VIDEO Hundreds queue in Leeds for Grand Theft Auto

It was billed as the most anticipated computer game of all time and it certainly lived up to its hype as hundreds of people queued to get hold of a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV at midnight.

The controversial game, released on the PS3 and XBOX360, was expected to shift a staggering 9m copies at it's launch.

Its impact was so large, in fact, that some Hollywood studios were rumoured to have postponed the release of several movies.

In Leeds, eager gamers started queueing hours before the official release time of one minute past midnight.

At Asda, Owlcotes, Pudsey, queues began forming at 9pm and eventually stretched to hundreds of people.

As our video shows, game fans young and old queued from inside the store tens of meters into the car park.

Asda night manager Mick Goodall said the game's release led to some of the biggest queues since the release of the last Harry Potter book.

He said: "We had an initial allocation of 250 games for XBOX and PS3 consoles and they sold out in 45 minutes. We had people in the store asking about them at 9pm and they started queueing then. Obviously, we couldn't sell the game until after midnight.

"We were quite organised in that we didn't want a stampede come midnight, so we had security guards there, just to help other shoppers and make sure everything was fair and only one copy was sold per person.

"It was the biggest queue I have seen. I think the last time we had something like this it was the release of the Harry Potter book but this was even bigger than that."

GTA IV has been in the making for the last four years and is the latest in the GTA franchise. The game franchise has attracted criticism because of its adult-orientated content, which critics have argued glamourises car jacking, random violence and organised crime.

Previous titles have included GTA III, GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas.

DEPTFORD, N.J. -- Chances are, if you are male and young, you know what the name Grand Theft Auto means. The same probably goes if you're a concerned parent.

Tuesday, April 29th brought the release of Grand Theft Auto IV, technically the sixth installment of a popular video game series chronically all that is debauch, violent and criminal. At 12 a.m., several area gaming stores held "Midnight Release Parties" which are essentially just special events giving the more hardcore in the gaming community to get their hands on a copy of the game that much faster; literally, the very first minute on the day a company allows their game to be released.

Grand Theft Auto has been hailed and criticized in the previous weeks. Those in the gaming world have given it A+'s, 10 out of 10 stars, 100%, some of the best scores any game has seen in close to a decade. The game was touted as revolutionary, all encompassing, a true evolution in the way people would game.

Opponents of the violence and alluded sexual content warned parents of the dangers exposing children to these kind of horrors and the damage it could due to a player's psyche. Guns, killing, blood, drugs and sex. Surely this kind of game is to be avoided, they said.

And a midnight release for the game? Would holding a middle-of-the-night party for this kind of game really be such a good idea? Wouldn't the stores be taking a huge risk? Allowing unsupervised (mostly) young (mostly) guys to mill around out front, waiting to get their hands on this kind of unprecedented content; isn't that just asking for trouble?

Apparently not.

The Deptford Mall houses two different gaming stores, GameStop and EB Games, who have the same parent company. Upstairs, GameStop saw a few kids quietly waiting out front beginning at around 9 p.m., sitting around reading magazines. The manager, who said he couldn't divulge any specific information, said no one would show up until a few minutes before midnight, get their game and leave. There was no loud clamoring, no unruly mob, just a few people mulling around, killing time.

EB Games, downstairs, had even less people around 10:30 p.m. Only six people were waiting, and no one had been hanging around for an exceptionally long period of time. People were talking amongst each other, making conversation with the managers who were waiting to let everyone inside.

The GameStop in the Locust Grove Plaze is across the street from the Deptford Mall. It lies within an outdoor strip mall. There were about 6 cars quietly humming out front in the parking lot.

Best Buy, by far, drew the largest crowd at the earliest time. By 11 p.m., the line was almost wrapped around the end of the building. Four young guys up front, Matt, Shane, Kevin and Keith, all 17 and 18, had been there since 7 p.m. They had a cooler, radio and lawn chairs. When it had been raining earlier in the evening, they had set up a tent they'd brought.

But the second group in line hadn't shown up until about 10 p.m. and the line had just began to expand in the last hour, though now it was growing quickly.

Finally, the GameStop at Hartford Plaza on Evesham Road in Runnemede had about fifty people show up total for the midnight release. Four mothers were counted making the nighttime trip with sons too young to purchase the Rated Mature game they wouldn't be able to purchase on their own, happy enough with the job they've done in raising their children to know the difference between reality and fantasy that they conceded to going out to purchase their child a video game and partake in the rare opportunity to due so with the truly committed group of gamers during a special occasion.

