With the “flickering” sprites in GTA Advanced, this was actually using the low LCD response rate of the GBA screen to render a psudo transparency effect that is not evident on emulators by default. The “Interframe Blending” option in mGBA will simulate this effect. This is also seen in Golden Sun and a couple other games
@@Krishy-dz4ov Agreed, Gran Turismo on the PSP actually did the same for a psudo anti-aliasing effect, shifting the rendering up/down by one pixel each frame. Thankfully can be disabled in game if desired via TV Out checkbox. This is more or less what the Golden Sun world map does as well, although it’s used elsewhere for transparency
Something I think is neat in VCS, you can actually return to the stadium and watch that Phil Collins song from that mission start to finish, fully animated in the game engine.
Playing VCS in general was a longtime custom of my teenage years. Had a PSP with it and I'm pretty sure I played it much longer than any other GTA game. I was so close to 100% it...
Vice City Stories... My first introduction to a GTA. I just borrowed a friend's completed save and mucked about the city from time to time, but years later I would return to it and work my way to getting to the second island open. Loved it.
Chinatown Wars was such a great game with all its QTE's and minigames and the drug empire was so well done . Such a shame they'll never attempt to be this ambitious ever again .
@@TylerPerry-qd7us They tend to only do that when making portable titles (eg; Midnight Club La remix , Gta VCS) which sadly is not the case anymore . They have a bad relationship with Nintendo and doubt Sony is ever going to make another handheld .
@@yoloswaggins1579 They should have kept fully voiced dialogues and a normal radio since there were fully voiced NPC chatter in the game but since this was a Nintendo Ds title it's understandable .
To this day, Vice City Stories is still the best GTA game I've ever played, together with IV. The city, the story, the characters, the music, it was amazing. It's a real shame it kinda got abandoned by Rockstar. No mobile release, no remaster, nothing.
Both LCS and VCS were both overshadowed by SA which imo is still the best GTA to this day, but yea it is a shame but at least LCS got a mobile release. I think VCS can’t get a mobile release cause of the copyright of Phil Collins.
It's criminal that LCS, VCS and CW are so often overlooked in GTA retrospectives. Glad you're covering all bases, even the old top down ports and Advance. Too bad the novel interface design of the DS original of CW was left out, but this video's coverage is more than enough.
In regard to the flickering in GTA Advance: The screen on the GBA had a lower pixel response time (other words the image wouldn't disappear instantly on the next frame) so flickering between an image and nothing would blend the two together resulting in the illusion of transparency. This was a common technique on the GBA and you can see in other games like F-Zero or Fire Emblem. It won't appear properly on modern screens w/ high pixel response times but emulators usually have an option (usually called frame blending) to restore it albeit with some inherently minor ghosting.
That compressed loop pf audio for each radio station mentioned at 11:30 is actually present in every GTA game before San Andreas. That was the first game to have individual files for every song, and thus play them in a random order. Also, GTA: Vice City Stories has the greatest licensed soundtrack in history imo
IIRC GTA IV also uses a loop for the radios as well. At least for certain stations anyway like The Beat. If anything I thought that was the case for every GTA. Never realized SA had an element of randomization to it.
@@VexAcer Yeah, it was something I noticed especially in GTA IV and SA, because III and VC you could go into the audio files and pull a .wav file of each radio station and even replace it with your own (in my tinkering of audio modding for III and VC)
I just recently scored a copy of LCS and VCS for the PS2. So glad I have them back in my collection, great memories of playing them on my PSP way back when.
Advance gives massive Hotline Miami vibes for some reason, the way characters are portrayed from a topdown angle, bloody deaths and the bright colours help.
One of the things I always found appealing about Hotline Miami is it feels like someone made a portable version of a third person shooter, but they made it better than the console version.
Being intimately familiar with Liberty City in GTA IV, it's seriously impressive how Rockstar translated LC in Chinatown Wars on the DS. Not to mention using the touchscreen for contextual actions, like three different hotwiring microgames depending on how nice the car was, or filling up bottles at a gas pump to make molotov cocktails.
I've never considered LCS, VCS or CW as spin-offs, and people normally do... It makes me sad because that makes me think they understand them as a lower level GTA, and I think they are as important as the other GTA's to understand the story.
i really love this guy's commentary. it really feels like he's explaining everything to me as if he were talking to me in person. great informative video and really great commentary.
I played so many hours of LCS. I love head radio (15 ways' Drive is a particular favorite) and just driving around the city, exploring every single alleyway and dock and building was a lot of fun for me.
This video made me think about the portable Driver games: there's a very impressive looking version of Driv3r on GBA and a PSP exclusive called Driver 76 which I can only assume might have started life as a Parallel Lines port since the entire game takes place in the 70s instead of half of it. And then there's Driver 2 Advance I guess
I just finished Driver 76 on my PS Vita, I really enjoyed it. Parallel Lines on PS2 was such a good game. The time skip is so cool to see the change between 70s to 2006. S The hole game looks and feels different but still familiar.
My fond memories of chinatown wars mirrors yours, I had always been tempted to revisit it but based on this its probably a relic left in the past for me
I replayed it last year and I thought it held up pretty well! I played the iOS version on an old iPad: you get the benefit of actual touch controls for a game obviously designed for them, as well as much improved graphics/audio over the DS version. Personally I *liked* the story, I always assumed a good chunk of the clunky dialogue and silly plot points were a deliberate/fun nod to the kung-fu B-movies the game was clearly inspired by!
I still enjoy it. IMO it’s the funniest GTA game purely because of how much everyone in the story treats Huang like dirt. Also the super short missions are fantastic for quick play sessions
Chinatown Wars is to this day my favorite GTA game ever. First played it on the DS back in the day and the more arcade like features, evading and actually DEFEATING the police, drug dealing for money, everything was so fun. Later I played the PSP and Android versions which have better graphics, but the DS one still holds up pretty f*cking well!
