Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Game music has been a passion of ours roughly since, oh, 1985, but in the past 10 years, it’s come to mean something more. Don’t get us wrong, we still love the beepatronic music of the 8- and 16-bit periods (and the wave of chiptune artists it inspired), but the past decade has also seen licensed music become a surprisingly important part of gaming. Sometimes, this just means a selection of familiar hits to accompany our music games, but every so often, a game will use licensed tracks to careful, brilliant effect – and in the process, will expose legions of gamers to music they might never have heard otherwise.

What follows are the games and franchises that have been the most influential in bringing strange and terrifying new musical styles to gamers’ ears – and in the interest of making this our most self-indulgent Top 7 since that other one, we’ve asked a handful of our editors to explain what made each one important to them personally...

There’s not long to go now until Rockstar finally unveil their Grand Theft Auto 5 trailer – unless you’re reading this afterwards, in which case disregard that first bit. Let’s be honest, we’re properly excited. Like groin tingling-ly so and by the amount of activity in our Twitter feed we can tell we’re not alone. 

We’re so pumped for the debut of GTAV that we’ve scoured the interwebs in search of the old, initial trailers for previous iterations. We remember GTAIV’s ‘things will be different here’ trailer with the first glimpse of Niko Bellic from yesteryear but how many of you remember how you felt when Vice City and San Andreas were aired?

Click inside to jog your memory and find out what we think these past trailers mean for GTA V's debut.

NO! We’re not talking about frigging hockey masks! Nobody has ever strapped on this mouthless, empty-eyed, bone-colored facial façade with the intent of instilling a victim with the fear and intimidation that comes with facing down a goaltender. No, virtually every game character not playing for the NHL who’s ever put on a hockey mask is doing it for one reason, and one reason only: to crib from Jason Voorhees. And that’s our incredibly loose criteria here.

With that in mind, we tried to find as many instances of characters dressing up as Friday the 13th’s hero (yes, he is the hero) in honor of Halloween. So turn out your lights and put the lawyers to bed... it’s time for Jason Masks. Let’s start with the obvious...

As we inch closer to the 10-year anniversary of Grand Theft Auto III this Saturday, we’ve done a lot of reflecting about the era of gaming that it ushered in, and how it changed the way developers look at games. But aside from standardizing open worlds and giving us and a decade of morally ambiguous gaming, GTA as a series has told a lot of fascinating stories. And a big reason those stories were so fascinating was their cast of larger-than-life scumbags, psychos and sociopaths, most of which were not only memorable, but surprisingly complicated underneath their cartoonish exteriors.

With that in mind, we roped together a few of our editors and wouldn’t let them leave until they’d told us, in their own words, which ones were their favorites...

The 35 rampages located throughout Vice City typically require you to kill gang members or destroy vehicles. Some of these challenges can be tricky; it is recommended you attempt each one with full health and armor. Finishing all 35 nets you a small amount of cash and a chunk of the 100% completion rating.

Note that when you begin a rampage, you cannot pick up or buy new weapons. Each rampage has a time limit in which the appropriate challenge must be completed.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City may seem to be nearly as old as the 1980s culture it parodies and tributes, but we still found a lot to love about this last-gen gem. The feud with the Forelli Family has been quelled by bloodshed and our beloved Tommy Vercetti reigns as Vice City's champion of organized crime. But what's a kingpin to do when all his enemies have been vanquished? Follow our guide to find all of Vice City's hidden packages, unique jump locations and more.

There are 36 unique jump locations throughout Vice City. You’ll want to procure a PCJ Motorcycle, as some jumps cannot be completed without one. You can find a PCJ 600 bike near the Standing Vice Point building in Vice Point.

You'll always want to hit each jump with as much speed as possible. Most require that you clear an obstacle or land on the roof of a building. Make sure you get the “UNIQUE JUMP” title after landing a jump before moving on to the next one.

14 months into the PlayStation 2’s long lifespan, the console was starting to find its feet. The big-name hits of 2001 had transformed the PS2 from an expensive, hard-to-find curiosity to a must-have commodity, and it had already cemented what would be a huge and permanent lead against the more technologically impressive Xbox and GameCube.

Of course, this was just the beginning, and plenty of the PS2’s most memorable hits were still ahead of it – some closer than others. Far from being a sophomore slump, 2002 was a year that saw the birth of what have since become monolithic PlayStation dynasties, as Sony saw several of its second-party projects, and its own online initiative, take off to wild success. To mark the second day of our premature celebration of the PS2’s 10-year anniversary, we’re recognizing the 10 best games to come out of that surprisingly solid year...

Sony seems to be on something of an HD remake kick lately. This week finally brought us long-awaited confirmation that the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus Collection will head our way sometime next year; with last year’s God of War Collection and the upcoming Sly Collection, that brings to three the number of classic PS2 series Sony’s retrofitting with 1080p visuals and Trophies, before re-releasing as budget-priced PS3 games.

This is a trend we can really get behind; as much as we love our old PS2 games, we can barely stand to look at them anymore. Give them a makeover so they don’t look crap on our new TVs, though, and we’re all over them. With that in mind, here are a few other series from the last generation we’d love to see resurrected for the modern age of HD consoles...

If you have happy memories of listening to the commercial breaks on Wave 103, Master Sounds 98.3 and Vladivostok FM, then you'll be mega-pumped to find out that Rockstar has set up a new site dedicated to the classic radio adverts of Grand Theft Auto.