These amusing stories pop up now and again, this time on tbo.com. It seems a man by the name of Michael Ray Ekes was arrested in his home after committing grand theft auto. What was he doing when he was arrested? Well... playing his copy of Grand Theft Auto III.
You've got to love this guy though. When asked about the game he replied "It's a blast".
"It has been revealed today that with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 claiming it’s ninth chart-topping week, Activision and Infinity Ward’s hugely popular First-Person Shooter (FPS) has become the third biggest selling videogame release ever in UK history. Only Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? can claim to have sold more units in the UK, despite Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 having only been on sale for nine weeks."
2005 saw one of gaming's more controversial events as hacked code from GTA: San Andreas was released allowing gamers to simulate sex. GTA's developers, Take-Two, have settled for US$20million in the end of what has been a protracted and damaging legal battle. Not that GTA gamer's will care of course, so long as this doesn't effect any future installments in the series.
"A couple times over the past few years, we've decided to sit down and take a good, cold, hard look at the PlayStation 2's library and select the best of the best to let you know what our favorites were (and are). Even though the system is fighting with every last breath to stay alive, it's still surprising to us that new games continue to creep into our list. So, because it's been a while, we figured it was time to look at our picks again and update our choices for the best 25 PlayStation 2 g..."
If we can't control it, it can't be in China. That seems to be the mantra of the Chinese government these days. If they have no means to strictly regulate part of the media, it can't be allowed. While that may not necessarily be the case, it's bans like this that give off the impression mentioned previously. This ban affects games such as Grand Theft Auto and the Godfather.
For those who don't bother clicking the source: Blood and gore isn't being banned, but rather the offending theme...
"Religion. In real life, it’s all kneeling, self-reflection and guilt. In games, it’s all alien conspiracies, demon worship and craftily put together cults designed to rob us of our readies. The following faiths might all be deceitful, money-grabbing or just downright homicidal, but at least they’re exciting. And hell, adopt a positive attitude, take everything they say at face value and follow their orders blindly, and we might even make it through one of their sermons with all our limb..."
The NPD Group has released the top twenty software and top ten software by platform lists for the recently unveiled February 2009 sales numbers yesterday, showing the top rankings in software sales for the month. The top ten rankings for accessory sales are also available.
Numbers inserted where known.
Top 20 Games of February 2009
01. [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo) - 644k
02. [360] Street Fighter IV* (Capcom) - 446k
03. [PS3] Street Fighter IV* (Capcom) - 403k
04. [WII] Wii Play (Nintend...
"To honour the highly-anticipated releases of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and the latest installment of the survival horror videogame Resident Evil, Guinness World Records have announced some of the franchises' biggest records."
""Grand Theft Auto IV" is more than 2008's Game of the Year. It's also America's touchstone, the game that continues to inspire -- inspire the awe and ire of violent deadbeats, washed-up lawyers, dumb gangs, sexual predators and news-hungry journalists fearful of gaming's effects on the poor wee tots. And once in a while, it inspires a little bit of good, too.
In preparation for the "GTA IV: The Lost and Damned" download, there's no better time to take a look back on "GTA"'s considerable ra..."
The NPD Group before the weekend released the top twenty software and top ten software by platform lists for the January 2009 sales numbers, showing the top rankings in software sales for the month. The top ten rankings for accessory sales are also available.
Numbers are inserted where known.
Top 20 Games of December 2008:
01. [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo) - 777k
02. [WII] Wii Play (Nintendo) - 415k
03. [WII] Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo) - 292k
04. [360] Left 4 Dead (Electronic Arts) - 243k...
Neoseeker's Lydia Sung aka RabidChinaGirl has a special Special up today in light of everyone's favourite holiday invented by greeting card companies...
Consider it a retort of sorts to GG's earlier article Top Ten Games To Play With Your Valentine -- this one's got breasts and guns and explosions and stuff.
Enjoy!