Everyone waited in line while groups of five or six at a time began to be admitted entrance at midnight. No pushing or shoving took place, even when late-arriving friends came and joined their friends in the middle of the line. Everyone was content to know they'd be going home with a copy of the game, even if they had to wait an extra minute or two.

The line moved swiftly, and inside of a half an hour since the first group had been let inside the store to pick up their prepaid prizes, the line was almost done with. There were no incidents of kid gone crazy for gaming, fighting to get their copy first. No anger or violence. Just a mellow crowd enjoying the rare opportunity to be in the same place at the same time for the same communal reason.

And then, everyone had gotten their game and moved on, rushing home to spend the next few early morning hours playing before other responsibilities like work and school began creeping up along with the rising sun, and more importantly, playing before most others could say they had.

Because in the gaming community, "First!' is best.

Grand Theft Auto IV launches across the globe, draws few crowds in its home town

At midnight last night, game stores across the country opened for launch of Grand Theft Auto IV. You may not have heard of it - it's an understated affair from a little known developer. It certainly isn't the kind of game where every single newly unearthed feature is granyted its own headline. And Rockstar definitely doesn't like carefully building hype for its games to a deafening crescendo right before launch. Oh no.

Last night I took a long pilgrimage (20 minutes, number 31 bus) to the centre of Rockstar North's home town of Edinburgh to see how the buzz had impacted on the city at the creative heart of the GTA franchise. Naturally the Scottish crowds were out in their thousands champion their very own home-grown conquerors of the video game world.

Okay, I'll cut the bullshit. It was actually a strangely muted affair. I arrived at the Princes Street Gamestation at around half eleven. The staff had opened the store up already and there was a short queue out of the door. Pretty soon a rumour travelled up the line that the shop staff were checking IDs. The line of people then dissolved into a grumbling mob of departing children and left me clear to join other fifteen or so people inside the shop.

This was a pretty stark contrast to the GTA: San Andreas launch which I attended just up the road at GAME nearly four years ago. That took over an hour and a half to get through even though I was about half way up. I did notice that other game stores had their own queues last night, but nothing on the same scale as before.

The most noticeable difference was the number of kids trying to sneak a copy this year. After we had all stood about looking at our watches waiting for midnight to bloody well hurry up so we could get on with it, another couple of under 18s were rooted out as they finally reached the tills.

I doubt this will have any impact on the game launch - far from it - but the lack of crowds and the number of kids seemed noteworthy. It was really a shame that there wasn't more buzz on the streets of Rockstar's North's home. The reported shortage of copies in the UK following massive pre-orders didn't seem in much evidence either.

As for the game itself; I sunk in a few hours last night and so far, yes, it is everything that we always hoped it would be. However, while the series has courted controversy over shocking amount of freedom you had to direct your actions, namely into violent assaults on as many hookers as you could find, the new one just seems less, well, shocking than it used to. Instead it has become par for the course and the maturity and attention to detail in all other aspects of the game reveal that Rockstar has been looking at a far bigger picture for much longer than its critics care to realise.

Other game developers are probably cowering in fear right now - Rockstar has just raised the benchmark. Again.

Grand Theft Auto Mania Hits Central Florida

It may be the biggest video game retailer Blockbuster ever and it debuts this coming Tuesday. Grand Theft Auto IV could rake in $540 million in the first two days of sales.

Many reviewers already give it a ten out of ten scoring.

Soon, millions of gamers will move their players through Grand Theft Auto IV.

The storyline has a newcomer to America and getting caught up in a revenge drama on the streets of a fictional New York City. Gamers like fifteen year old George Jeffry must have it. He told us, it feels like it’s an escape out of life.

Jeffry still plays the old version of this videogame for hours at a time- an escape into an intense world of fantasy.

“You get to steal cars and drive around,” he said. “I can't do that in real life, or I'll go to jail.”

Robert Catto is a big kid at heart. He's program director for the videogame development program at Full Sail University. Catto says playing Grand Theft Auto is like going to a movie. Except now you can be a part of it, and the decision you make can change the outcome, and you can restart it should anything dangerous happen.

Catto says the graphics are impressive on the new video game, but serious gamers focus on the storyline. They relish the challenges of navigating through the game and taking on a new character. It's the ability to take on a whole different character. It's the ability to be somebody different than who you are in real life.

Catto knows some parents and girlfriends won't approve of the violence, the nasty language, the hustlers, hookers, dealers and junkie’s players meet on the way. They encounter all that while they run down people and steal cars.

“I'd rather them be playing a game,” Catto said. “And running over game characters than doing it in real life.”

Store managers at the Lake Mary store say they pre-sold almost two hundred games at that store. The Lake Mary store is sold out but will restock this week.