[puh200490]

Well I am a mapper and I map GTA. I started playing GTAIII back in 2006 when my new Pentium 4 PC was purchased. A liked driving a car in this 3d game and with passing on time I become a fan of this game and I made 6 map mods for this game. Let it never die.

[Cash High]

First played on PS2. I remember thinking how epic the game looked and realizing that I could drive and do whatever I wanted to when I wasn't on missions. The beginning bridge exploding will always stand out as the beginning of my GTA interest. OH, and GAME RADIO.

[andym07home]

I still remember the first time I ever played GTA 3, I was round at a friend's house after school and he let me go on his PS2, I remember driving along Callahan Bridge and stopping at the first set of traffic lights (which were on red), I remember my friend telling me not to stop at the traffic lights.

I liked it so much that when I got a PS2 for christmas (which I had to share with my brother) one of the games I bought out of Christmas money was GTA 3 (I got my parents to pay for it as I was about 12 or 13 at the time lol), It must have taken me at least a month to beat it as I didn't have a memory card for a while and I kept having to switch it off every night without saving lol.

[Germanpark]

When I first got it I wanted the event to be very special haha kinda like your first time for sex
Anyways I turned off all the lights and turned my blacklights on and my blue neon clock, and blue christmas lighting that totally rocked my window and started the game up. haha
I think it was such a perfect setting to have with the first scene in the game being so dark and you as Claude being so secluded from everything, being on the middle of a bridge with an explosion and dead policemen right behind you!
After I got in the car the rest was history I made it my goal to everything and anything about the layout of Portland before I even started doing any missions, which I am glad I did because you lets you have great opprotunities to have an advantage during the missions. I.E. Health, armor, car, and gun locations.
Not to mention the great things you would have dropped off at your hideout from finding the hidden packages.

[danjodan]

I got overwelemed,and quickly turned the game off

[dingleman]

I was about six (2001) and my older brother got the game for our new PS2, and I still remember sitting in my room wondering where the sounds of sirens were coming from. I peeked out to find my brother playing the game in his room, and I sat on the carpet next to him just watched him play it for two hours straight, asking questions and begging to let me have a turn. It wasn't until he wasn't home that I managed to sneak into his room and fire the game up for the first time myself. He was saved at portland and wasn't very far in the game at the time. I got into the banshee he had parked in the garage, game radio blasting "I'm Da King" and what persued from that point on was probably my most cherished memory to date.

[cidamelo]

Ohhh I felt like a child playing it!!!! It was one of the best days of my life, to play GTA with my sons. They were very young!!!

[lol232]

I was 3 when this game was out, my 1st GTA I played was GTA VC, and then later I got GTA, the most that gives me memories of GTA III is when I entered teh Green Kuruma and saved it... And the 8 Ball too... I will always remember him

[sonnyBlack]

I remember it so well. For about the first two hours of gameplay I just stole any vehicle I could find and just ram it repeatedly into walls and other cars just to watch it explode. After a while I started stealing every car in sight and piling them in the middle of the road so I can cause a chain reaction after making the first car explode.

[titereburn]

I played GTA 3 for first time in 2007, and I kind of loved it very much. I remember that I bought it in a rainy day of winter, I went back home running with the game in a hand, came back home, had dinner and while I was eating I put the CD into the PC to install it, and then around 2 am, I was playing it, I played it until 8 am and went to sleep, good memories.

[forbjok]

Fond memories indeed.

It must've been in 2002, shortly after GTA III came out on PC, on a late night when I probably shouldn't really even have been up anymore (due to school the next day), but anyway...
I originally became acquainted with the original "Grand Theft Auto" on a LAN party in 1998 or so, when everyone seemed to be playing it, and had played both that and GTA2 quite a lot by the time GTA III came out, but I had never really bothered much with the missions - it was much more fun to just run around and try to cause as much mayhem as possible, or pushing people onto the electric rails.

As such, I didn't really know what to expect from GTA III, but basically expected it to be much the same, just in 3D... man was I wrong
After playing just a few missions, I quickly started to realize how infinitely much better GTA III was, and pretty quickly I was hooked.
Unfortunately, I never completed the game back then - I unlocked Shoreside Vale (probably only had a few missions left, though I didn't know that at the time) - probably got stuck on Espresso 2 Go, or one of those few infamously difficult missions at the end.

However, I never forgot the awesome atmosphere and great freedom in the game, and played it many times after (without quite finishing it), before I finally beat the game several years later (using almost only grenades... grenades are fun).

[Juicefani11]

Oh man, i remember when my dad told me he had GTAIII in a closet, i was like 5 years old.. I remember installing it and starting a new game when i skipped the cutscene and saw the beautiful graphics and Kuruma.. One of the nicest memories with GTA until i got Vice City for a birthday present when it was just published for PC and i was amazed.

[Butters 2011]

QUOTE (Sam998 @ Tuesday, Mar 1 2011, 11:38)

lol this was about a week ago. Literally, first day playing it ever.

