Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (lost builds of cancelled GameCube ports of open-world games; existence unconfirmed; early 2000's)
The cover arts for the PlayStation 2 versions of Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
Status: Existence Unconfirmed
Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City are two open-world action-adventure games developed by DMA Design (Grand Theft Auto III) and Rockstar North (Grand Theft Auto: Vice City), and published by Rockstar Games on October 22nd, 2001, and October 29th, 2002, respectively. The games were originally released exclusively on the PlayStation 2, but were eventually released onto many other systems, including the Xbox and PC.
GameCube Ports
On April 28th, 2003, an article would be published on GameCubicle, a news website dedicated to the Nintendo GameCube, claiming that Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City would be released onto both the GameCube and Xbox.[1] Although the Xbox versions for both games would be released later that same year, the GameCube versions of the games would never come out.
No other information is available regarding the GameCube versions of Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and the GameCubicle article is the only proof that GameCube versions of the games were planned.
Assuming the ports did exist, it is unknown why they were scrapped. Several possible reasons could be Nintendo not wanting two notoriously violent games on the GameCube (Though this is unlikely, as other M-rated game franchises like Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil had games released on the GameCube), the GameCube not selling as much as the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, and the poor sales of the GameCube version of Smuggler's Run: Warzones (2002), which was published by Rockstar Games. Disc space may've also been an issue as the GameCube used minidiscs which could only hold 1.46 gigabytes[2] compared to the Xbox & PS2, which used optical discs capable of holding 4.7 gigabytes.
Given how there is no other information regarding the GameCube ports aside from the GameCubicle article, it is also very possible that the two games were never planned to be released on the GameCube in the first place.
Both Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Alongside the third game in the trilogy, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas) would eventually be released onto a Nintendo system with the release of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition (2021) on the Nintendo Switch.
See Also
- Grand Theft Auto (lost build of cancelled Sega Saturn port of action-adventure game; 1997)
- Grand Theft Auto 64 (lost build of cancelled Nintendo 64 port of action-adventure game; 1999)
- Grand Theft Auto V (lost build of cancelled Wii U port of open-world game; existence unconfirmed; 2013)
- ZTA (lost build of cancelled PlayStation Portable zombie action-adventure open world game; mid-2000s)