Eurogamer Retrospective: GTA 1
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.