2/8/2026 at 9:11:14 PM

I'm sure it was officially re-released for modern (of the day) PCs before this? I think I've still got it on discs somewhere, a set of the first trilogy, Vice City, and maybe San Andreas.

by OJFord

2/8/2026 at 9:28:32 PM

Those were GTA3 versions. The linked version is for the original GTA with the classical top view perspective.

by tirant

2/9/2026 at 7:31:55 AM

You're referring to VC & SA I think? Right before them in my list was 'the original trilogy'. I definitely had and played it, it's the only way I know that the first was top-down like that, was quite a surprise.

by OJFord

2/9/2026 at 2:46:58 AM

For the benefit of anyone else trying to read along, it ?seems? there are 2 separate re-releases being referred to.

The first was the Rockstar Classics, which were slightly more modern repackagings of GTA and GTA 2 in the early 2000s https://www.ebay.com/itm/168127378760 which came out around the time gp also got their discs for San Andreas and Vice City

The second was The Trilogy, a much more current and deeper remaster of GTA III as well as those latter two OG games gp had (Vice City and San Andreas) which is actively distributed https://store.steampowered.com/sub/817628/

Speaking of all of these re-releases, I'm surprised Rockstar hasn't re-released GTA 4 recently. There are community made ways to make it run miraculously better on modern PCs as noted in https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV but I'm sure many would pay for something prepackaged (and maybe one or two other improvements). I guess they are too busy printing money with GTA V and hoping the next one will be the same :).

by zamadatix

2/9/2026 at 3:54:44 AM

> hasn't re-released GTA 4 recently

I did start trying to replay GTA4 recently, and although I loved playing it the first time, this time I couldn't stop noticing that each mission's Niko/NPC dialog feels very forcefully-timed to match almost to the second how long it takes to drive to the first objective. I found it really immersion-breaking.

PCGW sez “Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties” but IMO if one wants to reinstall, use FusionFix and Radio Restoration mods and no need for anything else. No packaged GTA4 re-release from Rockstar would be good enough to re-license all the removed songs anyway if the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition is any indication: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/333629-grand-theft-auto...

If they really wanted to get my money they would re-release Midnight Club Los Angeles on PC instead :)

by Lammy

2/9/2026 at 5:30:38 AM

I remember those Trilogy remasters being really disliked because they were (are?) based on a botched version of the game.

by jorvi

2/8/2026 at 10:03:59 PM

I vaguely remember Grand Theft Auto being free to download from the Rockstar Games website about ten years ago.

Here is to hoping that Rockstar Games brings these two classics back.

by retired

2/10/2026 at 2:26:38 AM

That's ringing a bell. I think it might have been GTA London? I downloaded it and probably have it archived somewhere.

by pcchristie

2/9/2026 at 5:17:21 AM

Same! All I want is a rockstar-endorsed distribution of them, with working multiplayer. Free? Not free? I don't care, just bring it back!

by glenstein

2/9/2026 at 12:19:56 AM

I remember when there was a kid who kept installing this and the Chex doom on the school pcs in 7th grade. GTA was pretty controversial as a game even though it is incredibly tame by today’s standards. I’m pretty sure they never caught him.

by ohyes

2/9/2026 at 12:44:49 AM

I got in trouble for bringing Doom shareware and putting it on one of the computers in the lab at school... worth, though - had half the class exclaiming at the awesomeness until we got busted hahaha

by amatecha

2/9/2026 at 10:59:17 AM

Did the same with a bunch of games all through school. I think the dune demo was an early one

by olelele

2/8/2026 at 10:20:06 PM

I played a lot of GTA1 and a bit of 2 when it came out. I think we used to play it at LAN parties my friends and I had as well. For me that’s where it stopped and I never clicked with GTA3 and onwards!

by bananaboy

2/8/2026 at 10:24:42 PM

I absolutely adored the first 2 games, especially GTA2. "Damnation! No donation, nooo salvation!"

by seattle_spring

2/8/2026 at 10:30:58 PM

GTA2 also had a cool cinematic intro:

https://youtu.be/9Z5O29rLRnw

by HPsquared

2/8/2026 at 11:35:04 PM

I remember downloading the RealPlayer version

by NetOpWibby

2/8/2026 at 10:38:29 PM

Do you play other 3d games? I've seen a lot of difficulty for people not growing up with 3d games just managing the camera + movement. Kind of how I feel looking at high level Fortnite play where the rapid fire build play layered on top of usual fps gunplay is just one layer too much complexity for my experiences growing up with fps only video games.

by asdff

2/9/2026 at 2:15:29 AM

I’ve played tons of 3D games, ever since they started coming out.

