GTA on GameBoy Color, “Camera Flashback”

"Success" for "Rockstar Games"is a permanent concept. And indeed, almost every game that is published by them has become successful. But every product developed by Rockstar Games’ main studio, Rockstar North, certainly received crowds of fans and a wave of popularity. And so it was with them all the time… With them, but not with DMA Design. This studio had to go through a lot, and only the era of the late nineties, when the second part of the young epic was released Grand Theft Auto, became the most productive for them, but also the last – later they came under the wing of a new publisher and reorganized into the same Rockstar North, and then began production altogether GTA III.
In this short blog series I would like to look at “special"games – they cannot be called completely unpopular or failures, but even if so – I will also not consider all the failures or unknown games in the series. In general, I wanted to make a retrospective of GTA: Chinatown Wars, and then I thought and realized that this game would not exist without Advance and decided to make a retrospective on this game as well. And then I thought and realized that Advance wouldn’t exist without the graphics of the first parts and decided to make a retrospective on them too. And then I thought and realized that without the first parts there would have been nothing at all, and Advance, in fact, is the heir to the GTA games on the GameBoy Color console, while Advance itself was released on the corresponding consoles of the same series.
In this Camera Retrospective, named after the games above that all used a top-down view, we’ll look at four games:
* GTA And GTA 2 on GBC (in this blog)
* GTA Advance (next)
* GTA: Chinatown Wars (in the last one)
Well, it’s time to start.

Grand Theft Auto, which sounded so pathetic only then, but now –GTA 1, first seen in Europe November 8, 1997 year. It was clear that there were not many full-fledged analogues on the market, and publishers could not miss the opportunity in the form of a potential hit. Among them, by the way, Take Two was later included, which currently owns Rockstar Games. Over the next two years, the game was distributed in other regions – the USA and Japan, as well as consoles: in addition to the original MS-DOS And Windows (which, it’s true, also appeared a little later), the young and daring Grand Theft Auto also came out on PlayStation And GameBoy Color. If everything is clear with the first, then the second, for obvious reasons, had to change.

The version for the portable console was developed by the studio Rockstar Lincoln. At least that’s what it’s called today and it localizes the games of the owner company. Initially it was "Tarantula Studios", which had two successful games about Austin Powers. But that’s not all: even earlier this studio was known as Spidersoft. However, there is one strange thing here: one source states that they released GTA ports as Rockstar Lincoln in the late 90s – early 00s, but another source says that they turned into Rockstar studio in 2002. We will take the second version as a basis.

Upon entering, a different menu is immediately noticeable, in which, unlike the original version, there are even faces of unknown people. But now everything goes the same way as in the original – the choice of a character that does not affect anything, i.e.To. The hero’s sprite will remain the same, cities and mode: passing missions, where you can complete missions, and a special mode for each location. But as is clear, only Liberty City is immediately available. There are 8 standard characters in total: Latinos (possibly SPANISH!1!) Bubba and Katie, black Troy and Divine, Europeans Kivlov and Ulrika, Asian Mickey and punk Travis. At least that’s what it looks like in this version.
By the way, the GameBoy Color version not only contains all the original protagonists, but also 16 additional ones, but from the very beginning only Kelly, a strange middle-aged man, is available. If you rename it SUMNER, then more than a dozen more heroes will open – rather non-standard ones. One of them, for example, is an orc. Most likely, these are the developers Tarantula Studios, who decided to immortalize themselves in the game.

One of the new characters

However, at that time, a portable GTA was something out of the ordinary. I don’t presume to say, but perhaps on par with the announcement of a major game (but not The Witcher) for the same Switch: Saints Row, Skyrim etc.d. Just imagine: this game DMA Design excited the minds of many players who tried to somehow play it on a computer or console, and then bam – and it ends up on a laptop, and now you can play your favorite game almost anywhere. It is worth noting that porting such a large game to the GameBoy Color was not so easy, since although it was not the first in the family, it remained limited. Did the young studio manage to transfer such a legendary product to a laptop??
The game immediately starts in the same place as other versions, but without a nearby car. And of course the graphics have also been downgraded – you can’t live without it. And then… here… then I got a little crazy. True, this is not connected with the port itself, but with the original version. I still don’t understand how the game came to the masses and who was in charge of management. Perhaps many will judge me, saying that I’m a casual player and don’t play anything in old games. In general, you will be right, but not completely. I played GTA 2 a long time ago – I liked the atmosphere and setting, but I couldn’t sit in it for a long time for obvious reasons, but I completed Retro City Rampage with great pleasure. For those who are not in the know: control in the first two games is carried out by turning the protagonist. To walk, you need to turn it in the right direction and hold down the walk key. And this incredible an idiotic decision that still scares off many players. In the last blog, by the way, I just talked about controls and layouts. I’m interested in old and retro games, so I’m trying to be more or less objective. So here it is, Tarantulas We also decided to use a standard scheme in order not to deviate too far from the canons, and therefore on an old GBC (or a not very old emulator) you have to use the A button. It is clear that they could not get away from this scheme, but it would be much better if they assigned walking to the arrows. Plus, the forward button is not used, but the back button performs a clear function. The character is a bit clumsy. In the meantime, we have what we have.

