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Grand Theft Auto Advance is now 21 years old.
Rockstar’s sole entry into the Game Boy Advance library is neither well-known or well-regarded. Releasing on the same day as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, it stands as yet another poorly executed attempt to bring a modern game to Nintendo’s last Game Boy.
So the question comes up; why did it end up this way?
What Was The Grand Theft Auto Advance That We Got?
This game was developed by Digital Eclipse in partnership with Rockstar Games. While it returns to the 2D top down gameplay of the PlayStation Grand Theft Auto games, Grand Theft Auto Advance also adds features from Grand Theft Auto III.
That includes the story, as it’s also set in Liberty City. Set exactly one year before Claude’s rampage, you play a small-time criminal named Mike. Mike wants to get out of the big city, but after his friend Vinnie and his retirement money is destroyed by a car bomb, Mike vows revenge.
Mike meets many of the same characters in Grand Theft Auto III, but his story is ultimately irrelevant to that game.
It’s clear that Rockstar and Digital had to deal with the Game Boy Advance’s technical limitations. But the platform that hosted classics like Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, isometric curiosities like Max Payne, and even 3D marvels like Asterix and Obelix XXL clearly could have had a better Grand Theft Auto.
What Was The Grand Theft Auto Advance That We Could Have Had?
Unseen 64 shared details on a Grand Theft Auto III game that was the original plan for Game Boy Advance. Unfortunately, Crawfish Interactive, the studio who was supposed to make the game, shut down a week after the game was announced in 2002.
Rockstar did not reveal the details of what happened behind the scenes. But it’s clear that Grand Theft Auto Advance suffered from Crawfish’s fate. If Rockstar had been able to dedicate two to three full years, we may have gotten a more polished game.
Retro City Rampage, originally released in 2012, is a flattering parody of the Grand Theft Auto games. Developer Brian Provinciano managed to backport the title to MS-DOS in 2015, proving that older hardware could realize a similar open world title.
While Grand Theft Auto Advance did not turn out to be a memorable 3rd party Game Boy Advance game, it was not the only major franchise to suffer that fate on the platform. Rockstar would have more chances to make their mark on portable gaming in the future.
