GTA London 1969/GTA 2


Let The Mayhem Continue.....

I'm Brown Bread Now!
For some reason, when I think GTA London 1969, Austin Powers pops into my head for some reason. But the only thing that GTA taught me was that London in 1969 was not a very inviting place. This expansion pack was released on both the PlayStation and the PC. On the PlayStation, it was released about a year after the first game.

There really isn't much to say about the game in that it's essentially GTA 1 with a 1960's British skin over it and people driving on the opposite side of the road, and 60's-ish music playing in the background. One quickly gets use to the Double-Decker buses and Union Jacks galore. The game was developed by RockStar Canada. On the PlayStation, one needs the original GTA disc in order to play the game. I have GTA London installed along with my GTA 1 game on my DOSBox SVN-Daum setup. Like the original game on the PC, the GTA London makes use of the Voodoo 3D Accelerator as well.

Beyond that, there really isn't that much to say about the game. There are still various missions, with plenty of mayhem to follow. Don't forget to keep London Tidy!


Gouranga.........I meant "Keep London Tidy!"

GTA II
You're in a dark alley. It's very gritty and dirty. Your next to a church that has the words "Jesus Saves". This is very fortunate as you're going to need lots of Salvation for the acts that your about to commit!

GTA 1 was a very massive hit on the PlayStation. As a result, a true sequel to the game only seemed obvious. I loved the first game, and as a result, this GTA II was highly anticipating this title. In many ways, it felt like the same game, but yet, very different with various improvements along the way.

Like GTA 1 and London 1969, this games utilizes the top-down view. Also, like GTA 1, I played GTA II mostly on the PlayStation as well. The original PC port of GTA 1 supported both software rendering and 3D acceleration via the 3DFX Voodoo Accelerator on both MS-DOS and Windows. The new game only supported 3D acceleration via DirectX. That meant that my Toshiba laptop with SVGA was out of the question. Ditching software rendering meant that GTA II could improve on rendering, which made the graphics move more smoothly, with various graphical enhancements and tweaks throughout. This though limited the audience of PC users as 3D accelerators was still a pricey proposition, and weren't a everyday thing yet. 

The game-play received major refinement. The player can now be in a gang now performing there activities. There is a meter that measures your respect among the various gangs. Not surprisingly, the more work you do for one gang will contribute to being disliked and distrusted among the other gangs. The game also introduced side missions that allowed you to become a taxi, bus, and semi-truck driver that retrieving packages. The player can ride on trains in this version of the game.

The PlayStation version of the game had a very short movie that played before the game started. Today, video playback is often taken  for granted, but back then, it was a novelty that caused people to surrounded the screen. I was amazed by the mini-movie that played as the intro on the PlayStation!

Mayhem follows me for some reason.

The PlayStation port of the game.

Rage in The Virtual Machine
I'm a huge fan of virtual machines and emulators. It's only natural that this would be tested as well. The guest OS's that I've used have been configured so much to my past rigs that sometimes, the resemblance of these setups sends shivers down my spine. GTA London 1969, like the original GTA, runs under DOSBox-SVN Daum, which is a fork of the DOSBox emulator that emulates the 3DFX Voodoo Graphics Accelerator. This game was ported to Windows as well, but I never tried that version. The DOS version of the game runs great under Daum though. It seems that Rockstar isn't selling London 1969, and it's not officially available on Steam either. However, a Google Search revealed that there are several abandonware sites offering this title. You can do the search yourself as I won't link to any of them though. It's no problem finding this classic though. I'm also not linking any downloads for London 1969 as RockStar never offered the game as a free download like they did with GTA I and II. 

 I downloaded GTA II when RockStar offered it as a free download many moons ago. The company did this as a promotion when GTA III was released. This was the version of the game that I tested under VMware with 3D Acceleration support. The guest OS is Windows 7 32-bit. When the game was originally released, the shipping Microsoft OS was Windows 98. While Windows 98 does run under VMware Player, there is no 3D acceleration support for anything prior to XP. The only emulator that might run Windows 98 with 3D acceleration is PCEM or 86Box, which is a fork of PCEM. I haven't tested this setup though, and when I tried Voodoo acceleration under PCEM with Windows 95, games that utilized OpenGL ran far better than DirectX-based games, which is what GTA II is. I will visit the PCEM+Windows 98+Voodoo combination in the future with newer builds of the emulator. It's something worth investigating.

In the meantime, if you want to run GTA II in a emulator/virtualizer, then it's VMware Player + Windows 7 32-bit+ 3D Acceleration combination via the GPU if it's supported by VMware. My computer has a Nvidia GTX 950, which VMware makes good use of it. GTA II run fine without issues. At the same time, this isn't that surprising as this is a very old game. GTA II wouldn't have any issue running under any modern PC. It might be patched if running natively under Windows 7 or 10 32 or 64-bit.

RockStar doesn't offer the game as a free download anymore. However, that free download that RockStar offered for free back years back is still hosted on several public servers if you want to download it and try it out. One of the software servers is linked below.

The Playstation versions of both GTA London 1969 and GTA II do run fine under the Epsxe emulator. Remember that in order to play GTA London 1969 on Epsxe, you will need either the real disc or a image of both London 1969 and the original GTA 1, as 1969 won't run without it.
Retrospective
Like the first game, GTA II has not aged that well with time. This game was more of a refinement that a redefining title. One has to remember was that during this time, GTA was a popular title, but it wasn't the genre-dominating franchise that it is today. Games like Driver (which will be covered later in this series) stole GTA's thunder by introducing a 3D open-world environment.

Because GTA II was more of a refinement instead of a genre-defining game, the game has mostly been forgotten with time. In retrospect, while it had many improvements over the original, GTA II was not a very interesting game. I hate to use the middle-child analogy, but that is what GTA II is essentially. It's sandwiched between the game that started the series (GTA I) and the first 3D game (GTA III) as well. Stuck between the two Titans didn't do the game any favors with the passage of time. GTA II was very popular at the time, but was forgotten the very second GTA III was released. Unfortunate as it was a improvement over its predecessor, and introduced many of the elements that would be incorporated into the 3D version. 

Despite this, GTA II is still a very fun title that is worth trying out. At the very least, you can see the evolution of the games in this series.



Grand Theft Auto: London 1969
WIKIPEDIA
 WWW.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto%3A_London_1969

Grand Theft Auto 2
WIKIPEDIA
 WWW.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_2

Grand Theft Auto: London 1969
GTA WIKI
 GTA.FANDOM.COM
https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto:_London_1969

Grand Theft Auto 2
GTA WIKI
 GTA.FANDOM.COM
https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_2

GTA II
Soft Famous
https://softfamous.com/gta-ii/

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