An amazing overview of some of my most beloved games of all time and you even had facts a GTA-nut like me did not know. Thank you! . Getting a PSP and VCS was even more magical then entering IV's Liberty City on X360
I'm playing GTA Advance on actual hardware and it is significantly smoother than your footage, and i'm not entirely sure why. With that said, everything else that you mentioned is still true. Great video btw! That's so much wonderful information and it's inspired me to actually play through VCS for the first time!
I think the only way to buy Vice City Stories digitally is the PS Vita collection, bundled with Liberty City Stories and China Wars. Never bought it though.
Liberty City Stories was my most played GTA game as a teenager. Got hooked on the story as someone who's never really gotten into 3, plus driving around and listening to Lazlo is always a treat. Dude's got a great presence in the games he's in. Never got as into VC Stories, but was proud of myself for figuring out that the military guys at the start won't shoot unless you do and they drop their rifles. Think I might load up some Stories in PCSX2 this weekend. I never have played the PS2 versions. Once upon a time a Los Santos Stories was listed as an upcoming game when I'd religiously read Tips & Tricks, so I don't know if that was actually in development at some point or if T&T was making stuff up. Would love to see what was done of that if it was in development.
Leaning my pre-watch comment to say that I love you(r channel)! Seeing that bolt on my front page makes my heart race. I’ve got the Rona right now so I’ve been binging TH-cam too
Fascinating coverage, I really enjoyed it. I remember getting a little way into VCS and just feeling underwhelmed and dropped it. This video shows I should have stuck it out as I love the sound of the business building aspects that I hadn't gotten to yet. I'll go see if I can find the UMD and try it out. The Advance game looks sweet too, I had no idea it even existed.
GTA Advanced has a small place in my heart. It ended up being my only game for a few weeks when my top screen of my ds went out. I finished it, but I don't think I'd ever play it again.
I have LCS and VCS on PS2 and I loveee those games. Totally still hold up on console despite the frame rate of LCS you just get used to it because the game is so fun
Phil Collins was both a blessing and a curse in VCS, missions involving him were iconic but because of the rights to his songs and digital likeness VCS is the only 3D universe game not to be ported to mobile on its 10th anniv
Say what you will about Chinatown Wars but it has my favorite NPC dialogue that's so relatable cause I played it on DS. "WHY AM I ALWAYS SO HONGREH?!?" truly a question for the ages, random pedestrian. i too wonder why i'm always so hongreh
Both of the PSP GTA games were incredibly impressive at the time. The player character in VCS was a bit different that the typical GTA protagonist too and seemed to be the start of Rockstar trying to make protagonists who are not psychopaths. Its a shame we never got a San Andreas Stories as that would have been an insane technical achievement on PSP.
you are really selling me on giving these games a shot. Like a lot of people I have it in my, "Ill play it someday" list but I also write it off because its mobile
Two things about GTA LCS You can shoot and move with the right weapons like the Pistol and the Mac-10 looking SMG and also there's a reference in the game Manual for GTA3 that says Motorcycles were outlawed because of people refusing to wear helmuts; which i'd like to think is also a cute forshadowing to GTAIVs Helmut Mechanic. Obviously I'm not very far into your video but loving everything so far, can't wait to see your thoughts on Advanced (one I never played) and Chinatown Wars (my favorite of bunch)
Wait a minute, GTA2 doesn't take place in multiple real world cities, it takes place in different parts of a single city called "Anywhere, USA" or just "The City"
Yeah. The only real cities we see are London and Manchester as expansions to GTA 1. GTA 2 is the most fictional a city has ever been in the series so far.
Yeah I'm looking back at my notes because now that I'm reading that with fresh eyes, I think tired 2am brain wrote down some fun trivia I'd found, and when I edited that part of the video together like 2-3 months ago I never caught it and just trusted my notes/VO. Ignore that! The trivia was related to GTA 1 GBC anyway, not 2, so I don't even know how that one slipped oops. Don't trust your old self! (Here's the trivia: One of the pre-release magazine pieces or something I'd found touched on the port using the real world names for NYC etc., rather than Liberty City - which I found kinda interesting because it got far enough along that the game was being covered properly before the port studio actually caught it!)
@@TheGoldenBolt That does make sense. GTA 1 has some reference to the real cities. The PC versions map file names use the real city names instead of the fictional ones. And that theme tune the game has, it mentions a few real life police departments. There's even a rock song in there that mentions "Cruising down the freeway with the guys in L.A." So whether it's in game reference by the music or outside file structure names the game has mentioned the real cities before.
GTA 1 and 2 on the GBC were insane. Yeah there were not a lot of cars and peds on the road at once but to have the open world and fast driving on the GBC was still pretty crazy.
You can move and shoot with two of the one-handed SMGs, the MAC and Tec-9. It was the zi that was keeping you in place. It also helps to get unlimited stamina from the Ambulance Missions.
I hate that vice city stories is tied to the original vice city. Vic Vance's character deserved better. He's easily top 3 all time of most tragic video game character stories. In my head Canon, he survived the opening of vice city and just left town without anyone knowing. That makes me feel better lol.
