Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999): Gangs, Respect and a Big Launch

GTA 2 by DMA Design: release dates on four platforms, what it added to the first game, the respect system, launch numbers and scores.

Grand Theft Auto 2 is easy to file as a stopgap between the original and the 3D GTA III. The record from 1999 shows something else. It was the first GTA sold as a launch event, under the new Rockstar Games label, with shipping and download numbers announced in a press release. Its one big design idea, gangs whose opinion of you changes the map, stayed with the series.

Critics, though, scored it almost exactly like the first game. This page sets out why.

At a glance


Developer	DMA Design, Dundee (Take-Two; The Herald)
Publisher	Rockstar Games (Take-Two)
PlayStation and PC release	Oct 22 1999, worldwide (Take-Two, Oct 13 1999)
Dreamcast	Shipped in North America May 1 2000; ported by Liquid Games with DMA (Take-Two)
Game Boy Color	December 2000 (GameRankings)
Setting	Anywhere City, a retro-futuristic city in three districts (PC Gamer)
Protagonist in the intro film	Claude Speed, played by Scott Maslen (PC Gamer)
Launch shipment	More than 1.2 million units over three days (Take-Two, Oct 21 1999)
UK sales awards	ELSPA Silver (PC), Platinum (PlayStation)

What is counted, and how

Shipments are not sales. Take-Two's Oct 21 1999 release said the company "will ship in excess of 1.2 million units" worldwide over the next three days. That is units sent to stores. It expected more than $33 million in gross revenue from that, booked in the quarter ending Oct 31 1999. Dividing gives a rough average of about $27.50 per unit to retailers ($33M / 1.2M). That is our arithmetic, not a Take-Two figure, and both inputs are given as minimums.

What Take-Two later reported. The Oct 21 release was a forecast: units the company "will ship." Take-Two's 10-K for the year ending Oct 31 1999 gives the after-the-fact figure: GTA2 "shipped more than one million copies" in that fiscal year and made up about 10.3% of revenue. Net sales for the year were $305,931,858, so 10.3% is about $31.5 million ($305.9M x 0.103). That is our arithmetic, it is a net figure where the press release spoke of gross revenue, and it covers only launch week to Oct 31, so the two numbers are not directly comparable.

Release date. Take-Two's releases and its 10-K give Oct 22 1999 and October 1999. Metacritic lists Oct 25 1999. We use Take-Two's date.

ELSPA thresholds. ELSPA's archived award lists put GTA 2's PC version on the Silver list and its PlayStation version on the Platinum list. Gamasutra's Nov 2008 report gives the thresholds as 100,000 units for Silver and 300,000 for Platinum in the UK. Those are the thresholds in 2008. We could not confirm they were the same in 1999 and 2000.

Setting year. No source we opened gives an official year. Rockstar's archived GTA2 site has an "Individual Police Files" journal with chapter entries dated 13/07/13, 01/08/13 and 03/09/13. Read as day/month/year, those point to 2013. Rockstar did not say that, so we leave the year open.

Left out: a lifetime sales total that appears in secondary sources, because we could not open the magazine article it comes from.

The setup

You play a criminal arriving in Anywhere City. PC Gamer describes the place as retro-futuristic and bleak, split into three districts carved up between gangs. Each district is a level. GameSpot's Gerstmann wrote that each level has three gangs, and an onscreen meter shows where you stand with each.

You earn a gang's respect by attacking its rivals. Once a gang respects you, its pay phones give you work. The catch, as Gerstmann put it, is that every job for one gang makes its rival angrier, and an angry gang opens fire on sight. To finish a level you eventually have to work for all three.

Take-Two's Dreamcast release summed it up in three words, "respect is everything." The same release says there are seven gangs in all. IGN's PC review listed them as Yakuza, Scientists, Looneys, Rednecks, Zaibatzu (GameSpot spells it Zaibatsu), Russian Mob and Hare Krishnas.

What GTA 2 added to the first game

Each line below compares a 1998 review of the original with a 1999 review of the sequel.

