For those of you old enough to play GTA 1 and GTA 2, how popular was the series then before GTA 3?

[darkknightkryta]

Where I lived not too many people really knew about it. Driver was the big game. Interestingly enough GTA 3 really didn't do too much more than Driver, but because it let you run over people, it was a huge game changer. Now there's no more Driver franchise :/