20 Years Ago, Rockstar Gave The PSP Its Blockbuster App
When the biggest franchise in the world went small-time.
The PlayStation Portable was a game-changer in so many ways. It was the first widely available smart device capable of playing videos and music, surfing the web, storing photos, and, of course, running games. But as impressive as the hardware was, it wouldn’t have meant much without the software to back it up. The PSP’s launch lineup was solid, but mostly consisted of remakes and dialed-down console games. Except for maybe Lumines, there weren’t any must-have games to push people to spend $250 on a shiny new handheld.
That changed seven months after launch. Hot off delivering one of the all-time open-world greats, Rockstar Games would make its PSP debut in equally impressive fashion. Its goal was simple: shrink the then-huge world of Grand Theft Auto III into the palm of your hands. Rockstar not only delivered on its promise and made one of the legendary series’ most underrated games, but gave the PSP its first console seller in the process.
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, which hit shelves 20 years ago today, is a prequel to 2001’s GTA 3. Set three years before the PS2 game, players take control of Toni Cipriani, the right-hand man of Italian mob boss Salvatore Leone. When players last saw Toni, he was grayer and more rotund as he doled out marching orders to GTA 3’s silent protagonist. Here, Tony is the one getting his hands dirty for the Leone family as he discovers a plot to turn over their territory to rival gangs.
Liberty City Stories is a surprisingly captivating chapter in the series’ “3D Universe” (not to be confused with the “HD Universe” consisting of GTA 4, GTA 5, and the upcoming GTA 6). Like any solid prequel, it’s fun to see the pieces you’re familiar with snap into place as the story moves along. Rockstar also had a blast filling out the city’s history. Unlike GTA 3, motorcycles are present in Liberty City, but radio programs detail a grassroots effort to ban them. Recognizable buildings, bridges, and tunnels are under construction, and key landmarks from GTA 3 are under totally different management.
Liberty City Stories was also the first game I played that showed nostalgia for the late ‘90s. Radio stations are booming with period-appropriate teen-band pop, grungy rock, and rugged East Coast hip-hop. It was bizarre to feel reverence for the '90s in 2005, but it was a palpable, unique vibe.
The most novel part of the experience was the fact that it worked at all. The PSP proved to be a portable powerhouse right at launch, with ports of Need for Speed: Underground 2 and Spider-Man 2 rendering near-PS2 level graphics. The open worlds of their console counterparts were ditched to get the visuals on par, but Rockstar made no such concessions. This was not only the same city as GTA 3, but a better-looking version of it. Character models were smoother and more articulate. Cars were shinier, and there was a greater variety of them. Even the load times were somehow reduced, despite the PSP’s infamously slow proprietary disc format.
Liberty City Stories successfully crammed GTA onto the small screen.
In the same way people are freaking out about GTA 6’s ridiculous levels of environmental detail, players in 2005 were similarly befuddled by the technical marvel of playing a fully featured 3D GTA game on the go. It was so impressive that people overlooked the fact that it was essentially an asset flip, albeit one with an original story and all the bells and whistles you’d expect from Rockstar.
Liberty City Stories would be the PSP’s best-selling game, incentivizing Rockstar to release the even more impressive (and fascinatingly weird) Vice City Stories a year later. On paper, Vice City Stories was bigger and better, but handheld GTA didn’t hit as hard the second time around. Maybe it was overshadowed by the impending launch of the PS3 and Wii, or maybe the PSP’s luster had taken a hit as the Nintendo DS began soaring in popularity.
Either way, the logical next step in the subseries, a San Andreas Stories, never materialized. That may have been for the best; the next time a portable GTA game was released was in 2009, and Chinatown Wars on the DS is a much better game than either of the PSP titles.
Still, Liberty City Stories is an underrated and often overlooked chapter in gaming’s biggest blockbuster franchise. It was the system-seller the PlayStation Portable sorely needed in its first year, and the ultimate showcase for the handheld’s capabilities. No matter the platform or era, Grand Theft Auto has always helped shape gaming, even if we don’t always remember it later.
