Colin Anderson, the audio manager and co-composer for Grand Theft Auto II at DMA Design, recently paid tribute to the game, calling it the “unsung hero” of the franchise. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, many see GTA 2 as a misstep, but Anderson believes that it was pivotal in shaping Grand Theft Auto’s future.
GTA 2 introduced several innovative features such as the gang reputation system and fictionalized radio commercials. It also moved the setting to “Anywhere USA,” a retrofuturistic metropolis inspired by films and comics like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Frank Miller’s Hard Boiled. These elements made it one of the more experimental entries in the series.
Anderson highlighted that GTA 2 was key for experimentation over perfection, making it a critical step in the franchise’s evolution. The game moved away from simple point-and-click mechanics and towards creating a meaningful immersive world.
Do you agree that GTA 2 is an unsung hero of the franchise?
It was the last GTA to let you run over Hare Krishnas.
I just loaded up a video and these sounds are so iconic. Top down GTA was so fucking good.
Why was it seen as a misstep?
I have memories of ramps, black z cars and a hotdog mission…Because it got 7/10 average review scores and didn’t sell as well as GTA. Then GTA3 (and its immediate spin-offs and eventual sequels) came out and started breaking all time sales records. So retroactively, GTA 2 was “a mistake” for not being GTA 3 two years early.
But like the guy says, the point of the article even, is that you don’t create run away successes without experimenting on the formula to find what’s good, without “failures” like GTA 2 to learn from.
That’s very funny to me, since GTA 2 is the only GTA I have fond memories of
But then again, I was a kid so. Not exactly the most refined tastes
Now there’s a deserving remaster
I’d love to have a modern gta in that style.
3D is cool. But I had more fun in GTA / GTA2 than in any of the games since.
Is the Retro City Rampage / Shakedown: Hawaii guy working on anything?
World be worth getting for the multiplayer alone. That was always good fun, unless you were among the people that could not connect to anyone because
you forgot to sacrifice your unborn child to the sun godof some strange networking reason.
Best GTA for sure. I quit the francise when they started making it 3D.
I agree it was the best in the series. I never quite enjoyed the later gta games as much as the unbridled fun of gta 2.
GTA 2 was fantastic, especially multiplayer over LAN on PC. It unseated a lot of our usual FPS or RTS games for a while as the game of choice.
Then again, what do I know, I still think Zelda 2 was awesome.
Yeah nobody is talking about the insanely fun multiplayer! That shit had us laughing hysterically for hours!
I had a lot of fun with it back then. I don’t think I ever beat it though.
It’s pretty interesting looking back on it and seeing how many of the gameplay mechanics went on to be in GTA 3.
It was what drew me to the series. The London Pack was the tits.
I thought the london stuff was on gta 1?
It’s probably the only GTA I’ve ever played. I recently tried to play it, but found the tank controls too annoying to play. The game would still be fun if it had analog support.
I’d bet there is some mod for it. I forgot about the tank controls. That’s why I could never get into it.
The only one I really liked. It was fun - cartoonish, goofy, wacky - fun.
The first GTA is still the most fun.
I’m not sure about unsung hero, but I really enjoyed it and we sank a lot of hours into it in our dorm sessions.
I missed the factions in the following open world games. I still want to make a tribute game at some point in my life
For those who want a top down GTA experience slightly newer than GTA 2, check out GTA Chinatown Wars.
It was PSP and Nintendo DS only but had a decent story and had the precursor to the drug trading that’s prominent in GTA 5 now. I enjoyed it but remember it having almost no marketing when it came out.
This was the first GTA I’ve ever played. I still remember a lot of the soundbites. The demo had a 5 minute time limit after which the character just exploded.
