What to Play Before GTA 6: Original Hardware & PAL Collector Guide

Deciding what to play before GTA 6 means looking past compromised digital remasters and returning to the original physical discs that built Rockstar's tropical metropolis. By tracking down specific PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and Xbox pressings, you experience the Grand Theft Auto history timeline with its licensed soundtracks, atmospheric visual effects, and uncensored missions intact. Here is how Vice City evolved across console generations, which PAL revisions belong on your shelf, and how to verify authentic Complete in Box copies with their pack-in paper maps.

Where Vice City Began: The 2D PS1 & Dreamcast Era

Long before neon lights reflected off wet 3D asphalt, Vice City debuted as a top-down pixel playground in the original 1997 Grand Theft Auto on PlayStation 1. The game structured its progression across three distinct locations: Liberty City, San Andreas, and finally a 1990s iteration of Vice City inspired by Miami. Playing this early version reveals how core series mechanics—pay-and-spray garages, pager missions, and escalating police heat—were established right from the start.

For PAL collectors picking up the original PlayStation trilogy of Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto: London 1969, and Grand Theft Auto 2, buying loose discs makes the games nearly unplayable. None of these 2D titles include an in-game pause menu map; instead, navigation relies entirely on directional arrows and the folded paper city map originally packed into the case. A genuine Complete in Box copy of the PAL PlayStation 1 Big Box editions must contain both the thick multi-language instruction manual and this crucial poster map.

When it comes to Grand Theft Auto 2, hardware choice significantly alters the experience. While the PlayStation 1 version remains the most common, the Sega Dreamcast port runs at a higher resolution with vastly superior lighting effects for its dusk-til-dawn aesthetic. Connecting a Sega Dreamcast via an RGB SCART cable or VGA box delivers crisp, jitter-free sprites that put the Sony original to shame, though the fragile PAL PS1 double-jewel cases remain the centrepiece for display collectors.

If you are mapping out what to play before GTA 6, you can safely skip the Game Boy Color ports of Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2. While impressive as technical curiosities crammed onto 8-bit cartridges, both handheld versions suffer from severe framerate drops, stripped-back audio, and cramped screen visibility that make actual gameplay a chore.

GTA Vice City (2002): Why Original PS2 Discs Beat the Remasters

Modern digital storefronts and The Definitive Edition remasters have stripped away much of what made the 2002 masterpiece special, making the gta vice city original ps2 version essential for returning to the 1980s. Because music contracts expire over decades, re-releases cut dozens of iconic tracks from the in-game radio stations. Booting up an original PAL PlayStation 2 pressing (product code SLES-51061) is the only effortless way to cruise Ocean Drive while listening to the complete licensed soundtrack, including removed classics by Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, and Ozzy Osbourne.

For collectors who want the rawest version of the game, the exact disc revision matters just as much as the platform. Early black-label PAL pressings (version 1.40) contain content that was quietly patched out of later Platinum and compilation re-releases. Specifically, this initial pressing retains:

• The tear gas weapon spawning behind the Washington Beach police station, which was replaced with standard grenades in later revisions due to severe framerate drops inside smoke clouds.
• Unaltered mission scripts and radio dialogue referencing the Cuban and Haitian gangs, which Rockstar edited following public controversy in 2003.
• Original weapon names modeled after real-world firearms before legal caution prompted renames in subsequent prints.

Beyond uncut content, playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on authentic PlayStation 2 hardware preserves the artistic direction of the RenderWare engine. The developers designed the game around the "trails" graphical setting, creating a warm, blurry, neon bloom engineered specifically for CRT televisions via RGB SCART. Later high-definition ports broke this post-processing effect, leaving the city looking sterile and plasticky. When inspecting a second-hand PAL copy, ensure the blue Amaray case houses both the manual—cleverly styled as a Vice City tourist guide—and the double-sided fold-out map and poster.

The Underrated Prequel: GTA Vice City Stories on PSP and PS2

Many players figuring out what to play before GTA 6 overlook the 2006 prequel, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. Set in 1984—two years prior to Tommy Vercetti's arrival—the story follows Victor Vance and explains how the Vance crime family rose to power. Exploring the 1984 map offers fantastic environmental storytelling, showing familiar 1986 landmarks still under construction alongside an empire-building mechanic where you seize and upgrade rival gang businesses across the city.

Unlike the main trilogy, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories has been completely delisted from modern digital stores and skipped for remasters. The culprit is a web of complicated licensing, most notably a full in-game appearance and playable concert performance by musician Phil Collins. Because these likeness and audio rights were never renegotiated, physical PSP and PS2 discs represent the only legitimate way to experience this chapter of Vice City lore.

European collectors have two distinct ways to play this entry: the original PlayStation Portable release (ULES-00502) and the 2007 PlayStation 2 port (SLES-54622). Finding a clean copy of gta vice city stories ps2 pal has become increasingly challenging because it launched late in the console's lifecycle after the PlayStation 3 was already on shelves. The PlayStation 2 version is widely considered superior for home play, adding right-analogue camera control, improved draw distance, and a few exclusive side missions.

If you opt for the PlayStation Portable version to play on a PSP-2000 or PSP-3000, inspect the Universal Media Disc (UMD) carefully before inserting it into the drive. The thin plastic outer shell on PSP games frequently separates at the seams with age. Never use superglue to repair a split UMD casing; cyanoacrylate fumes will permanently fog the optical disc inside and render it unreadable. Instead, snap on an inexpensive aftermarket replacement shell.