3D Era 2002 Vice City
Welcome to the 1980s. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a 2002 action-adventure game by Rockstar North, set in a fictionalised 1986 Miami. Tommy Vercetti, freshly out of a fifteen-year prison sentence, is sent south by the Forelli family to broker a cocaine deal that is ambushed before it closes, leaving him with no money, no product and a boss who wants both back. Working for a lawyer, a property developer, an exiled colonel and eventually the city's drug baron, Tommy buys and takes businesses across two islands until the organisation is his. It was the best-selling game of 2002 and has sold over 17.5 million copies across all platforms.
491 entries
Pan, zoom and jump to any district.
Named cast, who they answer to, and how their story ends.
The story in the order the game gives it to you.
Every car, bike, boat and plane, with the top speed, acceleration, braking and grip the game actually runs on.
Damage, clip size, range and accuracy for every weapon, down to the decimal.
Crews, syndicates and the cops who tax them.
Every station on the dial with its full tracklist.
Every district on the map, with its size and borders.
The background population — cops, gangbangers, tourists and everyone else on the street.
Safehouses, garages and the businesses that pay you back.
Everything for sale or handed over, with what it costs and what it earns.
Every code, per platform. Some permanently lock 100% completion.
// Chapter
01
6 missions
Tommy Vercetti has served fifteen years for a Harwood hit that Sonny Forelli set him up to take. Sonny sends him to Vice City in 1986 to open the Forelli family's line into the cocaine trade, with two soldiers and a local lawyer, Ken Rosenberg, to handle the paperwork. The buy with the Vance brothers is ambushed by masked gunmen. Victor Vance and both Forelli men die, and the money and the product vanish. Sonny gives Tommy the job of getting them back. Rosenberg points him at Colonel Juan Garcia Cortez, who arranged the meeting, and at Kent Paul, who trades in rumour. Tommy works his way through Rosenberg's back catalogue of favours: a party on Cortez's yacht, a beating in an alley that leaves Leo Teal dead and his phone in Tommy's pocket, two jurors intimidated, and a riot staged to bankrupt a delivery company. By the end of it, Lance Vance has attached himself to Tommy and the pair have a shared reason to find the shooters.
14 firsts for the series
Vice City · $100,000 + a pickup at Ocean View, Vercetti Estate and Hyman Condo every 10 packages; Sea Sparrow at 80, Rhino at 90, Hunter at 100
Vice City · $1,000 for the final rampage
Vice City · $10,000 on the 36th jump
playstation 2, north america
render pipeline
cinematics and motion capture director
9 stations
across the map
requirement groups
PlayStation 2 · Windows · Xbox
Ray Liotta was the first actor to give a Grand Theft Auto protagonist a voice. Cinematics director Navid Khonsari found him difficult on set, and Sam Houser recalled that in some sessions he was very dark and could not work. After the game sold in the millions, Liotta publicly complained that he had been underpaid for the role.
Lance Vance is voiced by Philip Michael Thomas, who played Ricardo Tubbs in Miami Vice, and Lance's revenge-for-a-dead-brother motivation mirrors Tubbs' in the show's pilot. Several vehicles are lifted from the series as well, including the Squalo speedboat and the Stinger, and Emotion 98.3 plays Jan Hammer's Crockett's Theme.
In November 2003 the Haitian Centers Council and Haitian Americans for Human Rights protested in New York, arguing the game invited players to attack Haitian immigrants. After New York mayor Michael Bloomberg threatened Take-Two with legal action, the publisher apologised and removed the offending lines from later copies. North Miami's council separately proposed an ordinance restricting violent game sales to minors.
In the mission Boomshine Saigon, Phil Cassidy's moonshine still explodes and Tommy has to drive him to hospital while hallucinating. Phil loses his left arm, which is why he appears one-armed fifteen years later in GTA III.
Vice City sold over 500,000 copies in its first 24 hours and 1.4 million in two days, making it the fastest-selling game in history at that point. It was the best-selling game of 2002 in the United States, sold 14.2 million copies on PlayStation 2, and had reached 17.5 million across all platforms by March 2008.
Vice City was made on a development budget of about $5 million with a $13.2 million marketing spend, the most Rockstar North had spent on a game. The release date slipped from 22 October to 29 October 2002 to meet manufacturing demand, and development stopped on 15 October when the game went to manufacturing.
A radio station called Vice City News was planned and dropped during development. The VCN building still stands in the finished game and the VCN Maverick news helicopter is still drivable, but the station itself is not on the dial.
The game is set in 1986, but Cachao's A Gozar Con Mi Combo is from 1994 and the version of Man Parrish's Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don't Stop) used in-game is a 1988 acid house remix. Two Los Super Seven tracks from 2001 also play in cutscenes. Of the 103 songs on the original soundtrack, 1983 is the most represented year with 21.
Music licences expired over time, so the 2012 iOS and Android ports, the PS2 Classics re-releases and the 2021 Definitive Edition are all missing tracks that were in the 2002 original, including Michael Jackson's Billie Jean, Ozzy Osbourne's Bark at the Moon and Herbie Hancock's Rockit. Wave 103 is the only station to keep its full original playlist.
Vice City led the first British Academy Games Awards with eight nominations and six wins, took Console Action/Adventure Game of the Year at the 6th Interactive Achievement Awards, and won the Golden Joystick Ultimate Game of the Year alongside Best PlayStation 2 Game from IGN, GameSpot and Entertainment Weekly.
