Liberty City Stories
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is a 2005 PSP prequel to GTA III, set in 1998, in which Toni Cipriani rises through the Leone crime family. It later reached PS2 and mobile.
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is an action-adventure game developed by Rockstar Leeds with Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It launched as a PlayStation Portable exclusive on 25 October 2005 in North America and on 4 November 2005 in Europe. It was the first 3D Grand Theft Auto game released for a handheld, and it is the ninth installment in the series.
A wise guy comes home to Liberty City
In Rockstar's description, Toni Cipriani was once a trusted wise guy in the Leone crime family. He killed a made man, had to go into hiding, and is now back in Liberty City.
Toni was first introduced in Grand Theft Auto III. Here he rises through the Leone family while a mob war over the city plays out around him. Danny Mastrogiorgio voices him, replacing Michael Madsen from GTA III. Frank Vincent returns as Salvatore Leone, the family's boss.
Liberty City in 1998, minus a bridge
The game is a prequel to GTA III, set in 1998, three years before that game, and it uses the same version of Liberty City. The city differs from the 2001 one: the Callahan Bridge is still unfinished, so a ferry links Portland and Staunton Island, and Fort Staunton is still a Little Italy district.
Motorcycles yes, swimming no
Liberty City Stories brings features from earlier 3D games into Liberty City, including motorcycles, more interiors and clothing changes. Toni, however, cannot swim or climb, and flyable planes are absent.
The PSP version has wireless ad hoc multiplayer for up to six players across seven modes. The PS2 and mobile versions dropped it.
A new engine, and your own music on the PSP
Rockstar dropped RenderWare, the engine used in every previous 3D GTA, and built a new in-house engine for the PSP. Facial animation used technology from Image Metrics.
Ten radio stations carry a mix of licensed music, original tracks and talk radio. On the PSP, players could also bring their own music through Rockstar's Custom Tracks tool. The PS2 version later went without custom soundtracks.
88 on Metacritic, 8 million copies
Metacritic lists a Metascore of 88 based on 65 critic reviews. At the 9th Interactive Achievement Awards the game was nominated for Handheld Game of the Year and lost to Nintendogs.
On sales, Take-Two reported 8 million copies as of March 2008, which put it among the best-selling PSP games. The PSP version alone passed 7.5 million units worldwide by July 2013. In the UK, the PSP version earned a Double Platinum ELSPA award for at least 600,000 sales.
From PSP to PS2 and mobile
A PlayStation 2 version followed in June 2006 at around half the price of the PSP release. The PS2 version reached PlayStation 3 through the PlayStation Network in April 2013.
Mobile ports came later, with touch controls, real-time lighting and HD textures. They arrived on iOS in December 2015, on Android in February 2016 and on Fire OS in March 2016.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, a prequel to Vice City, came out in October 2006.
Latest news
Software Sales Statistics
We still owe you the UK software sales charts for the last three weeks of December, so here they are. It seems that as Christmas drew closer, demand for both Vice City Stories and Liberty City Stories went up among the Brits, and in the final week VCS almost made it into the TOP 10.
UK Software Sales, December 4-9
Unfortunately the Grand Theft Auto games have slipped further down the UK software sales chart. Vice City Stories dropped five places and Liberty City Stories three compared to last week's sales.