This was my first ever PS2 game, so to me the game was amazing, especially since the console I upgraded to the PS2 from was the N64. Got hooked on the game as soon as I started playing it, loving the amount of freedom and how 'advanced' this game was, which kind of seems silly now. Think I spent a full day just messing around, then got down to business so I could progress onto the other islands.

[Shayan Shaffey]

I started it on my PS2 in 2001 and I got into the Kuruma, it took me months to learn how to drive

[battlemage2015]

i cant play gta anymore cause of a controllor issue

I can only play eflc and iv

[Kalev4ever]

I think I got the GTA 3 in 2003 or somewhere near that year.

Because I was very young back then, I still remember how much I feared the Triads and Columbians, because they were hostile towards Claude. There was just no going into Cedar Grove back in the day
The first time played it, I reached the Espresso-2-Go! mission that I failed a couple a times and after that for some reason I didn´t play it any more. Not because I got bored of it, hell no.

Today, I truely admire many places in the state. Although the Cedar Grove area is crawling with those fools, I like the beauty of the area. A bit mountainous + those gardens and big houses / villas.

I haven´t bothered to accomplish the game 100%. Thanks to that I haven´t passed all of Courtney´s missions. No need for two more gangs to start war with you.
How relaxing is driving a Yardie Lobo, Perennial or Esperanto in Newport, listening to the Scientist...

Saint Mark´s is also a place where it´s interesting to drive. I´ve always wondered what´s with the little part of the street near Toni´s place, with the scaffoldings and unfinished road repairment.

Also, Red Light District and the Atlantic Quays - I found something in them, that makes me drive back and enjoy the atmosphere.

And who wouldn´t like to go to the subway and cause chaos
I also like to beat people so they will fall onto the railway tracks (upcoming unfortunate death ) or somewhere near a precipice or the sea. Fun with the M16 - head, arm or leg? Or driving the Barracks and ramming every second or third vehicle on its roof.

For a game that is from the year 2001, it had a great list of radio stations and songs. Because of all these and some more memories, I downloaded this game more than a week ago. Just to memorize what my childhood was like and how terribly I sucked at driving back then.

E: Sorry, for awakening this old topic, but I thought that this truely needs it. So we can write our and read others memories about this fantastic game.

This post has been edited by Kalev4ever on Tuesday, Jan 17 2012, 14:44

[Zee]

Ah, my first bout of GTA. I was th tender age of 11. At the time, I loved Crazy Taxi for Dreamcast, it was one of my favorite games. I loved the idea of driving a car around a virtual city, except for two things: 1) The time limit 2)Couldnt hit pedestrians. I tried for ages to get just the right angle for a hit, but peds went right thru the car! Bollocks to that.

Cut to Christmas 2001, my cousin had just gotten a ps2, and was playing some sort of Taxi game. (At first I thought it was a Crazy Taxi ripoff for ps2 LOL) until he took a sharp turn, and drove towards a ped, hitting them. I expected them to go thru the car like Crazy Taxi, when something magical happened,msomething that would change my life. The ped went under the car, screamed, and there was a loud SQUISH! The car even left a trail of blood! I couldnt believe my eyes! Then, he got out of the taxi, and I realized Taxi Missions were only A tiny PART of the full game. We spent ages roaming around portland getting into trouble, switching when we died. I still get flashbacks to it when playing the first portland stages on my iPad.

Then, in January of '02, I got GTAIII for my own. I remember the a,aze,ent of unlocking Staunton, and all the plot twists as turns that came with it. 2002 later turned out to be one of the greatest years in GTAGaming of all time, forever sealing my fate as a lifelong GTA fan.

[cyberwolf00233]

First thing I did was stole a truck and drove over a few dozen peds, I didn't complete the first mission untill days later

[cidamelo]

Funny story Zee! A taxi game!!

[NikoGTA4]

Hey I remember like yesterday. It was 2002 and I was at my cousin's house, I was about 8 or 9 at the time.
Sadly I couldn't enjoy the game's graphics because my cousin's PC was not powerful enough so he put the classic top view from the older GTAs. About a year later he bought himself a Xbox and had the GTA double pack with Vice City. He let me play them but I didn't notice that GTA3 was the game that I played a year earlier, I was happy when I figured that. The graphics were awesome at the time. Had my Xbox in 2004 and the Double Pack the same year.

Oddly enough when I started playing at my cousin's house in 2003 I didn't read "Grand Theft Auto" on the cover, I saw "Grand Chief Auto" for some reasons and I told my friends about the game "Grand Chief Auto", haha good memories.

Also for a long time I thought that Tommy Vercetti and Claude were the same person and wondering why he didn't talk in GTA3.

Also another childhood memory was when GTA San Andreas was about to come out, me and my friends came with some bullsh*t rumours like, you can go in the jungle or things like that... ahh memories.