The player must again go to http://casinocasinocom.co.uk/ the phones and take any task. Many people believe that in the first part of Grand Theft Auto there is no plot as such, but in reality everything is not so – each city has its own storyline:
* IN Liberty City you need to take part in the war between two mafia clans: work for Robert “Baby” Sergalino, leader of the Vercotti gang, and destroy members of the Sonetti family, and later even the bikers of the Angels club. In the end, the hero will be able to eliminate the clan leader and his trusted man, Cabot, by blowing up the building with them near the end of the game.
* IN San Andres the player will find himself in the center of a confrontation between several gangs: Uncle Fu and his Triad fight the mafia Mob and the El Burro group. By the way, you can also work for the latter, and one of his tasks is to destroy some representatives of the Yakuza with a unique limousine.
* IN Vice City you need to choose the side of the typical "bad cop"Samuel Deaver or the terrorists of the Army of Love Jah led by Brother Mark, who in turn also fight Babylon – the government power structure. What is true is that in the end you will still have to take the side of the latter, and it seems to me that this is just an option, because the DMA, of course, does not praise extremists (although, who knows), but did it purely for a PR move, they say “look how special our game is!». T.e., it breaks all patterns just to break patterns. By the way, one of Deaver’s missions is to kill El Burro, t.To. he is involved in drug trafficking with Brother Mark’s group.

In general, there was a plot, and in addition there was freedom of choice, due to which the plot could differ between different players. At that time, this factor was, in my opinion, quite important, because the player himself could choose who to play for. This hasn’t happened anywhere else in the series. But Tarantula this also had to be transferred, taking into account the open world, many interesting systems and the power of the GBC itself.
Let’s move on to the port itself – the cities have been moved exactly, even the containers with weapons are in place. However, traffic can be described simply: either all or nothing. Well, or with the meme phrase: “I am hard to find, easy to lose and impossible to forget». The point is that vehicles rarely travel through the streets, but if the player manages to catch at least one, then within a minute there will be a huge traffic jam throughout the city. And no, they don’t have a specific time of appearance – transport appears when it pleases. Yes, it’s transport, because there are no drivers here – if you get into the car (and for this you need to go pixel by pixel to the driver’s door), the player will simply sit down. It is clear that in those conditions and with such productivity it was quite difficult to implement a full-fledged transport system, so here you need to be objective and not focus on this problem, but it is worth notifying.
But the management, in my subjective opinion, is screwed. Again, because of the not-so-nice control system. Perhaps I will be wrong, but it would be better if the character just walked, and not walked in the direction that still needs to be configured; accordingly, shooting through these keys and controls would be more convenient. On the other hand, there are old players for whom this control has long been familiar and for whom it is correct in this case.

It is clear that the main charm of Grand Theft Auto for the players of that time was the gameplay and atmosphere of freedom, while the failure of missions was not something terrible. It’s difficult, of course, to use such controls and enjoy the city, but did the GBC port manage to convey everything that lured players in the original?? I won’t bore you and I’ll answer yes. True, when traveling through cities, you may get the impression that you are traveling not through the metropolis of Liberty City, the pearl of the 90s San Andreas and the drug center of the entire country Vice City, but through a city, half of which disappeared at Thanos’s click, a night version of any resort and a more tropical version of the first settlement. This is due to traffic and pedestrians. If the situation with the former is more or less clear, then it is not so easy to meet people on the streets. And thus exterminate the population of cities, which is what gamers used to do so zealously, and get the famous bonus “GOURANGA"It’s simply impossible..

Loss of losses
but it would make sense to do it? Years earlier, in 93rd, Mortal Kombat, notable for its cruelty, was released on the first GameBoy console, but its subsequent parts continued to be released on this family Nintendo. Apparently it was cost effective. Now imagine what it was like for the first time for the children to launch it on their laptop. Imagine this:
A joyful boy runs into the yard and shouts to everyone that he has “That same bloody MK!». As a result, almost all the local kids gather around him, like around a local fire. The kid pulls out a wonderful device – a GameBoy, after which he adds: “Right here. ». They launch it and start the game, choose Scorpio, not even paying attention to the black and white palette. And so, having barely finished off the enemy, almost losing due to an input lag, everyone is triumphant, feeling the same way as visitors to the Colosseum, and ask not to leave a trace of the enemy, knowing the possibilities of the game. The player tries to use a fatality that he remembers, but instead of a bloody massacre, viewers only see the beating of Sub-Zero. Accordingly, the boy is called a liar, beaten until he is blue in the face, the console is taken away and pissing on considered an enemy of the people.
In general, somewhere such disappointment awaited ordinary buyers. There was no blood or violence in the game due to censorship by the publisher Nintendo. The same situation is with GTA 1: let’s put aside the fact that there are not many pedestrians and that they don’t look like themselves, but if you try to kill them or a cop (who, by the way, are also present), then not a puddle of blood is visible. And here is a question from a typical player of that time, for example, Igor: “Why the hell do we need GTA on GBC, if it’s not even GTA?». And although I’m trying to be objective, I agree with Igor – GTA challenged the then standards and frameworks, trying to be special, because let’s be honest: Igor could beat people until they were blue in the face in River City Ransom. Well, he doesn’t have much desire to watch the falling sprites of pedestrians.
I may be wrong, but Nintendo, in my opinion, left the missions of the Brotherhood of Love line of the Army of Jah. Let me remind you: this is a line of hippie terrorists, during which the character becomes a direct participant in terrorist attacks, helps suicide bombers accomplish the goal of his life and kills the President of the United States. In general, double standards have always been a problem in society. Although allowing MK or GTA on the GBC was already a result for fans of this style of play.