I think the "weak dialog" joke (if you can call it that) might be a Johnny Bravo reference? I remember hearing it on the show while Johnny was watching a DBZ parody
What gets me about the GTA Definitive Edition collection.... they didn't NEED to "remaster" it. They could have just straight up ported the ps2 games as-is, to newer consoles, and maybe updated the aiming to be closer to GTA4/5. And...it woulda sold really well, and probably ended up with way better reviews than it ended up with. BUT, more importantly, if they didn't have to focus on trying to remaster the games, they could have tossed in the PS2 ports of Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories. A 5 game bundle of really good games that haven't been properly ported to newer consoles, with updated aiming mechanics would have been a day 1 purchase for me. Instead. I have a PS2 emulator on my Xbox Series S. I can play all 5 of those games on there, and they run great, even upscaled. But, I also have all 5 of the games on my PS Vita. So I have two entirely different ways to play all 5 PS2-era GTA games. Kinda makes the idea of buying janky versions for $40+, a bit hard to imagine.
so I've watched this vid multiple times because your analysis of LCS and VCS was dope. Would you ever consider doing a deep dive into the story of VCS? Would watch it repeatedly
The GTA games have some of my favorite characters in not just video games but in fictional media in general hurt a bit when he said that people who enjoy the stories of these games are weirdos lol
Yeah, i love the old gta stories, the characters arent the most "realistic", well if you exclude gta 4, that took the more grimmy realistic approach, but they are really well-written and fun. They all kinda fit into the theme of the games, being a parody of the USA, thats why they are over the top and full with pop culture references.
I was looking to buy a new game for my aging Game Boy Color when I was about 8. I went to the Target with my mom. I looked at the Game Boy games they had. I saw Zelda Oracle games, but didn't get those because I already had Link's Awakening and thought they were just Link's Awakening with different cover art. I saw a Tonka truck game, but something about a GBC Grand Theft Auto game caught my eye. I asked my mom if I could get it, and she said no. I think she knew the name Grand Theft Auto from the news or something and knew that it wasn't for kids. I ended up getting Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for the Game Boy Color. Little did I know that that was actually one of the last games to be released for that system, and is actually a pretty good JRPG-style game with a surprising amount of minigames. I think I made a good choice in getting a game at Target that day.
Have started playing through these on my homebrew Vita, honestly, I'm really impressed with what they managed to accomplish, particularly the GBA game.. cheers for the roundup ❤
1:00:23 = you can see that, right after the player, there's a NPC-controlled Van that just straight up drives into the water too 😆 In the PC/PS1 version of the game, there are barriers at the entrance of the "broken bridge" and no cars (other that the player) ever enter it.
I didn't get VCS when it was released and finished it first time around 2020. Man it was such a nostalgia trip and felt like getting together with an old friend you haven't seen in decade. Vice City was my 2nd favourite game as kid and I felt VCS did the city justice. Story was kinda meh, that is true.
No, you're correct! Playing VC ("Definitive") back when I was first putting together the early plans for this video either fooled me or did in fact tweak the radio setup, but it had me thinking it ran a sort-of hybrid between 3's loops and SA's dynamic setup. That's what I get for not double-checking annotated pieces of the script a month later, and just trusting my past self!
Vice city stories is super underrated i remember when it first came out i bought it along side liberty city stories in one package and some posters for both games, the story was amazing and the empire building was great.
This video is pretty great, I remember emulating GTA Advance in my phone a few years ago and having a lot of fun with it, I'd like to say that Chinatown Wars doesn't have a 1:1 recreation of the map in 4, it's pretty close but the streets sometimes have different layouts and there's a few where elevation or something else is different, but if you are familiar with the map in 4 it is pretty great, the dealing is definitely the highlight of that game and it's something I really wish was in 4 because that game has gangs but they aren't really prominent and it would have been cool to see them around in the map and being able to buy and sell them stuff
NECK SNAPPING WAS USEFUL. After being kicked from the army, you can use that thing by the wall on the side of the base to jump in, snap 3 guys necks for M16 ammo, and you got the beat rifle!
Although the points you made about this game were critical and understandable. Playing this as a 12 year old was the coolest thing ever and I just didn’t care at the time. There was so much detail with stuff that you didn’t think would need it like at 0:47:30. The officer frantically running at the car and pulling the locked door. Despite its flaws, I loved it.
Personaly i love Chinatown Wars, my favourite handheld gta and favourite ds/psp game. And i like the story and writing, even if it's quite cynical - but i really like Huang. Overall i think it just plays great, it has by far the best police chases, and i acutally really like combat, although it gets leagues better once you get the sword, then it's just great. Although i have to agree that the city doesn't really work that well when it comes to top down perspective, at least on psp it kinda just blends together. Apart from music i prefer DS version to psp. And i kinda like GBA GTA :p Not that i love it, but i like it, i think it's unfairly treated - good car handling (and really cool pseudo 3d tilt of the vehicles). It's story might not be great but, and it lacks radio stations, but for me the only problem is choppy framerate. I always thought LCS had really weak story, with no likeable characters, and i never enjoyed it. And VCS while amazing in terms of technology, has such sad story i was never able to finish it. Way too dark. Btw. really awesome bunch of reviews, subbed!
Such a nostalgia trip! LCS was the first GTA I ever beat without cheats... I never realized how packed it actually was. I really just wanted San Andreas for PSP, but looking back, this was more than enough.
I beat GTA Liberty City Stories & the whole time i was thinking. Wow this seems kind of long for a older GTA game. Thanks for confirming, that yes the game is infact long and was not just my nostalgia clouding my judgement. GTA Vice City Stories was really good. has so many new mechanics & between the two games. You can see that start of a lot of game mechanics. Some that didnt make it.
best review of VCS on the internet. IMO this is the best PS2 era Grand Theft Auto. Essentially when considering GTA 5 more or less makes GTA SA redundant.
