A former Rockstar Games technical director on GTA games has shared his thoughts on the fan port of GTA III on Dreamcast. Plus, he’s revealed details about the Rockstar version and how Vice City could come to Dreamcast next.
We’ve just passed the fabled 9/9/99 release date 25th anniversary of the Sega Dreamcast. Whilst it was a commercial failure that killed Sega’s console business, to this day it still has fans across the world. A quarter of a century on, some of these die-hard fans are set on modding the console or bringing new experiences to life.
It was just last month we reported how a few community members managed to get GTA III running on a Sega Dreamcast without a RAM modification. The reason fans want to do this is that Rockstar Games were originally developing GTA III for the Sega Dreamcast back. Due to things such as the lack of console sales, it switched to a PS2 game followed by PC, Xbox and even mobile phones.
Major updates
This week, to celebrate 25 years of Dreamcast, community members published an updated look at the game on Dreamcast. The game is looking in much better shape than when we last checked in. Previously it had major frame rate issues but it has since got a locked 30FPS. Plus, there are no more clipping issues and most effects are in the game. You can watch a few minutes of gameplay here.
As noted by one of its developers Falco, there is still a way to go and it is still in the early stages. That said, the progress in just a few weeks and months is highly commendable. So much so, a GTA III developer gave praise to it.
Obbe Vermeij who worked on the classic GTA games we know and love took to Twitter to say “There is an impressive effort going on to make gta3 run on the Sega Dreamcast.” He went on saying “The first months of development of gta3 (back in 99/00) were done on the Dreamcast. For commercial reasons we switched to ps2. At the time we did think it was technically possible to pull it off on the DC and these guys are actually doing it. Nice one.”
What’s next?
A fan asked Vermeij about the viability of getting GTA Vice City running on Dreamcast. For those unaware, GTA Vice City uses a slightly updated version of GTA III’s engine. Obbe does say “If they can get gta3 to work I’m sure they can do the same with Vice City. They’re basically the same game.”
We look forward to seeing how this project continues to develop over the months ahead.
To keep up to date with every GTA news update, make sure to check back to RockstarINTEL and sign up to our newsletter for a weekly round-up of all things Rockstar Games.
Subscribe to our newsletter to get all of the must-read Rockstar Games news stories delivered to your inbox. Plus, we’ll sometimes include some PlayStation and Xbox gift codes for you so keep on the look out!