What would I like to say in the end about the port of the first Grand Theft Auto to the GameBoy Color console?? It is clear that Tarantulas tried, trying to transfer all the best, despite technical limitations – even the boss sprites look pretty good, although crap, but fully functional, as if they were the original. But censorship spoiled the experience for the players of that time (but not for me in general), which is why many, not having learned from the MK experience, were left somewhat disappointed.

GTA 2 was released a few weeks earlier than the GBC port of the first part – so it was clear that the portable version would not be released in the same year. And so, already in 2000, when DMA had already become Rockstar North, a continuation on GBC was released.
The sequel became the fourth game in the series (GTA 1, London 1969, London 1961, GTA 2) and the first where the protagonist is “fixed” – he became Claude Speed. He also appeared in a short film based on the game. It is worth noting that Speed ​​is not a very good person and an anarchist in the most vulgar sense of the word. However, in addition, he is not romanticized (quoting recent remarks by US President Donald Trump) and looks like a real gangster. What is true, only in the main versions – in return, GBC players received six characters, who, however, cannot be renamed: Caligari, Candy, Eddie, Gretchen, Paulo and Ruben. Also, the sprites do not look very high quality, since their portraits are designed in blue, which is why everything blends together. By the way, in the game itself a small section has appeared in the lower indicator, where a portrait of a certain hero is displayed. It’s unclear who he is, and in all cases the protagonist’s icon is an unknown man. Question: why then make a choice of characters/this icon??
It’s immediately obvious that both the authority system and the gangs with their own transport and system have been ported. What is true, at the same time you can notice the graphics of the game. It would be better if they hid it. At first it seems that it has become more detailed, but the red gamma (from the main game) and the world looks like it was created for an old NES based on a movie of the category "B». It seems as if the world has degenerated.

The retrofuturism of the second part created its own unique atmosphere, but there is also potential here that is negated.

GTA 2 – cyberpunk. Events take place in the future – 2013, year of release – 1999, cities are controlled by companies – the player needs to go through three districts of Anyuea City, and each will have three gangs, and the third will always be the Zaibatsu corporation, appropriate weapons have been added, and cars are also in the appropriate style. In general, GTA 2 is part of the cyberpunk genre.

But not without good things: now the hero can find weapons at the very spawn point. The protagonist himself, by the way, began to move much faster – and that’s pretty good. Although sometimes it seems like he’s on speed.
Continuing to praise the port, I note that the city has become alive (within the GBC of course) – there are pedestrians and adequate traffic. It’s true that NPCs can sometimes fall into a stupor and run in circles, but they still exist, and in quite large numbers too.
What about the appearance?? As I understand it, the developers transferred the sprites from the previous port to the new one, but they were given work on the city too late, so we have what we have, unfortunately.

T.To. Since the engine is the same, I can’t say much – many details remain the same as in the first port. But it is clear that last time Tarantulas we had fun and were obsessed with our product, this time economic factors and deadlines worked, as it seems to me. Also influenced by the merger with Rockstar Games and reorganization into Rockstar Lincoln. Despite the fact that some things were tweaked, the global problem – management – was left. For obvious reasons. Shooting, in general, is suitable for use both there and there.To. the pace is not quite fast and stormy unlike the successor of these ports. In the second part, unnecessary things appeared, like the same protagonist icon, which used a sprite of an incomprehensible person. Why was he needed??

At the end "reviews“If you can call them that, I’ll finally say that the ports are not bad, although I repeat that in the second part the graphics were worse than in the first (although the sizes of the locations were not very different in numbers), but if in the original of ’97 the graphics were also not fire, then the version of ’99 caught up in this regard.

Rockstar Lincoln, which has already undergone transformation a couple of times, remains at the moment a subsidiary studio of Rockstar in the city of the same name. They never returned to the GTA ports – now their job is localization and other similar things. However, there was a small scandal associated with them: the guys stated that while working on RDR 2 they worked overtime, which is why they overworked and were tired. As a result, Rockstar Games introduced a more flexible schedule for them in 2019 and generally improved their production. The next part will tell about GTA Advance – a visual continuation of the first GTA, the actual successor to the GBC ports and a prequel to GTA III.