My aunt got so pissed at me when I was like 12 and telling my cousin about all the drugs I was selling on Chinatown Wars. I got way too into the drug dealing mini game, I can't imagine why parents got mad
I pre ordered my Sony PSP and picked it up on UK release day with a handful of very expensive games, UMD videos and accessories. But the most memorable part of owning a PSP was GTA Liberty City Stories release day. I was by far the most incredible thing at the time to play a handheld version of GTA to a very high game standard. It was almost like having a PS2 in my pocket. The game was great and despite having clunky controls, like most PSP games, it was well done. My favourite part was that you could use your own Music to play as an in game radio station! My PSP was my music player, about the time that people started to buy MP3 players and have 10 songs on them. I could play GTA and create the soundtrack! Which was made better as PSP memory cards became bigger and cheaper. I really enjoyed vice city stories as a game, but it didnt have the same WOW factor as Liberty city stories did, because we already knew the minimum standard. For many of us, owning GTA was also vital as for many years it was the ONLY way to do homebrew once the firmware had been patched.
Really bizarre how the only entry in a series that heavily involves drug use/trafficking only had that as a gameplay mechanic in the entry originally released on a Nintendo console. I want to know how that even got on the system or if it was just Rockstar's clout at the time and/or the DS doing so well at that point Nintendo didn't care what was put on there.
Vice City and Liberty City Stories were really the peak handheld GTA experience, especially for their prequel nature. Rockstar prequels ngl are quite great, especially the PSP ones and RDR2
11:23 "They actually achieved this by setting each radio station, ads and commercials and all, as one compressed looping 25 to 30 minute audio track rather than a more dynamic mix like in previous games." Say what? It's exactly the same as it was in III or VC.
If that's the case, remove the plural and read that as "like in the previous game!" I could've sworn when I played Vice City back in January that the stations were a half-step between III's single looping audio track and the dynamic mix like they were in San Andreas a couple years later, but if San Andreas was the lone innovator there then either they tweaked the Definitive versions' radio stations (which I'd believe given music licensing, thinking about it now) or they just fooled me.
25:42 something started to feel strange here. Only at 27:25 did I get why. Discretely in the background, a soundtrack from Horizon Chase Turbo plays instead of GTA music. Having played the game just today, I thought it was an earworm haunting me, but instead it was the video. Very strange experience indeed. I must have been the only one to notice.
Vice City Stories is such a banger of a game Edit: when u bring up your problem with the writing of the prequels, i dont know what you think of RDR2 but would u agree if i said that these games clearly show the writing team at rockstar practicing for how to properly write a prequel with that game
Nice video! You should play GTA: Sindacco Chronicles, its a fan mod of LCS, parallel story to lcs, 60 new story missions and basically everything except the map, cars and weapons changed, new side missions, vice city style bussines properties with misions, and a simplified VCS style bussines empire, you can crouch and there's helicopters. The story isn't it's strong point (and there's AI voiceover lol) but it's really good for being a mod
If you think about it, patreon.com/TheGoldenBolt is sort of like spending money on GTA Online Shark Cards, except better.
Wholeheartedly agreed.
That’s a bad investment
I am an native Leeds person where this game is produced
That’s a good point
Ok will do
With the “flickering” sprites in GTA Advanced, this was actually using the low LCD response rate of the GBA screen to render a psudo transparency effect that is not evident on emulators by default. The “Interframe Blending” option in mGBA will simulate this effect. This is also seen in Golden Sun and a couple other games
That’s honestly a really cool way to take advantage of weak hardware
@@Krishy-dz4ov Agreed, Gran Turismo on the PSP actually did the same for a psudo anti-aliasing effect, shifting the rendering up/down by one pixel each frame. Thankfully can be disabled in game if desired via TV Out checkbox. This is more or less what the Golden Sun world map does as well, although it’s used elsewhere for transparency
Something I think is neat in VCS, you can actually return to the stadium and watch that Phil Collins song from that mission start to finish, fully animated in the game engine.
Playing Vice City Stories on a Vita with the dual stick patch took alot of my time a few years ago
That’s the phase I’m in now and it’s going great! Just finished vice city stories to 100% and now starting LBC
@@dxni_05 those side missions with smuggling and stuff were tough
@@dxni_05 I want to play it too. But don't know if I get GTA Chinatown Wars first or the complete package, it's 35 Euro.
Is it in the game naturally for ps vita or by hack.
Playing VCS in general was a longtime custom of my teenage years. Had a PSP with it and I'm pretty sure I played it much longer than any other GTA game. I was so close to 100% it...
Vice City Stories... My first introduction to a GTA. I just borrowed a friend's completed save and mucked about the city from time to time, but years later I would return to it and work my way to getting to the second island open. Loved it.
The fact that Vice City Stories has Phil Collins and a concert of his in it makes it the best GTA game by default.
Everything about that game
the game is fantastic.
facts, end of story
Chinatown Wars was such a great game with all its QTE's and minigames and the drug empire was so well done . Such a shame they'll never attempt to be this ambitious ever again .
right i hope they put the same drug system into gta6 weird that they dont take what they create for each game and add onto it
Yeah the minigames jumpstarting cars and stuff I remember putting a fish on someone's cars radiator. And the soundtrack was really nice.
@@TylerPerry-qd7us They tend to only do that when making portable titles (eg; Midnight Club La remix , Gta VCS) which sadly is not the case anymore . They have a bad relationship with Nintendo and doubt Sony is ever going to make another handheld .
@@yoloswaggins1579 They should have kept fully voiced dialogues and a normal radio since there were fully voiced NPC chatter in the game but since this was a Nintendo Ds title it's understandable .
Yep, I really loved how unique it felt for the GTA franchise.
To this day, Vice City Stories is still the best GTA game I've ever played, together with IV. The city, the story, the characters, the music, it was amazing. It's a real shame it kinda got abandoned by Rockstar. No mobile release, no remaster, nothing.