I could never get very far in GTA 3 or Vice City because of the controls. I tried when they came out and I think I tried again later.

It wasn’t looking around, that was never a problem. The shooting controls were abysmal. If I ended up in a fight with more than one person I was pretty much guaranteed to die.

GTA 4 was the first of the main line series where the controls were good enough for me to enjoy the whole game.

by MBCook

2/9/2026 at 12:53:37 PM

I play lots of 3d games and always have (back then I was playing DOOM, Descent, Quake). I really liked the charm of GTA1+2 with the top down view and the (slightly dated) visuals, and the humour and ridiculous over the top vibe of everything ("Gouranga!"). GTA3 was just way too serious for my liking.

by bananaboy

2/9/2026 at 5:24:05 AM

That it's geo blocked in the UK, where the IP of the games originates makes me feel that's illegal even though no modern release is legitimately available.

by hirako2000

2/8/2026 at 8:59:16 PM

Check out Exodos for this type of thing. It's built on launchbox (an emulator front end) and just gives a huge listing of every game you might ever want to play. Those games aren't all installed (assuming you didn't do the full 500GB+ install) but you click the game and it quickly downloads, installs into dosbox and jumps into the game (takes seconds since these are old games).

by AnotherGoodName

2/8/2026 at 9:14:24 PM

Slightly related, if like me you have gone far to far down the emulation rabbit hole and find that you are now onto FPGA emulation, you might enjoy:

https://0mhz.net/

https://amiga.vision/

I really want to get these working on my steamdeck too but it looks like a lot of work.

by pipes

2/8/2026 at 11:37:04 PM

I need GTA II on modern consoles. I've begged Rockstar for years but I'm just a single person in their contact form.

by NetOpWibby

2/9/2026 at 8:55:05 PM

A core memory for me is playing GTA on my PC when my brother was home from one of his many stints in jail. He looked at me playing for a minute, asked what it was about, and then commented "whatever happened to super mario?".

by INTPenis

2/8/2026 at 9:27:42 PM

Love GTA1, but IIRC my version at least is a 3dfx glide game which makes it quite hard to play on modern kit.

Will give this a try.

by badgersnake

2/8/2026 at 11:32:08 PM

It has an 8-bit color, a True Color and a 3dfx executable side-by-side in the installation folder.

by rzzzt

2/10/2026 at 1:55:00 PM

I believe a few years back the 3 top view ones were downloadable for free on rockstars website. Wasn't aware they did not run on pcs anymore.

by eagrt4tdg

2/9/2026 at 10:07:28 AM

Interesting from a retro-perspective that there is chat there that getting the other 2D GTAs working in DOS should be possible too.

by stuaxo

2/9/2026 at 10:52:40 AM

I think it should also be possible to mod it into a browser version. I think even GTA Vice City runs in browser.

by randomtoast

2/9/2026 at 12:24:07 PM

Before a DMCA takedown from TakeTwo

by tetris11

2/9/2026 at 1:11:58 PM

I mean you can takedown a website hosting the JavaScript/WASM Version of Vice City, but if you just host the JavaScript/WASM on localhost:8080 then TakeTwo cannot take it down.

by randomtoast

2/8/2026 at 9:35:44 PM

The best version - thank you.

by grebc

2/9/2026 at 3:48:18 AM

Opened the game, picked a car and immediately went over the Hare Krishnas. Fucking classic, I remember playing this game at school somehow, then played GTA2 until my eyes bled, amazing games.

by AbraKdabra

2/9/2026 at 10:08:29 AM

Goranga!

by The_President

2/8/2026 at 9:02:03 PM

[flagged]

by nickandbro

2/8/2026 at 9:09:15 PM

This post has nothing to do with AI. Plus, these games are classics not just because of their mechanics. Nearly the entire library of the NES were games trying, and failing, to replicate the magic of Super Mario Bros.

by jonny_eh

2/8/2026 at 9:15:27 PM

Yes, and I have always found it amusing because on the surface it was run right, jump, repeat.

by doubled112

2/8/2026 at 10:26:32 PM

Sure, in the same way that The Lord of the Rings is a really long trilogy about walking in the woods.

by seattle_spring

2/8/2026 at 9:05:34 PM

Take care with the link folks:

- it's a fork of the main repo with much less eyeballs*

- following directions on the repo leads to arbitrary code execution, on your machine, via an LLM controlled by prompts and code from the repo

- comment is unrelated to TFA besides "video game"

* for all I know this is the new cool repo, but...the combination of circumstances is suspicious.

by refulgentis