From Vice City to GTA 6 Leaks Here’s a Deep Dive Into the 25 Blazing Years of Rockstars’ Flagship Franchise

Rockstar’s phenomenal series Grand Theft Auto or simply known as GTA officially turns 25 years old. The series made its debut in 1997, with a 2D game for the PlayStation, PC, and Gameboy color. Ever since then, the franchise has evolved into a genre-defining series, selling hundreds of millions of copies. 

The GTA franchise has gone down as one of the most successful and popular gaming series of all time. The most recent release in the mainline series was GTA 5. The game was released back in 2013 and it is still played to this day. GTA 5 is the most successful game in the series, with over 170 million sold copies. 

The original GTA game that was released on November 28, 1997, was a 2D action-adventure, which was visually similar to the old Legends of Zelda games. But as time passed, the series evolved into fantastic 3D open-world action-adventure games inspired by gang wars and underworld stories.

Most influential games of GTA history 

The franchise took the turn from 2D to 3D for the first time in the third game in the mainline series. Before GTA 3, the previous games were 2D adventures, where players had to play as a criminal and complete jobs for the underworld while running from the cops and making a reputation for themselves. 

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The 3D evolution was carried by the upcoming games of the series after GTA 3. Vice city was the beginning where Rockstar started developing its formula. Vice City was a massive game in the franchise. It allowed the players to roam around its massive 3D open-world map and do whatever they want. Making them feel like a true gangster. 

If Vice City developed the formula, Then San Andreas perfected it. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas came out in 2004 and it quickly gained a lot of attention from gaming enthusiasts around the world. The game used the same graphics engine as Vice City, but the scale was much bigger. The game is also very notorious as there were some aspects that were received very negatively by the media and the parents of young players. 

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And with the rumored and highly anticipated GTA 6, Rockstar is all set to take this legendary franchise to a whole different level. The 6th installment of the series promises to bring fresh new aspects to the franchise. This game is rumored to have a female protagonist, which will be the first in the series. 

As time moves on, The Grand Theft Auto series will only become better and better. With its 25th anniversary in the industry, we and fans can only hope that the game keeps on gifting us great experiences for another quarter of a century and more!