I play gta vcs everyday
is that why vice city stories is very pricey on the ps2
@@TTBurgerThePlayStationGamer yup
Both LCS and VCS were both overshadowed by SA which imo is still the best GTA to this day, but yea it is a shame but at least LCS got a mobile release. I think VCS can’t get a mobile release cause of the copyright of Phil Collins.
@@StraightEdgeKnight19 music licenses
It's criminal that LCS, VCS and CW are so often overlooked in GTA retrospectives. Glad you're covering all bases, even the old top down ports and Advance.
Too bad the novel interface design of the DS original of CW was left out, but this video's coverage is more than enough.
when i was a kid my dad surprised me after school one day with vice city stories and i still remember the excitement & how much fun i had with it
In regard to the flickering in GTA Advance: The screen on the GBA had a lower pixel response time (other words the image wouldn't disappear instantly on the next frame) so flickering between an image and nothing would blend the two together resulting in the illusion of transparency.
This was a common technique on the GBA and you can see in other games like F-Zero or Fire Emblem.
It won't appear properly on modern screens w/ high pixel response times but emulators usually have an option (usually called frame blending) to restore it albeit with some inherently minor ghosting.
That compressed loop pf audio for each radio station mentioned at 11:30 is actually present in every GTA game before San Andreas. That was the first game to have individual files for every song, and thus play them in a random order.
Also, GTA: Vice City Stories has the greatest licensed soundtrack in history imo
IIRC GTA IV also uses a loop for the radios as well. At least for certain stations anyway like The Beat.
If anything I thought that was the case for every GTA. Never realized SA had an element of randomization to it.
@@VexAcer Yeah, it was something I noticed especially in GTA IV and SA, because III and VC you could go into the audio files and pull a .wav file of each radio station and even replace it with your own (in my tinkering of audio modding for III and VC)
I love how the hidden packages equivalent in GTA: VCS is a reference to the song "99 Luftballons", which was featured in GTA Vice City on Wave 103.
I just recently scored a copy of LCS and VCS for the PS2. So glad I have them back in my collection, great memories of playing them on my PSP way back when.
Advance gives massive Hotline Miami vibes for some reason, the way characters are portrayed from a topdown angle, bloody deaths and the bright colours help.
One of the things I always found appealing about Hotline Miami is it feels like someone made a portable version of a third person shooter, but they made it better than the console version.
Being intimately familiar with Liberty City in GTA IV, it's seriously impressive how Rockstar translated LC in Chinatown Wars on the DS. Not to mention using the touchscreen for contextual actions, like three different hotwiring microgames depending on how nice the car was, or filling up bottles at a gas pump to make molotov cocktails.
I've never considered LCS, VCS or CW as spin-offs, and people normally do... It makes me sad because that makes me think they understand them as a lower level GTA, and I think they are as important as the other GTA's to understand the story.
i really love this guy's commentary. it really feels like he's explaining everything to me as if he were talking to me in person. great informative video and really great commentary.
I played so many hours of LCS. I love head radio (15 ways' Drive is a particular favorite) and just driving around the city, exploring every single alleyway and dock and building was a lot of fun for me.
LCS has been my favorite GTA game since i put my hands to it, it just has such a charm to it
This video made me think about the portable Driver games: there's a very impressive looking version of Driv3r on GBA and a PSP exclusive called Driver 76 which I can only assume might have started life as a Parallel Lines port since the entire game takes place in the 70s instead of half of it. And then there's Driver 2 Advance I guess
I just finished Driver 76 on my PS Vita, I really enjoyed it. Parallel Lines on PS2 was such a good game. The time skip is so cool to see the change between 70s to 2006. S The hole game looks and feels different but still familiar.
Don't forget about cop the recruit for Ds it's in the same universe as driver just doesn't share the name
My fond memories of chinatown wars mirrors yours, I had always been tempted to revisit it but based on this its probably a relic left in the past for me
Better to give it a shot yourself. People often differ in options on games
Give it a try, it's still awesome
I mean the story is meh, but the game itself is still a cool hybrid between modern GTA and the classic top down stuff.
I replayed it last year and I thought it held up pretty well! I played the iOS version on an old iPad: you get the benefit of actual touch controls for a game obviously designed for them, as well as much improved graphics/audio over the DS version. Personally I *liked* the story, I always assumed a good chunk of the clunky dialogue and silly plot points were a deliberate/fun nod to the kung-fu B-movies the game was clearly inspired by!
I still enjoy it. IMO it’s the funniest GTA game purely because of how much everyone in the story treats Huang like dirt.
Also the super short missions are fantastic for quick play sessions
Chinatown Wars is to this day my favorite GTA game ever. First played it on the DS back in the day and the more arcade like features, evading and actually DEFEATING the police, drug dealing for money, everything was so fun. Later I played the PSP and Android versions which have better graphics, but the DS one still holds up pretty f*cking well!
An amazing overview of some of my most beloved games of all time and you even had facts a GTA-nut like me did not know. Thank you! . Getting a PSP and VCS was even more magical then entering IV's Liberty City on X360
I'm playing GTA Advance on actual hardware and it is significantly smoother than your footage, and i'm not entirely sure why. With that said, everything else that you mentioned is still true.
Great video btw! That's so much wonderful information and it's inspired me to actually play through VCS for the first time!
Played it on a different emulator and it ran a lot smoother as well when rendering buildings and other 3D objects
Just found this gem of a channel 20 minutes ago from MySims and i'm already early to an upload W
lol me too right now a hour ago
You and me both!
I think the only way to buy Vice City Stories digitally is the PS Vita collection, bundled with Liberty City Stories and China Wars. Never bought it though.
That’s how I managed to buy it recently!
@@Pandaramaster Maybe I oughta do the same, so I don't regret anything. Besides, I remember really enjoying this game when it was new.