By now I'm sure we're all aware of Resident Evil 5's racism issue, but racial stereotyping is an issue that seems to go beyond beyond just one game.
Darion White, from Edge Online, takes a look at the way black characters are portrayed in video games, both the positive portrayals and the negative ones.
The article mostly focuses on newer titles, such as Resident Evil 5, Final Fantasy XIII and Metal Gear Solid 4, while also taking a look at the games of a decade ago, including Final Fantasy...
"A 6-year-old Virginia boy who missed his bus tried to drive to school in his family's sedan and crashed. His parents were charged with child endangerment. State police said the boy suffered only minor injuries and authorities drove him to school after he was evaluated at a local hospital for a bump on his head. He arrived shortly after lunch, Sgt. Tom Cunningham said."
Just when you thought Grand Theft Auto couldn't be blamed for anything else...
This time the Sheriff's Office of Maricope County have found that GTA is to blame for two children, 6 and 7 years old, stoning and then hanging a kitten using a game controller cord.
quoteThe boys are also too young to be charged by animal cruelty and child protection services declined to help because the case is "outside the normal criteria." So, what we know is that a bunch of ignorant parents let children una...
"When we sit down for a round of gaming with our console or PC of choice, we're usually on the look-out for extreme action, non-stop thrills and a sophisticated story. One thing we never expected to see was sex. But as the average age of the gaming audience grows ever higher, interactive entertainments are tackling more grown-up topics like the beast with two backs in a variety of different ways. Some games play it for humor, some use it as a plot motivator, and others let you fornicate just f..."
Jason Michaels of collegehumor.com has made quite the comical article indeed. Editing the cover art for certain games, he chose ten games to murder with puns.
Some of them are pointing out rather funny truths, others are just plain rude!
It's now confirmed Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will soon be available as a downloadable title via Xbox Live Marketplace, and very soon, too.
Originally released three years ago, San Andreas marks the fifth installment in the series; it is the best-selling video game in the United States, and has sold over 21 million copies worldwide.
GameInformer, the popular magazine about all things gaming that has somewhere near three million subscribers, always has a different game on the cover each time. MTV wanted to see if there was a GI cover curse, so they looked back into the past and pulled out magazines from 2-3 years ago.
One game titled Superman Returns didn't so well, receiving 6/10's. That's nothing compared to Fear and Respect, which was at one point on a GI cover, but ended up being canceled!
All in all, the game...
"Video game characters are increasingly becoming the poster children for gym membership. With most of gamings heroes and heroines being chiseled, pert and with cheek bones you could grate cheese on, there seems to be less and less room for the more gelatinous gentleman in the industry.
Thats why we thought wed celebrate those characters who said no to Atkins and still managed to pull off moves that would shame most gold-winning Olympians. But while they might seem fighting fit on your..."
After a teenager from Thailand was arrested because of murdering a taxi driver, police questioned why he did it. He said he was inspired by the Grand Theft Auto series (police assume from Grand Theft Auto IV specifically). The game was then pulled from shelves in Thailand. Now the Secretary General of the Catalan Taxi Federation in Spain, is asking for a ban of the Grand Theft Auto games, along with the cabbies in Spain.
An extremely refreshing article by the folks over at GameRevolution showing how as violent videogames are on the rise - violent crime rates are actually falling (and at record rates). So take that Jack Thompson, Take that Connecticut Senator Gayle Slossberg. For those ignorant fools who still will not believe these facts (not that there are any here on GG and Neo, but...) there are pretty and colorful charts, and after all a picture is worth a thousand words.
"So does media imitate society, or does society imitate media? Since both are extensions of human nature, the answer can only be both. But as a video game, GTA is just a simulation - a make-believe world where you have no consequences for shooting peoples' heads off or cutting up cops with chainsaws while stoned off your ass.
These troubled teens have learned the hard way that reality doesn't translate well from video games and that they can't get away with everything.
Interestingly, ..."
