Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City have been reverse-engineered on PC by a team of modders and programmers. The two early entries in the series were the games that first made GTA into a household name, but the PC versions aren’t easily playable on modern machines without substantial modifications.
That’s finally changed, thanks to the team behind “re3” and “reVC.” You can’t experience the mods without a PC copy of GTA 3 or Vice City, but if you have them, it’s quite impressive work. (You can find both on Steam.) Both projects add some much-needed features to these games, including native support for widescreen resolutions, improved effects from the PS2 versions, and debug menus. Re3 also includes a map of Liberty City in the pause menu, which, believe it or not, was actually missing from all versions of GTA 3. Definitely make sure to switch the controls to “classic,” unless you like strafing with an analog stick.
The combined project has reverse-engineered the two games, meaning that it’ll be far easier for hobbyists to craft interesting mods for the early GTA entries in the future. Based on the GitHub repository, it looks like the team is also tackling the PSP side-story Liberty City Stories, which uses the same map as GTA 3, though there’s no word on when that’ll be available. In other GTA news, Take-Two’s CEO recently said that single-player is not dead, despite the obvious popularity of multiplayer games. We also recently got word that GTA 5 has sold more than 140 million copies, further cementing its place as one of the best-selling games of all time.
GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.