@@Pandaramaster where can you buy the collection?
@@Gloryboyquan Yes.
Its on ps2
Liberty City Stories was my most played GTA game as a teenager. Got hooked on the story as someone who's never really gotten into 3, plus driving around and listening to Lazlo is always a treat. Dude's got a great presence in the games he's in. Never got as into VC Stories, but was proud of myself for figuring out that the military guys at the start won't shoot unless you do and they drop their rifles. Think I might load up some Stories in PCSX2 this weekend. I never have played the PS2 versions.
Once upon a time a Los Santos Stories was listed as an upcoming game when I'd religiously read Tips & Tricks, so I don't know if that was actually in development at some point or if T&T was making stuff up. Would love to see what was done of that if it was in development.
Leaning my pre-watch comment to say that I love you(r channel)! Seeing that bolt on my front page makes my heart race. I’ve got the Rona right now so I’ve been binging TH-cam too
Fascinating coverage, I really enjoyed it.
I remember getting a little way into VCS and just feeling underwhelmed and dropped it. This video shows I should have stuck it out as I love the sound of the business building aspects that I hadn't gotten to yet. I'll go see if I can find the UMD and try it out.
The Advance game looks sweet too, I had no idea it even existed.
Am I the only one who loves the GTA IV theme and storyline?
Awesome video by the way, so much I didn't know about GTA in general, GREAT JOB!
Woah wasn’t expecting another vid so soon! Awesome!
GTA Advanced has a small place in my heart. It ended up being my only game for a few weeks when my top screen of my ds went out. I finished it, but I don't think I'd ever play it again.
lol 😆 that game horrible bro
@@Gloryboyquan hence the I don't think I'd ever play it again
I have LCS and VCS on PS2 and I loveee those games. Totally still hold up on console despite the frame rate of LCS you just get used to it because the game is so fun
Unpopular opinion: Vice City Stories is better than Vice City
Phil Collins was both a blessing and a curse in VCS, missions involving him were iconic but because of the rights to his songs and digital likeness VCS is the only 3D universe game not to be ported to mobile on its 10th anniv
He's still quite alve isn't he... odds are T2 aren't even trying to negotiate a new license.
Say what you will about Chinatown Wars but it has my favorite NPC dialogue that's so relatable cause I played it on DS.
"WHY AM I ALWAYS SO HONGREH?!?"
truly a question for the ages, random pedestrian. i too wonder why i'm always so hongreh
Both of the PSP GTA games were incredibly impressive at the time. The player character in VCS was a bit different that the typical GTA protagonist too and seemed to be the start of Rockstar trying to make protagonists who are not psychopaths. Its a shame we never got a San Andreas Stories as that would have been an insane technical achievement on PSP.
Awesome video man! Really fun and satisfying watch, thanks!
Last time I was this high you released a video on dig-dug and blew my freaking mind, so really good timing to upload another video.
you are really selling me on giving these games a shot. Like a lot of people I have it in my, "Ill play it someday" list but I also write it off because its mobile
Two things about GTA LCS
You can shoot and move with the right weapons like the Pistol and the Mac-10 looking SMG and also there's a reference in the game Manual for GTA3 that says Motorcycles were outlawed because of people refusing to wear helmuts; which i'd like to think is also a cute forshadowing to GTAIVs Helmut Mechanic.
Obviously I'm not very far into your video but loving everything so far, can't wait to see your thoughts on Advanced (one I never played) and Chinatown Wars (my favorite of bunch)
GTA Advance features a lanetracking system aswell. if you push UP on the dpad, the car alines with the road.
Wait a minute, GTA2 doesn't take place in multiple real world cities, it takes place in different parts of a single city called "Anywhere, USA" or just "The City"
Yeah. The only real cities we see are London and Manchester as expansions to GTA 1. GTA 2 is the most fictional a city has ever been in the series so far.
Yeah I'm looking back at my notes because now that I'm reading that with fresh eyes, I think tired 2am brain wrote down some fun trivia I'd found, and when I edited that part of the video together like 2-3 months ago I never caught it and just trusted my notes/VO. Ignore that!
The trivia was related to GTA 1 GBC anyway, not 2, so I don't even know how that one slipped oops. Don't trust your old self! (Here's the trivia: One of the pre-release magazine pieces or something I'd found touched on the port using the real world names for NYC etc., rather than Liberty City - which I found kinda interesting because it got far enough along that the game was being covered properly before the port studio actually caught it!)
@@TheGoldenBolt That does make sense. GTA 1 has some reference to the real cities. The PC versions map file names use the real city names instead of the fictional ones. And that theme tune the game has, it mentions a few real life police departments. There's even a rock song in there that mentions "Cruising down the freeway with the guys in L.A."
So whether it's in game reference by the music or outside file structure names the game has mentioned the real cities before.
GTA 1 and 2 on the GBC were insane. Yeah there were not a lot of cars and peds on the road at once but to have the open world and fast driving on the GBC was still pretty crazy.
You can move and shoot with two of the one-handed SMGs, the MAC and Tec-9. It was the zi that was keeping you in place.
It also helps to get unlimited stamina from the Ambulance Missions.
Loving this video! Excited for the handheld sims and mysims:)
I remember playing vice city stories so much back then on psp
I hate that vice city stories is tied to the original vice city. Vic Vance's character deserved better. He's easily top 3 all time of most tragic video game character stories.
In my head Canon, he survived the opening of vice city and just left town without anyone knowing. That makes me feel better lol.
My head canon is that Lance got Pete to stand in for Vic because Vic wanted nothing to do with drugs at the end of VCS.
