[HN Gopher] A GTA modder has got the 1997 original working on mo...
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A GTA modder has got the 1997 original working on modern PCs and
Steam Deck
Author : HelloUsername
Score : 88 points
Date : 2026-02-08 20:34 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gtaforums.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gtaforums.com)
| etrvic wrote:
| You might want to add [2022] in the title
| HelloUsername wrote:
| Crap, you're right. But I can't edit anymore. Also that would
| exceed the character limit.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Check out Exodos for this type of thing. It's built on launchbox
| (an emulator front end) and just gives a huge listing of every
| game you might ever want to play. Those games aren't all
| installed (assuming you didn't do the full 500GB+ install) but
| you click the game and it quickly downloads, installs into dosbox
| and jumps into the game (takes seconds since these are old
| games).
| pipes wrote:
| Slightly related, if like me you have gone far to far down the
| emulation rabbit hole and find that you are now onto FPGA
| emulation, you might enjoy:
|
| https://0mhz.net/
|
| https://amiga.vision/
|
| I really want to get these working on my steamdeck too but it
| looks like a lot of work.
| giobox wrote:
| https://www.retro-exo.com/exodos.html
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I always feel old when I read Reddit comments by people who say
| _they_ feel old because they remember when GTA III came out. I
| played a lot of GTA I and II in the late 90s /early 00s.
| Admittedly GTA I felt a bit dated at the time but GTA II was
| great. The top-down view didn't age well I guess but made it feel
| quite distinctive. I feel like in a lot of people's minds the
| series only really began at III.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| I played GTA after I played Carmageddon and I thought the
| graphics on GTA were kind of retro at the time, but in
| reflection, it does have some charm, I think.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| Loved carmageddon, and yes graphics felt far more modern than
| GTA. Still loved gta eventually though as it was more fun.
|
| Dropped out of gaming before GTA3 came out, but was given a
| PlayStation and gta V last year, very disappointed there was
| no "gouranga"
| bluedino wrote:
| I remember the DOS (?) GTA demo that came on a PC Gaming
| magazine demo disk. I think it had a ten minute time limit?
|
| Tons of fun on a friends dark green Acer Aspire.
| boredemployee wrote:
| Yes! I remember it, it was around 1997/98, I was a kid and
| couldn't believe a game like that could exist lol! it was so
| crazy for that time
| barbs wrote:
| Oh yes! I remember playing that at a friend's house when I
| was 5 years old and having my little mind blown. I couldn't
| believe you could just take any car and go anywhere you
| wanted.
|
| I later got my hands on a copy of GTA2 and played that a lot,
| behind my parents' back of course
| user2722 wrote:
| And you could reach 1 million $ on those 10 mins, just had to
| put a bomb car south to the start point, get the orange guys
| to follow you, get inside the car, trigger the bomb and wait
| for detonation inside the car.
|
| Additionally, you could go under the fences if you parked a
| heavy vehicle next to them and crawled below it.
|
| Don't forget walking below the city entering the spot where
| the water was solid on northwest pier.
|
| And finally, if you left the train in the precise spot, you
| could exit the train on top of the (eletrified) tracks and
| would not die.
| bartread wrote:
| I'm more than old enough to remember the original GTA and GTA
| II, and I have friends who played and loved both of them. For
| me, I thought the first GTA had graphics from the past (I'd got
| too used to playing 3D shooters on PC - along with Wipeout on
| the Playstation - so struggled to get past the top down
| presentation), and just felt janky to play. GTA II was more
| polished, but I still didn't love it. Yet people raved about
| them.
|
| Anyway, the negative associations I had with GTA I and GTA II
| stopped me from playing any other GTA game until 4 came out in
| 2008, at which point I was like, OK, FFS, people won't stop
| banging on about this so I suppose I'll try it again. I ended
| up really liking it but, because I only played it on friends'
| consoles, and I started the game several times over, I never
| played it all the way through until 2018. I then played through
| both the expansions, along with GTA V in 2019. I've
| subsequently gone back to play III and Vice City, both of which
| I also like - as well as Vice City Stories on the PSP. I've
| barely touched San Andreas, but the few minutes I have played
| suggest that I'll also enjoy it.
