The development of the original Grand Theft Auto, released in 1997, was not easy. Instead of fifteen months, the Scottish studio DMA Design, which later became Rockstar North, worked on it for several years. But the action still came out and became so successful that the studio was sold to Rockstar Games, within whose walls it turned into a real phenomenon. A unique opportunity to travel back to 1996 and see the office, where at that time work on the game was in full swing, appeared thanks to the archival video of the BBC television channel.
A six-minute fragment of the report was published in the official BBC microblog. In it, TV channel employee Rory Cellan-Jones interviewed DMA Design specialists. At the time, the Dundee-based studio (Rockstar North is now based in Edinburgh) was quite famous, having produced several successful Lemmings titles. It already numbered about a hundred people. First, the journalist spoke with programmer David Kivlin about the concept of the game. Then he went to the room where composer Craig Conner created music for radio stations (all of it was original). At that moment, the employee was working on hip-hop tracks.
1996: Rory Cellan-Jones was busy distracting the developers of a new game called Grand Theft Auto. GTA didn't ship in 1996. Thanks Rory.
- BBC Archive (@BBCArchive)
Also, Cellan-Jones looked at the site where the motion capture was carried out (where he joked that the actor is not βcrazyβ, but performs blows for motion capture), to the specialist in sound effects and testers - Fiona Robertson (Fiona Robertson) and Gordon Ross ( Gordon Ross). According to the TV presenter, they got the "dream job". In conclusion, the journalist spoke with Gary Timmons (Gary Timmons). The developer rather ironically reacted to his remark that people here are "paid money for playing games", and noted that after the release of Grand Theft Auto, the studio plans to do new interesting projects.
Grand Theft Auto was originally going to be called Race'n'Chase and released for MS-DOS, Windows 95, PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and Nintendo 64. However, it never made it to the last two consoles. Development began on April 4, 1995, but by July 1996, contrary to the schedule, it could not be completed. The authors defined their goal as "a fun, addictive and fast-paced multi-person car crash racing game using a new graphical method." Producer David Jones cited Pac-Man as one of his inspirations: Pedestrian runs and police chases were based on the same mechanics. In 2011 it was published dated March 22, 1995.
Grand Theft Auto came out in October 1997. The action quickly entered the UK bestseller list, and by November 1998 worldwide shipments of its PC and PlayStation versions had exceeded one million copies. It gave rise to a whole genre of games that offer cynical entertainment in the "sandbox" of fictional cities, stealing cars and knocking down pedestrians. Recently Take-Two Interactive about 110 million shipped copies , and the total circulation of the series exceeds 235 million copies.
Until some time, the original Grand Theft Auto could be downloaded for free from the official Rockstar website, but now for some reason it is not even available on Steam. However, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for mobile and portable platforms is on sale, very reminiscent of the first parts.
Perhaps someone will also be interested in another old behind-the-scenes video - about the creation of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
Source: 3dnews.ru