Feature	Grand Theft Auto (1997)	Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999)
Map	Three separate cities (GamesRadar)	One city in three districts, one per level (GameSpot; PC Gamer)
Who gives jobs	"The local crime boss" (GameSpot 1998)	Three gangs per level with a respect meter (GameSpot 1999)
Health	No health meter mentioned	Health meter, new "this time around" (GameSpot)
Weapons	Four: pistol, machine gun, flamethrower, rocket launcher (GameSpot 1998)	Adds grenades, Molotov cocktails, tasers, shotgun, silenced machine gun, dual pistols (GameSpot 1999)
Police	Roadblocks (as described by GameSpot 1999)	Cars that cut you off, SWAT vans, federal agents, tanks (GameSpot 1999)
Saving	No saving inside a level (GameSpot PC, 1998)	Save only on finishing a level, PlayStation (GameSpot 1999)
Music	A radio station per car type (GameSpot 1998)	Station-style radio with music from Moving Shadow records (GameSpot 1999)
Intro	Not applicable	Live-action film, directed by Alex De Rakoff (PC Gamer)
Publisher	BMG Interactive in Europe, ASC Games for the US PC version (see GTA 1997)	Rockstar Games
Pre-launch demo	None reported	Downloaded more than 1 million times in three weeks (Take-Two)

The respect system is the real change. Almost everything else on the list is more of the same thing. PC Gamer's 2017 retrospective singles out the same feature, saying your allegiances affect the game in a direct way.

The film

Rockstar promoted GTA 2 with a short live-action film. PC Gamer says it was directed by music-video director Alex De Rakoff, shot in New York, and starred Scott Maslen as a criminal named Claude Speed. Clips from it make up the game's intro. Take-Two's 1999 news page offered "GTA 2 - The movie" as eight downloadable episodes. It also apologized for a delay after the copy sent for encoding was stolen in transit.

Claude Speed shares a first name with Claude, the silent lead of GTA III. We found no Rockstar source linking the two, so we do not treat them as the same character.

Reception

Version	GameRankings average	Reviews counted	GameSpot	IGN
PC	71.50%	10	6.8 (Oct 27 1999)	7.3 (Nov 18 1999)
PlayStation	69.92%	12	6.9 (Oct 22 1999)	not in archive
Dreamcast	70.80%	10	6.9 (May 4 2000)	6.7 (May 8 2000)
Game Boy Color	35.00%	2	none listed	4/10 (Dec 19 2000)

Metacritic's PlayStation page gives a Metascore of 70 from 15 critics. GameSpot and IGN dates above are as shown on GameRankings, except the GameSpot PlayStation review and IGN PC review, which we read directly.

Compare that with the original game, using the same outlets (see GTA 1997):

Measure	GTA (1997)	GTA 2 (1999)	Change
GameSpot, PC	6.4	6.8	+0.4
GameSpot, PlayStation	8.0	6.9	-1.1
GameRankings, PC	78.50%	71.50%	-7.0 points
GameRankings, PlayStation	68.33%	69.92%	+1.59 points

The sequel did not move the critics. Gerstmann called it, in his summary, largely the same game as the first, and docked it for blocky graphics and slow-feeling cars. IGN's PC review gave sound 9 and lasting appeal 9 but graphics only 7, calling them "average at best." Our reading is that GTA 2 was a better game than the first in ways reviewers noticed, such as gangs, health and saving, and a similar one in the way they scored, which was how it looked.

The Game Boy Color average rests on two reviews, so treat it as two opinions, not a consensus.

Legacy

GTA 2 was the last top-down main entry. Its successor moved to 3D in 2001; see GTA III and the series timeline. The top-down view came back on handhelds with GTA Advance and Chinatown Wars.

The launch is the other legacy. Take-Two's two October 1999 releases read like a modern launch plan: a gold date, a worldwide date, a three-day shipment number, and demo downloads reported as a selling point. For the numbers that followed, see GTA sales history.

Rockstar later gave GTA 2 away. Pocket-lint reported on Dec 23 2004 that Rockstar was offering GTA 2 and the first game free to mailing-list members, as a 353 MB download. Rockstar's archived Classics page lists it as Volume 3.

Trivia

The Herald's diary column reported in Mar 1999 that DMA's Dundee team considered calling the game "Eh Stole E' Motur." They dropped it because they thought it had little international appeal.
Take-Two's Oct 13 1999 release called DMA Design the company's "recently acquired" subsidiary. The 10-K dates the deal to September 1999: Take-Two paid one pound for DMA Design Holdings and took on about $12.3 million of debt. GTA 2 was the first main GTA game DMA shipped as a Take-Two subsidiary. See Rockstar North history.
Take-Two's "GTA Day," Jul 1 1999, launched the GTA 2 website on the same day as the free London 1961 pack.