Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is now 20 years old.
Releasing as one of the launch games for the PlayStation Portable in the West, it also came to the PlayStation 2. Rockstar says it sold 8 million copies on the PlayStation Portable, making it the best-selling title on the platform.
What Even Is Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories?
This game tells the story of Toni Cipriani. While Claude meets him when he was already one of the capos of the Leone crime family, this game tells the story of how he made his way up their hierarchy.
Unlike Grand Theft Auto Advance, Rockstar clearly put effort to make this as good a game as any they released on PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Rockstar North and Leeds’ studios worked on this game, including Dan Houser and Leslie Benzies.
Working The PlayStation Portable
While the PlayStation Portable isn’t exactly the same as the PlayStation 2, it was similar enough that Rockstar could make a similar scale game.
The PlayStation Portable had some limitations as well, such as the lack of a left analog stick. Rockstar also had to cut down this game’s scope, so that Toni couldn’t fly planes, swim, or even climb.
It’s hard to imagine this now, but in 2005, a full 3D open world game on a portable seemed unheard of, like other PlayStation Portable games. That’s clearly the reason why Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories did as well as it did.
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories’ success led to two more PlayStation Portable games, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. The latter game also released on the Nintendo DS, as Rockstar’s priorities shifted to show they could make their vision work on Nintendo’s platforms as well.
The Irony Of PlayStation Portable’s Success
The PlayStation Portable is such a unique piece of hardware that few games get ported from it to modern platforms. The 2016 port that came to mobile platforms like iOS, Android, and FireOS was based on the PlayStation 2 version instead.
While some would argue that that is a good thing, it also means newer gamers can’t relate to the original experience. In particular, these mobile ports no longer have the local six player multiplayer modes of the PlayStation Portable version.
Rockstar Games and the Grand Theft Auto franchise as a whole has simply kept growing in the years since. But one wonders if they will ever show Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories in the future.
