Taking a quick break from GTA IV mayhem with a news story we feel should have been posted about 10 years ago... and probably was...

I originally had no intention of making this post, but due to the rising number of websites covering the story I thought it would be a good idea. A number of respectable gaming sites have over the past couple of days posted up reports of a bizarre rumour regarding GTA2 and it's alleged impending release on to the Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Store, and I just wanted to put it out there as fact that there is no truth in this so called rumour.

The rumour itself centres around the official GTA2 website and the flash countdown shown upon skipping the intro. The top part of the countdown always shows today's date, and a time which always starts at 09:38:00. Below this is a date in the future, always 21 days later, with the time exactly 2 hours ahead of the top one. The clocks both reset every 60 seconds.

Apparently, this has never been spotted by the rumor starter, whomever it was, who believed that the site had been updated and intended to be a clue towards a release of some kind by Rockstar Games. This was despite the fact the website has been online almost 10 years and as far as I know has always had this on the website. The fact that professional gaming websites are reporting this now is both amusing and slightly worrying.

For those not in the know, GTA2 (and earlier, GTA1) was made freely available for the PC over 3 years ago - Because of this I'm not sure that many people would even bother with an XBLA or PSN version, since presumably you'd need to pay for it.

The Official PlayStation Magazine claims that Rockstar Games is set to release the first two top-down Grand Theft Auto titles, GTA and GTA II, on the PlayStation Network. The magazine seemed to be hinting at the release being in the near future as well:

Can't wait for GTA IV? Well, GTA and GTA II, the top-down PS1 classics that started it all, are set to appear as PSN downloads...

A scan of the very short article can be found here. It isn’t yet known if the titles will also be released on the Xbox Live Arcade for Xbox 360 users, but if their claims are true, then I wouldn’t doubt it.

It was brought to my attention today that a petition has been made for Rockstar Games to make both GTA1 and GTA2 open source. For those of you not familiar with programming terminology, this means that the source code (basically the code that makes the game work) will be made viewable to anyone who wants it.

This would be invaluable to modders and programmers alike, who would be able to make modifications to ultimately improve the playabilty of the games much more easily than before.

Topic starter drwbns sums it up well.

Creating enhancements such as improving gameplay physics, weapons, and netcode could be a start and would show the GTA community contributing back and showing their support for old favorites.

The original topic on our forums can be found here, more importantly, head over to Petition Online to sign the petition, remember to use a valid email address too.

Thanks for the support everyone!

You are probably all aware that quite some time ago Rockstar made the original GTA optimized and downloadable from their website, well now they have done it with GTA2. That's right, more details below.

Yes, GTA2. The 2nd proper installment in the Grand Theft Auto lineage, originally released in 1999. The one that introduced the concept of multiple rival gangs vying for your attention and criminal work-for-hire.

The Yakuza, Scientists, Looneys, Rednecks, Zaibatsu, Russian mob and Hare Krishnas. Gouranga!

This late 20th century top-down classic is now available to you all in the form of a 350MB downloadable .zip, courtesy of Rockstar Games.

So this is your Christmas present from Rockstar Games. Head on over to the Rockstar Classics page and fill in the form and follow the instructions in order to download it, I will be downloading my copy in a minute. Obviously you'll need a broadband connection or faster to download this as it's over 350MB!

According to this GamesRadar Article the release date for the GameBoy Advance version of Grand Theft Auto has also been held back a week. It says 'late October' but one would assume it would have the same release date as San Andreas.

As for the top-down GBA version of Grand Theft Auto, which was also due to be released on 22 October, this is now scheduled for "late October" so we wouldn't be surprised for that to also be put back to 29 October to coincide with San Andreas.