GTA: Chinatown Wars: The One Time GTA Went Small
GTA: Chinatown Wars: The One Time GTA Went Small
South Park got it wrong on this one.
We’re just three months away from the release of Grand Theft Auto VI, and the series feels more “too big to fail” than ever. If you decide to completely pass on playing the latest entry in the franchise, even if you’ve never enjoyed GTA before, you’ll inevitably wonder what you’re missing out on. Because people are going to tell you nonstop how amazing the game is. And, if you abstain, you may also struggle to keep up with the larger conversation about the direction of games as medium as a whole, as Rockstar has consistently used GTA to push gaming to new levels of technical excellence and narrative extremes.
Except for the one time they didn’t.
Originally released in 2009, GTA: Chinatown Wars was one of the few times that Rockstar used the GTA series to follow trends instead of setting them. The Nintendo DS had recently become the best-selling handheld system of all time. Smartphone gaming was still in its infancy, and no one was sure just how far this whole “touch control” fad would go. But people knew that things were changing in the industry, and, naturally, no one wanted to be left behind. So everyone began asking if touch-controlled, handheld games like Nintendogs and Brain Age were strictly for “casual” experiences, or if they could end up taking more traditional franchises like GTA to new heights as well?
The answer to that question may seem like an obvious “no” when you hear it today, but look at it this way. Animal Crossing on the GameCube sold about 2 million copies. Not long after, Animal Crossing: Wild World on the DS, with worse graphics and fewer features, sold more than 10 million. By that math, you couldn’t blame Rockstar for looking at games like GTA: San Andreas and GTA IV, which each sold 10 times what Animal Crossing had on GameCube, and thinking, “We can kick Animal Crossing’s ass on the DS as well.”
What Rockstar, and most of the world, didn’t understand yet, is that Animal Crossing helped precipitate a new “cozy games” format that didn’t follow any of the old rules. Cozy games aren’t about escaping into big, dangerous places where you can do anything you want. They aren’t about action at all. Games like Animal Crossing are physical objects that people want to hold in their hands—like a book or a warm cup of cocoa—and cuddle up to. They’re additions to our lives, forces for positivity during difficult times, and they make the real world less of a terrible place. That’s not something that only “casual” gamers want. It’s something that most people could use in their lives.
GTA: Chinatown Wars, on the other hand, was far from cozy. It worked as sort of a half-step between the classic GTA games and the touch-controlled mini-game collections that did so well on the DS. Like Animal Crossing, it played from the top-down perspective, using stylized characters who communicate in text as opposed to voice acting. But this wild world wasn’t filled with trees to shake and virtual stuffed animals to befriend. It featured a huge, sprawling city, gun fights, drug dealing, real music on the radio, morally grey NPCs (most of whom die by the end), and, of course, stealing cars.
And it’s pretty fun! If it were released today for $20, maybe as a Hotline Miami spin-off, it would probably do pretty well. It’s also possible that, if it was released as just “Grand Auto: Chinatown”, with the theft and the wars removed, with the focus being on exploring fun restaurants and gift shops, it could have potentially won over the Animal Crossing crowd. But instead, it was a miss with GTA fans and Nintendo fans alike, moving fewer than a million units—the least ever for a Rockstar GTA title. It would eventually come to PSP and mobile platforms, and it seemed to find something of an audience on phones, but Rockstar hasn’t kept up with making the game available on modern platforms of any kind, which isn’t the best sign.
As a result, GTA fans today (many of whom were reared on GTA V and GTA Online) have likely never even heard of Chinatown Wars. Anyone watching South Park reruns who gets the Season 13 episode “Margaritaville”, which shows the whole world obsessing over the pending release of GTA: Chinatown Wars, may wonder if the game was even real, or if it only exists in the show. It’s hard to imagine that any entry in an historically important franchise in another medium, like a Lucas-directed Star Wars movie or a book by Stephen King, being lost to time like this.
Hopefully, once GTA VI makes all the money in the world, Rockstar will put some of that cash into porting Chinatown Wars to modern hardware. It can be little treat for people who like GTA for more than its realistic graphics, cinematic storytelling, and “next big thing” status in the industry.