I think the "weak dialog" joke (if you can call it that) might be a Johnny Bravo reference? I remember hearing it on the show while Johnny was watching a DBZ parody
What gets me about the GTA Definitive Edition collection.... they didn't NEED to "remaster" it. They could have just straight up ported the ps2 games as-is, to newer consoles, and maybe updated the aiming to be closer to GTA4/5. And...it woulda sold really well, and probably ended up with way better reviews than it ended up with. BUT, more importantly, if they didn't have to focus on trying to remaster the games, they could have tossed in the PS2 ports of Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories. A 5 game bundle of really good games that haven't been properly ported to newer consoles, with updated aiming mechanics would have been a day 1 purchase for me.
Instead. I have a PS2 emulator on my Xbox Series S. I can play all 5 of those games on there, and they run great, even upscaled. But, I also have all 5 of the games on my PS Vita. So I have two entirely different ways to play all 5 PS2-era GTA games. Kinda makes the idea of buying janky versions for $40+, a bit hard to imagine.
so I've watched this vid multiple times because your analysis of LCS and VCS was dope. Would you ever consider doing a deep dive into the story of VCS? Would watch it repeatedly
i always liked the stilted dialogue in Chinatown Wars. it reminds me of one of those old poorly dubbed kung fu movies or anime from the 90s
The GTA games have some of my favorite characters in not just video games but in fictional media in general hurt a bit when he said that people who enjoy the stories of these games are weirdos lol
Yeah, i love the old gta stories, the characters arent the most "realistic", well if you exclude gta 4, that took the more grimmy realistic approach, but they are really well-written and fun. They all kinda fit into the theme of the games, being a parody of the USA, thats why they are over the top and full with pop culture references.
I was looking to buy a new game for my aging Game Boy Color when I was about 8. I went to the Target with my mom. I looked at the Game Boy games they had. I saw Zelda Oracle games, but didn't get those because I already had Link's Awakening and thought they were just Link's Awakening with different cover art. I saw a Tonka truck game, but something about a GBC Grand Theft Auto game caught my eye. I asked my mom if I could get it, and she said no. I think she knew the name Grand Theft Auto from the news or something and knew that it wasn't for kids. I ended up getting Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for the Game Boy Color. Little did I know that that was actually one of the last games to be released for that system, and is actually a pretty good JRPG-style game with a surprising amount of minigames. I think I made a good choice in getting a game at Target that day.
I'm assuming u already had pokemon silver
Have started playing through these on my homebrew Vita, honestly, I'm really impressed with what they managed to accomplish, particularly the GBA game.. cheers for the roundup ❤
I never gave this game a chance, always thought it was just a cut down gta3 for the psp. I think I was wrong lol
1:00:23 = you can see that, right after the player, there's a NPC-controlled Van that just straight up drives into the water too 😆
In the PC/PS1 version of the game, there are barriers at the entrance of the "broken bridge" and no cars (other that the player) ever enter it.
What an amazing video! I play LCS alot, i carry my vita around everywhere i go lol. You did an amazing job on this video!
I didn't get VCS when it was released and finished it first time around 2020. Man it was such a nostalgia trip and felt like getting together with an old friend you haven't seen in decade. Vice City was my 2nd favourite game as kid and I felt VCS did the city justice. Story was kinda meh, that is true.
11:25 All the previous GTA radio stations excluding San Andreas ran on loops. Or at least they did on PC where I played them.
No, you're correct! Playing VC ("Definitive") back when I was first putting together the early plans for this video either fooled me or did in fact tweak the radio setup, but it had me thinking it ran a sort-of hybrid between 3's loops and SA's dynamic setup. That's what I get for not double-checking annotated pieces of the script a month later, and just trusting my past self!
GTA library stories was the first game I got when getting the psp when it first came out and I was hooked I couldn’t put it down
I really enjoyed this retrospective. great work.
GTA LCS and VCS sure had no issues fitting on a UMD. Keep in mind that both games came on 2 CDs when released for PC
Neither game ever came out on pc
@@jacksawack6724 you’re right of course. I meant that the original GTA 3 and Vice City fitted on 2 CDs
Flipnote Studio deserved that rating tbf, the Flipnote Hatena service was crazy good.
Vice city stories is super underrated i remember when it first came out i bought it along side liberty city stories in one package and some posters for both games, the story was amazing and the empire building was great.
Chinatown was my favourite game for a while. I flipped dwags like there was no today back in the day.
This video is pretty great, I remember emulating GTA Advance in my phone a few years ago and having a lot of fun with it, I'd like to say that Chinatown Wars doesn't have a 1:1 recreation of the map in 4, it's pretty close but the streets sometimes have different layouts and there's a few where elevation or something else is different, but if you are familiar with the map in 4 it is pretty great, the dealing is definitely the highlight of that game and it's something I really wish was in 4 because that game has gangs but they aren't really prominent and it would have been cool to see them around in the map and being able to buy and sell them stuff
NECK SNAPPING WAS USEFUL.
After being kicked from the army, you can use that thing by the wall on the side of the base to jump in, snap 3 guys necks for M16 ammo, and you got the beat rifle!
Yooo I just got done doing a Dave survey and i clicked this video and BOOM Dave, i thought TH-cam was listening to my thoughts again
I never knew how much work and the impressive tricks R* used to make LCS work on the PSP very cool to learn about.
Although the points you made about this game were critical and understandable. Playing this as a 12 year old was the coolest thing ever and I just didn’t care at the time. There was so much detail with stuff that you didn’t think would need it like at 0:47:30. The officer frantically running at the car and pulling the locked door. Despite its flaws, I loved it.
Personaly i love Chinatown Wars, my favourite handheld gta and favourite ds/psp game. And i like the story and writing, even if it's quite cynical - but i really like Huang. Overall i think it just plays great, it has by far the best police chases, and i acutally really like combat, although it gets leagues better once you get the sword, then it's just great. Although i have to agree that the city doesn't really work that well when it comes to top down perspective, at least on psp it kinda just blends together. Apart from music i prefer DS version to psp.