|
| I've even fired up GTA and GTA II again... but still don't
| really get on with either of them. I presume there must be
| others out there who were put off enough by them that it meant
| they've never touched the rest of the series, or only got into
| again several games later, but it doesn't seem to be a
| particularly common experience.
| secretballot wrote:
| Similar effect with the Fallout series. A whole lot of the
| fanbase has never played any of the three 2D games (Fallout,
| Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics). The series started, for them, with
| Fallout 3.
|
| I'm kinda that way with Elder Scrolls. My first one was III
| (Morrowind) and I've still never played the first two.
| QuantumNomad_ wrote:
| My first time playing anything in the GTA series was the
| GameBoy Color version of GTA 2. I borrowed it from a friend for
| a week or two, and enjoyed it quite a lot. My parents were
| pretty against me playing any kind of "violent" video games. So
| secretly playing GTA 2 on the GBC was kind of exciting due to
| that as well. Even though the "violence" in GTA 2 on GBC is of
| course very tame in terms of any kind of graphic realism or
| anything.
|
| A few years later one of my friends was playing GTA III on the
| PS2 at his home. I also had a PS2, but there was no chance of
| my parents letting me play that, and I didn't even play it at
| his house either.
|
| Later still, Rockstar was giving away GTA 2 for PC for free on
| their website. So I played GTA 2 a little bit on PC too, after
| GTA III (and probably Vice City) was already out.
|
| It took many years before I finally had a chance to play GTA
| III, GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas. My first time playing
| GTA III and GTA Vice City was when I was an adult with an
| iPhone and they sold iOS ports of those games in the App Store.
| I ended up completing GTA III and GTA Vice City on the iPhone
| and have played a bit of GTA San Andreas on the iPhone as well,
| including completing the famous train mission.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| A couple of days ago a colleague of mine was talking about very
| old rts games he still liked to play , and mentioned red alert.
| It turned out he had never heard of dune 2, Warcraft 1 and 2!
| Lammy wrote:
| I like how GTAIII is the only 3D GTA game (not 3D- _era_ GTA
| game, because Chinatown Wars lol) where you can permanently
| select the oldschool top-down camera. It 's kind of a trip to
| play it that way.
| OJFord wrote:
| I'm sure it was officially re-released for modern (of the day)
| PCs before this? I think I've still got it on discs somewhere, a
| set of the first trilogy, Vice City, and maybe San Andreas.
| tirant wrote:
| Those were GTA3 versions. The linked version is for the
| original GTA with the classical top view perspective.
| Lammy wrote:
| Your memory is correct! They released GTA1 (all expansions) and
| GTA2 as free "Rockstar Classics" in 2003 and 2004 respectively:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20130116055920/https://www.rocks...
|
| One can get those versions here:
| https://archive.org/details/rockstar-classics_202107
|
| They're great on XP-era machines! I have both installed on my
| HITACHI FLORA 270HX
| badgersnake wrote:
| Love GTA1, but IIRC my version at least is a 3dfx glide game
| which makes it quite hard to play on modern kit.
|
| Will give this a try.
| Stevvo wrote:
| Also available at; https://dos.zone/grand-theft-auto/ where WASM
| is used to emulate Windows 95 in your browser.
| w4yai wrote:
| 404 - I think you meant
|
| https://dos.zone/grand-theft-auto-1997/
| grebc wrote:
| The best version - thank you.
| retired wrote:
| I vaguely remember Grand Theft Auto being free to download from
| the Rockstar Games website about ten years ago.
|
| Here is to hoping that Rockstar Games brings these two classics
| back.
| bananaboy wrote:
| I played a lot of GTA1 and a bit of 2 when it came out. I think
| we used to play it at LAN parties my friends and I had as well.
| For me that's where it stopped and I never clicked with GTA3 and
| onwards!
| seattle_spring wrote:
| I absolutely adored the first 2 games, especially GTA2.
| "Damnation! No donation, nooo salvation!"
| HPsquared wrote:
| GTA2 also had a cool cinematic intro:
|
| https://youtu.be/9Z5O29rLRnw
| asdff wrote:
| Do you play other 3d games? I've seen a lot of difficulty for
| people not growing up with 3d games just managing the camera +
| movement. Kind of how I feel looking at high level Fortnite
| play where the rapid fire build play layered on top of usual
| fps gunplay is just one layer too much complexity for my
| experiences growing up with fps only video games.
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