GTA: London 1969 and London 1961, the Mission Packs

Before Grand Theft Auto had a sequel, it had an add-on. GTA: London 1969 moved the first game's top-down formula to late-1960s London. A free follow-up, GTA: London 1961, went out to PC owners two months later. Together they were the series' first experiment with selling more content on top of a game people already owned, and the only time GTA has visited London.

The two packs are often merged into one entry. They were different products, and this page treats them separately.

At a glance

What is counted, and how

Mission counts disagree. Rockstar's launch announcement, as reported by GameSpot, claimed "nearly fifty new missions." Eurogamer's reviewer counted thirty new missions and thirty new vehicles. We print both. Neither source explains how it counted.

The PC release date is unclear. GameRankings lists Mar 31 1999 for the PC version, which may be a database placeholder. IGN reported on Apr 22 1999 that GTA London had gone gold and would ship to stores the next week. We give the confirmed PlayStation ship date (Apr 30 1999) and say only that the PC version shipped around the same time.

Who published it in the US was still changing in spring 1999. GameSpot reported on Mar 15 1999 that Gathering of Developers would publish a US PC package with the original game included, for about US$30. We did not find a later contemporary source confirming who appeared on the US PC box, so we do not name one.

Day counts: Apr 30 1999 (London 1969 on PlayStation) to Jul 1 1999 (London 1961) is 62 days. Jul 1 1999 to GTA 2's Oct 22 1999 release date (as scheduled on Take-Two's news page) is 113 days.

Left out: chart positions from Take-Two press releases we could not open, and scores that appear only in secondary sources.

London 1969: the setup

The publisher's blurb on GameRankings casts you as "a stylish hooligan." The rules carry over from the first Grand Theft Auto: jobs from phone boxes, multi-stage missions with time limits, and police attention that rises with your crimes (Eurogamer). Rockstar's announcement promised Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and Tower Bridge.

On PlayStation, the pack worked as a disc swap. IGN explained in Feb 1999 that you needed the original game and its save data on a memory card, then loaded the new disc. IGN put the new city at about half the size of the original game's world. GameSpot's report on the PlayStation launch called it the first add-on pack ever made for that console. That is Rockstar's claim, repeated by GameSpot; we found no source that tested it.

Sam Houser, then Rockstar's president, said when the pack was announced that 1960s London had been "slick, glamorous, and cool." For more on the founders, see the Houser brothers and Rockstar.

How it was made

Vice's 2019 oral history interviewed three of the team: artists Ray Larabie and Adam Holbrough and designer Blair Renaud. Their account:

• The work was done at Rockstar Canada. Greg Bick directed and Sergei Kuprejanov designed missions with him. Larabie believed Dan Houser also worked on the missions, and said Houser visited the studio often.
• Larabie said it was close to reworking the art on top of the original game's code. Programmer Kevin Hoare did the hardest part, moving the driver's side to British left-hand traffic and rebuilding the traffic logic.
• The team watched 1960s British car-chase films for homework. Renaud said he learned London's layout for the map without ever having been there.
• For car sprites, the team bought British diecast model cars at a shop in Mississauga, Ontario, and photographed them from above.
• The team in London did the cutscene voice work and put the music together. Renaud pointed out that the sound won a BAFTA.

London 1961: the free sequel

GameSpot reported on Jun 8 1999 that Rockstar would release a free downloadable pack called GTA London 1961 on Jul 1. Take-Two's own news page called Jul 1 1999 "GTA Day": the same day it launched the GTA 2 website and opened the London 1961 download at GTA-London.com.

Take-Two's page set the terms. It was free, PC only, and needed London 1969 already installed. It was set in 1961, with new cars and missions and a new map for multiplayer only. GameSpot's Jun 8 story described "a few new maps" with one for multiplayer. Take-Two's wording is the more specific of the two.

London 1961 was a marketing tool as much as a game. It went live the day the GTA 2 site opened, three and a half months before GTA 2 itself.

Reception: cooler in the US than in the UK

Most US outlets scored the pack lower than the British ones did.

The clearest example is one PC game scored 5.9 by GameSpot's US site and 8.5 by GameSpot UK. Dulin's US review said there was little new and that GTA's existing problems were still there. IGN was the exception among US sites: Doug Perry gave the PlayStation pack 7.5 and wrote that IGN's earlier 6 for the original game had been "a bit too harsh." Eurogamer's 2000 review, written after a budget re-release at 9.99 pounds from Sold Out Software, accepted the poor graphics and praised the soundtrack.

The sound is the one thing nobody disputes. Gerstmann noted that all the speech had been replaced with London slang and accents and the music rebuilt to fit. In 1999 BAFTA gave GTA: London 1969 its Interactive award for Sound. The other nominees were Rebellion's Alien vs Predator and Konami's Dancing Stage.

Legacy

London has not returned. Every later GTA is set in American-style fictional places; see GTA universes and the series timeline. In the Vice interview Renaud said he doubted Rockstar would go back. The article adds that Dan Houser told The Guardian in 2013 that another London game was unlikely.

The packs did set two habits. London 1969 was paid extra content for a game people already owned. Rockstar sold add-ons again a decade later with GTA IV's episodes, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony. London 1961 was a free extra released alongside the promotion for the next game.

On sales, the only primary trace we found is a UK one. ELSPA's Silver award list includes a PC entry titled "Grand Theft Auto / GTA: London," which appears to be a bundle. The list does not give the year or the threshold. See GTA sales history.

Trivia

• Rockstar marked the death of novelist and art critic John Berger in a Jan 3 2017 Newswire post that called him a "Secret GTA: London Villain." The post's summary recalls the Crisp twins, Archie and Albert, two gangsters at war with crime bosses including Harold Cartwright. The rest of the archived post did not load, so we cannot confirm which role Berger voiced.
• An editor's note on Take-Two's 1999 news page said 30,000 copies of the original GTA had been stolen from a UK warehouse. It also said the studio recording GTA London's audio was broken into and lost all its hardware. This is Take-Two's own claim, made in a joking tone.
• Larabie told Vice he made the London tiles look duller than the original game's on purpose, to suit a grimy 1960s city, and that the team made a parody department store called "Harrobs."

Sources

• IGN PSX, "Grand Theft Auto Does the Math," Feb 2 1999
• GameSpot news, Feb 10 1999
• IGN PSX news, Feb 23 1999
• GameSpot, "Grand Theft London," Mar 15 1999
• IGN PC news, Apr 22 1999
• GameSpot, "Take-Two Ships GTA: London 1969," Apr 30 1999
• GameSpot PC review, Ron Dulin, May 21 1999
• GameSpot PlayStation review, Jeff Gerstmann, May 28 1999
• IGN PlayStation review, Doug Perry, May 10 1999
• GameRankings, London 1969 (PC)
• GameRankings, London 1969 (PlayStation)
• GameSpot, "GTA London Gains Free Pack," Jun 8 1999
• Take-Two news page, 1999
• GameSpot news, Jul 1 1999
• Eurogamer review, Apr 22 2000
• BAFTA, Interactive: Sound in 1999
• ELSPA, Sales Awards: Silver
• Vice, "The Oral History of GTA: London," Apr 30 2019
• Rockstar Newswire, John Berger post, Jan 3 2017