And i kinda like GBA GTA :p Not that i love it, but i like it, i think it's unfairly treated - good car handling (and really cool pseudo 3d tilt of the vehicles). It's story might not be great but, and it lacks radio stations, but for me the only problem is choppy framerate.
I always thought LCS had really weak story, with no likeable characters, and i never enjoyed it. And VCS while amazing in terms of technology, has such sad story i was never able to finish it. Way too dark.
Btw. really awesome bunch of reviews, subbed!
I really enjoyed Chinatown wars back in the day. I was just excited for a GTA game on a handheld and it did not disappoint. Hella nostalgic
Such a nostalgia trip! LCS was the first GTA I ever beat without cheats... I never realized how packed it actually was. I really just wanted San Andreas for PSP, but looking back, this was more than enough.
1:01:20
What is the background music here? I know the keyboard sample is from Bob James.
woah i was binging ur vids n i see this, gonna watch it rn!! ty for the background noise
Clicked as soon as I saw notification, feel like I'll like this video, thank you bro I love you
im still hoping LCS and VCS would have a Pc port
I beat GTA Liberty City Stories & the whole time i was thinking. Wow this seems kind of long for a older GTA game. Thanks for confirming, that yes the game is infact long and was not just my nostalgia clouding my judgement.
GTA Vice City Stories was really good. has so many new mechanics & between the two games. You can see that start of a lot of game mechanics. Some that didnt make it.
You deserve way more views, you have my sub!
Youre out of your mind if u dont like chinatown wars! It was so much fun!!
It’s possible to crouch on LCS and VCS but it requires Cheat Device plugin.
best review of VCS on the internet. IMO this is the best PS2 era Grand Theft Auto. Essentially when considering GTA 5 more or less makes GTA SA redundant.
My aunt got so pissed at me when I was like 12 and telling my cousin about all the drugs I was selling on Chinatown Wars. I got way too into the drug dealing mini game, I can't imagine why parents got mad
You mean dwugs
dude
that's hilarious 🤣
Not a video I expected, but an enjoyable one.
I pre ordered my Sony PSP and picked it up on UK release day with a handful of very expensive games, UMD videos and accessories.
But the most memorable part of owning a PSP was GTA Liberty City Stories release day.
I was by far the most incredible thing at the time to play a handheld version of GTA to a very high game standard.
It was almost like having a PS2 in my pocket.
The game was great and despite having clunky controls, like most PSP games, it was well done.
My favourite part was that you could use your own Music to play as an in game radio station!
My PSP was my music player, about the time that people started to buy MP3 players and have 10 songs on them.
I could play GTA and create the soundtrack! Which was made better as PSP memory cards became bigger and cheaper.
I really enjoyed vice city stories as a game, but it didnt have the same WOW factor as Liberty city stories did, because we already knew the minimum standard.
For many of us, owning GTA was also vital as for many years it was the ONLY way to do homebrew once the firmware had been patched.
These Games are One of my Top Favorites of all Time.
Back when Rockstar Games was good.
Really bizarre how the only entry in a series that heavily involves drug use/trafficking only had that as a gameplay mechanic in the entry originally released on a Nintendo console.
I want to know how that even got on the system or if it was just Rockstar's clout at the time and/or the DS doing so well at that point Nintendo didn't care what was put on there.
Horizon Turbo Chase music? Wow, wonderful attention to detail on this video.
The mafia dude's house you can go into by the water is super comfy. I'd go back there on occasion just because I liked it.
gta vcs's story in one sentence: America Healthcare system is fucked, so Vic ends up in an escalated situation
Vice City and Liberty City Stories were really the peak handheld GTA experience, especially for their prequel nature. Rockstar prequels ngl are quite great, especially the PSP ones and RDR2
11:23 "They actually achieved this by setting each radio station, ads and commercials and all, as one compressed looping 25 to 30 minute audio track rather than a more dynamic mix like in previous games."
Say what? It's exactly the same as it was in III or VC.
If that's the case, remove the plural and read that as "like in the previous game!" I could've sworn when I played Vice City back in January that the stations were a half-step between III's single looping audio track and the dynamic mix like they were in San Andreas a couple years later, but if San Andreas was the lone innovator there then either they tweaked the Definitive versions' radio stations (which I'd believe given music licensing, thinking about it now) or they just fooled me.
@@TheGoldenBolt To be honest, I kinda forgot that LCS came out after SA, so yeah, it was kind of a step backwards, my bad.
25:42 something started to feel strange here. Only at 27:25 did I get why. Discretely in the background, a soundtrack from Horizon Chase Turbo plays instead of GTA music. Having played the game just today, I thought it was an earworm haunting me, but instead it was the video. Very strange experience indeed. I must have been the only one to notice.
I think CTW style ports of 4s DLCs would be fun or at least stylistically interesting combining the cell shaded style with the neon style of TBoGT.
Chinatown wars was the first gta game I played on my friends ipod touch when I was like 7 so its my favorite out of these
Vice City Stories is such a banger of a game
Edit: when u bring up your problem with the writing of the prequels, i dont know what you think of RDR2 but would u agree if i said that these games clearly show the writing team at rockstar practicing for how to properly write a prequel with that game
Nice video! You should play GTA: Sindacco Chronicles, its a fan mod of LCS, parallel story to lcs, 60 new story missions and basically everything except the map, cars and weapons changed, new side missions, vice city style bussines properties with misions, and a simplified VCS style bussines empire, you can crouch and there's helicopters. The story isn't it's strong point (and there's AI voiceover lol) but it's really good for being a mod