“Get this limey out of here,” Burt Reynolds informs the producers of GTA: Vice City during a recording session for the title, as Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser walks into the studio. “I won’t be working if this limey Brit is around!” Houser declines to exit, as the tale goes – he merely came down to meet one of his idols! – leading to a confrontation between him and Reynolds, nearly resulting in a brawl, before a studio engineer intervenes to halt the clash.
I can’t authenticate the accuracy of this narrative. It’s one of those development speculations that’s lingered for quite a while, initially chronicled in a book about how games triumphed in pop culture titled “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” by Harold Goldberg. However, I prefer to believe it’s accurate, for in this singular moment, the two pivotal threads of GTA: Vice City’s DNA intertwine: its star appeal and Rockstar’s haughtiness.
And I’m not indicating that in a derogatory sense whatsoever. I believe a game of Vice City’s magnitude – strained to its limits with aspiration, funding, and technical brilliance – could not come into being without Rockstar’s inflated sense of self at its pinnacle. This is a title that (somehow!) began as a modest DLC for GTA 3, supposedly meant to debut as a mission pack when Rockstar North figured out how to transition it to PC. GTA 3 was released in October 2001, and by some miracle – and undoubtedly a lot of crunch – Vice City appeared on store shelves in October 2002.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City – Anniversary Trailer
Rockstar knows how to create a trailer.Watch on YouTube
This game – a game that would come to symbolize everything the GTA series embodies for future generations – was assembled in roughly a year. I’d feel quite impressed with myself, too, if I were capable of producing that level of quality within such a timeframe. With a development budget of around $5 million (considerable at that period, even though it seems insignificant compared to GTA 6’s rumored $1 billion+) and a marketing expenditure of $13.2 million,
