Digital Foundry: GTA3... on Dreamcast

[JohnVG]

First of all, that is a huge project with amazing results, and anything I will say now, has never ever to be considered as an attack against it.

That fan-made DC port of GTAIII is based on the assets of the PC version.
The developers are trying, very hard, to replicate the PS2 graphic (and gameplay) version experience in the DC.

That may seem a great idea, and probably is the most logical. BUT: PC assets of that game are richer than the PS2 one (so, more polygons here and there)
Also, being the 2 machines (DC and PS2) VERY different in its inner hardware (and CPU/GPU architecture), making "an EXACT" port of the PS2 game experience, in a DC, is probably not the thing you would get in an official 2001 DC version. The reason is, you will get performance implications: DC cannot supply the architectural differences, with brute force of the hardware, to get "the exact same game" (as, for example, emulation does many times, because the emulated machine is several times worse then the one who uses the emulator). And official version it would just adapt every situation to the DC hard, differently to the PS2 would do, to get a similar result in gameplay experience.

Plus, DC used GD and not a DVD (way too expensive to be launched with one, in 1998, although it were rumours during years DC could get a DVD reader as an expansion). That means, a 1 disc game has only a maximum of 1 GB, not 4,5GB (the limit in a single layer DVD). So... DC version probably would got its radio stations cropped (in number, or at least, in extension) to save space in the disc. Or its quality would had been too compromised.

SO, what we are getting here, is a very DC hardware-stressed PS2 GTAIII "version". Not really a DC version developed with that machine in mind.
What I'm trying to say is, if DMA (Rockstar North) had released a GTAIII version for Dreamcast, in that moment, it would probably had better framerate experience and would have been much more similar in quality to the PS2 version, without trying "to be" the PS2 version in DC.

That said, the result of this project is IMPRESSIVE, praiseworthy, and totally recomendable if you have a DC.

Last edited by JohnVG - on 12 January 2025