There are those pivotal moments in one's gaming habit that come around every once in a while. Critical junctures or vital forks in the road where things could have been very different had the other choice been taken at the time. Usually you don't see them for what they are in the moment, they are very much things you only recognize retrospectively. Such is the case for the subject of today's post where I am going to ramble on at length on the subject of what might be my favourite game demo of all time. This would be the time-limited taster of everything the original Grand Theft Auto had to offer. Yes the first one that most GTA players at this point probably haven't played, an historical artifact developed by DMA Design out of Dundee and published by BMG Interactive back in 1997.
Now who, where and what was I in the midst of in 1997? By the time the game itself came out later that year I would've been 13 years old, in my third year of secondary school generally being awkward, quiet and awkward. Musically Puff Daddy was missing you, Backstreet was back, Robbie Williams was loving angels instead and Chumbawamba was getting knocked down but also getting back up again. The cinematic Titanic was on course for big money at the box office, the Men In Black were less sinister and more musical than you might imagine and Arnold Schwarzenegger played Mr. Freeze.
A glorious time to be alive I'm sure you'll agree after such a comprehensive one paragraph summary. Usage of the popular Internet was non-existent to niche, smartphones were not and I'm not sure if even mp3's has quite arrived just yet. Point is there was a lot more room for boredom to settle in back then. That's not to say that gaming wasn't thriving at this time because it was. We were in the midst of the then latest stage of the console wars. The Nintendo 64 competed with the OG PlayStation and the Sega Saturn for that all important market share. PC gamers looked on from afar and just laughed as they ingested soft drinks with high sugar content and played Myst. Good times!
Now I'm not going to talk about the game proper at length here, this is more about my initial introduction to it. I'm trying to remember which PC gaming magazine came with the demo disc that contained the first trial of GTA. Can't recall if it was PC Gamer or PC Zone or something more obscure and short lived? Maybe PC Renegade Storm or PC Turbo Frontier or something equally imaginary? Anyhow I acquired it and unassumingly inserted the CD into my very modest PC of the time. Expectations were not high, they were possibly non-existent. I came from a family with modest income, I didn't get many new games, I was just happy to dip into a brief selection of them. So anyhow I installed this demo and loaded it up. You could select an 8-bit colour version, a 24-bit colour version or really push the boat out and load the 3DFX version I got the unassuming title screen, I started game.
Now the notion of freewheeling vehicular carnage was not exactly new to gaming but it was certainly novel to me. So what happened next blew my mind. I found myself looking top down at a city in a pseudo 2D (or 2 and a half D) style with crude but effective presentation. The collection of pixels representing the top down view of my character could go anywhere and do what felt like anything within the strict time limits of the demos prescribed playtime. In my fading memory I think it was seven or eight minutes long but a Google search has proved inconclusive on this particular detail. Only thing I could confirm was that there was a six minute demo out there. Point is, you didn't get much time with it but oh boy did I find ways to maximize my usage of said time.
Stealing cars, joyriding cars, ploughing them into other cars as my wanted level rose. A spot of armed violence against the authorities then I'd repeat it all over again. Conjuring up the highest wanted level within the time limit was the name of the game and I got very good at it. Those high speed police car chases throughout Liberty City were quite unlike anything else I had ever played up until that point. Oh there was a mission to do in that demo but that was not the main event here. Total carnage was suddenly at my fingertips and it was brilliant.
As a mission statement of what this game could deliver this demo was an absolute success story. Something akin to what game developers now refer to as a vertical slice. The scent few minutes you were allowed weren't much but you could make each minute count and dial up the crazy in no time at all. The escalation felt real and exciting as the authorities became increasingly concerned about this unhinged lunatic at work in their city. The graphics weren't cutting themselves on the edge but they were good enough to let your imagination fill in the blanks. The iconic GTA car radio was here too even if it was the most basic version of it.
More than anything this demo delivered a sense of freedom that felt new, dangerous and exciting. Open world experiences weren't exactly unknown but they were far from commonplace. Certainly open world experiences that revelled in chaos and widespread destruction were a pretty new thing to me and many others who had grown up with their more wholesome Nintendo and Sega consoles. To impress all those qualities upon your audience in a few short minutes cannot have been the easiest ask but credit to DMA Design they did just that. Nothing quite like this had happened to gaming before and I had to have more. Looking back I think I played and replayed this demo more than any other demo I've played either before or since.
By the time the game itself came out there was a whole lot of pre-release excitement around this game in a time where the marketing machine wasn't nearly so well refined as it is today. It was one of those rare moments where I actually found myself in the middle of something popular just at the very moment that popular thing was being unleashed on the public. That it broke through in such a big way, without full 3D graphics, celebrity voice acting or a full dramatic presentation. Well that remains an impressive feat in my eyes. A game with modest means and lofty goals, quirky but full of energetic mania. A game that very much stood by itself in a way the sequels could not as the market caught up to this new type of game and cranked out some competition.
Grand Theft Auto itself would move on of course and eventually become the entertainment behemoth that it is today. DMA in turn transformed into Rockstar Games and never looked back. As of the time of writing we are all eagerly awaiting Grand Theft Auto VI after the fifth game has been a multi-generational success story. Those humble beginnings have been eclipsed by the entertainment juggernauts that came in their wake.
Not even eclipsed really, the original GTA, it's 1960's London based expansion pack and the immediate sequel have in fact been somewhat forgotten in the years since. Once offered as free downloads directly from Rockstar Games, those options are seemingly not available anymore. So it's left to the murkier side of the web to provide as long as you don't mind sifting out the sites loaded with dodgyware and viruses. Here's hoping Rockstar gets out a complete collection in the not too distant future.
I'm sure other people have their version of this experience. A whole generation of gamers no doubt came on board with the 3D games of the PS2 era, with GTA IV in the generation that came after or with the fifth game that remains popular over a decade after it's initial release. This is perhaps more an ode to a different world where so many things that are standard now simply did not exist back then. Can't remember the last time I even installed and played a game demo from a free disc that came with a gaming magazine. The world's moved on, game delivery methods have vastly improved but the pleasant nostalgia remains. Join me next time as I lament the passing of the over-sized game boxes that once housed the humble CD within
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