Pastel Colours and Spandex - GTA Vice City with Chief

Arrggh! A Video Game Podcast from The Waffling Taylors

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We hope that you've had your recommended daily amount of pastel colours, spandex, and cocaine as we dove deep into the only game which has ever gone full-80s: Grand Theft Audio Vice City. Chief joined us for a long talk about our collective memories of this amazing title, what the heck Rockstar were thinking when they released Table Tennis, and just how 80's we all are.

Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Content Warning

We're discussing the 80s spoof-a-thon, and Scarface rip-off pastiche Grand Theft Auto: Vice City in this episode. As such we talk about a lot of rather NSFW topics.

Please listen responsibly.

Show Notes

This episode saw the Wafflers tackle the fantastically stupid GTA: Vice City - one of the first 3D, open world, crime-a-thons from acclaimed developers Rockstar. It wasn't the first, but was a lot of people's firsts - the earlier title GTA 3 was the first from Rockstar, and it set the stage for later titles in the series, and competitor titles like Saints Row.

Anyway, Jay and Squidge were joined by Chief in this episode - and it was recorded on the same day as his previous appearance on the show: Spirits Within; Plot Without. Chief wanted to start the conversation by bringing up "Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis" (aka "Table Tennis"):

It was bonkers, completely out of left-field.
- Chief

And he's not wrong, because there wasn't even a table tennis competition or global event happening at the time. They just released it, seemingly randomly.

And the big topic of the day that we recorded - back in September of 2022 - was that someone had hacked into Rockstar's systems and leaked a bunch of early GTA 6 stuff.

this is Jay: please don't do this. Us developers don't want our early builds of stuff to see the light of day otherwise, we'd release them. Please remember to be nice to people, especially developers.

But before they could do that, the system that they use to record episodes completely crapped out

Jay: and it was after that day that we started using our Discord server to record episodes

Grand Theft Auto Vice City

We all need to put on our pastel coloured suits, [and] get a pile of cardboard boxes and prepare to drive into them. Because we are going to be talking about Scarface meets Miami Vice - or as we all know it Grand Theft Auto Vice City
- Jay

But they couldn't seem to get away from just how bonkers it was for Rockstar to have released a Table Tennis game, randomly between several entries in all of their extremely violent, very silly, crime-a-thons. It would be as bonkers as if:

Nintendo releases Diddy Kong Does The Accounts
- Squidge

This brought us to the topics of Nintendogs, societal pressure from parents in Japan, and what some young, Japanese couples get up to during bank holidays - or BONK holidays. Amiright?

I mean, that hasn't helped at all.
What Miyamoto has done is he's clocked into other people's misery, and sold them a copy of Nintendogs. Which hasn't helped the problem, and has just made it worse, AND he's charged them £45 for it.
- Chief

Attempt Number 2

Since there are a lot of people who have neither played Grand Theft Auto, nor GTA Vice City specifically, Jay wanted to challenge both Squidge and Chief to come up with a 30 second long (or less) elevator pitch for Vice City. Squidge went first:

Do you wanna play a game where you can race around, jump over things, shoot people, and apparently there's a story that's set in the '80s?
You need to play the story, you can just drive around, running people over and shooting things.
- Squidge

Then Chief came in with:

Don't bother, just play Table Tennis.
It's reliving the '80s, isn't it? Great soundtrack. You drive around in '80s, like, Miami and Florida. It's fun, yeah. And you drive around and it's cool. '80s soundtrack.
It's a lot of fun. There's a good story there as well, despite what Squidge said. I mean, it's just nicked off Scarface like, but yeah. A lot of fun. A lot of fun.
'80s!
- Chief

But who won the elevator pitch battle? You decide! Let us both know either on Twitter or on our Discord server.

And afterwards, Squidge was able to reduce his elevator pitch down to:

Vice City is a soundtrack with a game built around it.
- Squidge

And finally, Jay had a shot at it (but without the timer):

So GTA Vice City.
It's a game set in 1986. You play as Tommy Vercetti, who is essentially Scarface, and you're running through a whole series of situations that are very similar to episodes of Miami Vice.
And it has an absolute BANGER of a soundtrack - I hate to have said that word after all of that; I'm getting the finger from Chief, but not the naughty one, the other one: the naughty finger.
- Jay

And it's a real shame that they had to drop most of the licensed songs in the soundtrack for the "remasters" - the less said about them, the better - due to the rights being way more expensive now.

Full Show Notes

Make sure to check out the full show notes for more discussion on the points we raise, some extra meta-analysis, and some links to related things.

Have you listened to the Tokyo Game Life podcast? Did you catch Mono's episode on TGS yet? What did you think to it? Have you ever been to Japan? Are you excited for Sonic Frontiers, or will it continue the 3D Sonic games legacies of not being very good?

Let us know on Discord, Twitter, Facebook, or try our brand-new contact page.

Links

Here are some links to some of the things we discussed in this episode:

• Join our Discord server and be part of future episodes
• Our Facebook page
• Us on Twitter
• Support us on Ko-Fi
• Rockstar owner issues takedowns after Grand Theft Auto VI leak
• Sony patent wants to make advertising more interactive

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