GTA 3's unofficial port for Sega's console: Everything you must know
A Grand Theft Auto fan is making a port of GTA 3 on Sega's last console, the Dreamcast. Now, Grand Theft Auto 3 was a revolutionary game that set forward the open-world sandbox genre that Rockstar Games has become an expert in. It also paved the way for the success of future Grand Theft Auto titles. Grand Theft Auto 3 was originally released as a PlayStation 2 game, although it was soon ported over to Xbox and even PC.
At this point, the game is even available on Android, iOS, and Mac OS X. The Dreamcast, on the other hand, is a 1998 console that was discontinued before GTA 3 was even released.
This article details everything you need to know about this peculiar port of a beloved classic.
Fan-made GTA 3 Dreamcast port in pre-alpha stage
The Sega Guru, a YouTuber and expert on all things SEGA, recently brought attention to a fan-made GTA 3 Dreamcast port being attempted by SKMP (@poiitidis). The port is currently in its pre-alpha state, and everything seems to be glitched, including the menu, which is just a blur. The in-game HUD text isn't readable either, and the colors of the game are all botched.
There are some glitches with the models as well, such as the Kuruma that you get at the beginning being completely invisible. However, the fact that the game runs at all is quite extraordinary at this moment, and hopefully, it will progress to a fully playable GTA 3 Dreamcast port at some point in the near future. The Dreamcast runs on a 16 MB memory pool, and SKMP has managed to increase it to 32 MB on an emulator (Reicast), which is comparable to the PS2.
It should be noted that this project was made possible thanks to the RE3 (reverse-engineered Grand Theft Auto 3) project, which was, along with countless other mods, taken down by Take-Two. The assets were taken from the PC version of Grand Theft Auto 3, and textures were downsized to 32x32 resolution, but the game is still struggling with the limited VRAM capabilities of the Dreamcast.
A recent update from SKMP shows that the game now runs in 3D even on 16 MB RAM, although the model glitches seen in the video are due to them being processed in blender, according to the modder. SEGA released the Dreamcast in 1998, but despite having some successful games like Sonic Adventure, Crazy Taxi, Shenmue, and Jet Set Radio, it was eventually discontinued on March 31, 2001, because of commercial failure.
GTA 3 was considered way ahead of its time when it launched on the PS2 back on October 23, 2001. It has since been ported over to Windows in 2002, Xbox in 2003, Mac OS X in 2010, mobiles in 2011 (Android/iOS), and even Fire OS in 2014.
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