Eurogamer Retrospective: GTA 1
News by John Walker
Contributor
Published on Aug. 23, 2010
With only coincidental timing, this week I wrote about the original
Grand Theft Auto for Eurogamer - Dave Jones' game that spawned
the empire that led to his creating APB. Does the top-down 1997
original stand the cruel passage of time? Is it still controversial? I write:
It's not like gaming had been an innocent pursuit until 1997.
Obviously not. But it was the year that things got noticeably controversial.
(The same year also offered us another chance to mow down innocents with Carmageddon.)
And when a mainstream game from DMA - who had entertained us
with suicidal green and purple rodents - contains lines like,
"My brother knows I'm bangin' his wife. Waste the sonofabitch before
he finds me," it comes as quite a surprise. To go from Christmas Lemmings
to people shouting about "getting pussy"... it's like your gran revealing
she used to be a porn star.