Grand Theft Auto (video game)
Grand Theft Auto is an action-adventure video game developed by DMA Design and published by BMG Interactive. It was first released in Europe and North America in October 1997 for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. It was later re-released on 12 December 1997 in Europe and 30 June 1998 in North America for the PlayStation. It is the first instalment of the "Grand Theft Auto" series, to be followed by 1999's "Grand Theft Auto 2". The series, which has led to five main entries and several special edition games over 16 years, has sold more than 150 million units as of September 2013. The story follows a group of criminals in three fictionalised versions of US cities as they perform bank robberies, assassinations, and other illegal activities for their respective crime syndicates.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
The game is set in 1986 in fictional Vice City, which is based heavily on the city of Miami. Vice City previously appeared in the original "Grand Theft Auto" (1997); the development team decided to reuse the location and incorporate ideas from within the studio and the fanbase. They wanted to satirise a location that was not contemporary, unlike "Grand Theft Auto III"s Liberty City. The team wanted to choose a location that had various similarities and differences to New York City—the inspiration of Liberty City—eventually leading them to Miami, which producer Leslie Benzies describes as "a party town, all sun and sea and sex, but with that same dark edge underneath". Sam Houser called it "the grooviest era of crime because it didn't even feel like it was crime ... it was a totally topsy-turvy back-to-front period of time". The team intended to make Vice City a "living, breathing city", for the player to feel like "life still goes on" while the character is inside a building.