"The NPD Group has worked with Forbes to release a list of top sellers over the last 15 years (since NPD began tracking point-of-sale data in North America). Interestingly, as further proof of the explosion in game industry growth in this century, the top games were all released after 2001.
Rockstar's "Hot Coffee"-licious GTA: San Andreas sold through 9.4 million units, and there's a chance that this year's GTA IV could break that figure to take the top spot. Activision's Guitar Hero III c..."
An interesting update to the 100 ranking thing: according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal, former employees at Rockstar claim one of the GTA creators Sam Houser "has his staff to 'go to war' with offending publications to demand a better review or score."
""Grand Theft Auto would be super interesting for me, and I think I would actually be the right guy to do it, because my movies are all bloody and violent and I don't have a problem with action scenes," said Boll. "But look, they will go, in the end, with a Michael Bay or a Brett Ratner, and it will be a PG-13 movie made for $150 million. I think it would be better to make a $30 million, very hard, brutal movie without compromising, but I'm not optimistic.""
Cristism. Everyone needs it and while Grand Theft Auto IV was being praises with a 10/10 from IGN and living up to the hype, somebody from video gamer sat in their basement to write up a blog on all the wrong things of the game. He relates the new to the old, basically and how Rockstar changed things...for the worse. Go to the source to read full details, but the changes that he doesn't like in the game are the 'too-realistic' driving, harsh cops, the world, the bad combat, the overall fun(wh...
As many of you know, Electronic Arts tried to buy out Take 2 Interactive, but if that did happen, how would the Grand Theft Auto series change? Would it be the same? Or crash and burn like Command and Conquer when the company took over Westwood Studios? Talk Playstation figures that the franchise simply wouldn't be the same and would be ruined if EA took over.
Remember the Hot Coffee scandal which surrounded San Andreas? It involved a hidden bit of code which if hacked allowed the user to play a sex mini game with your girlfriend after you took them out on a date. After much work a similar thing has been found in GTA IV. A secret mission titled Hot Coughing and starring someone who bares a uncanny resemblance to one of our favourite lawyers... Jack Thompson
"When did a videogame release become such a big deal?
Well, the U.S. videogame industry is worth a whopping $18.8 billion a year--that's less than McDonald's makes selling burgers and fries but 2.5 times as much as all the music CDs sold last year. It's also enough money to turn even the most conservative of entertainment executives' heads. Scott Steinberg, vice president of product marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment America, predicts we're about to see the "GTA Effect"--box office sa..."
"10) Body Bags
El Castillo del Diablo, Bone County, San Andreas
San Andreas may be a harsh and grizzly place, but its a bit of a shock to find youre not the only reason. Somebody is up to very bad things, and using a cave tucked away in the desert to dump the remains - in a pile of horribly stiff body bags. Oddly, the serial killers truck is still there too, parked right where the bodies were presumably slung from its bed. You can find this worrying little scene directly south of t..."
Grand Theft Auto always gets a lot of praise from the critics and fans, well it does deserve it. But the article shows why the GTA games are not as smart as they really seem. The main points are the fact that the games exploit stereotypes, the fact that the plot elements seem unoriginal, the repetition of missions and the fact that you can't play Grand Theft Auto without being violent.
"Heroes, cities and decades change, but in the world of Grand Theft Auto, the hard-working hooker will forever remain. No matter what the year or console, we can always count on her to patrol our virtual streets.
Isn't it time, then, that this beloved gaming icon received the spotlight she deserves? And more importantly, isn't it fun to laugh at really cruddy last-gen graphics? We think so - which is why we've rounded up every prostitute we could find and pitted them against each other in a..."
The whole world knows that there is a game called Grand Theft Auto which is rated 17+ (In some cases 18+). But a part of that world also knows that many teenagers below that age limit play this game. The question is, how do they get their hands on the game?
The team at the MTV Multiplayer Blog has interviewed three underage teenagers to find out how they got their hands on the game. Read on.
We all know that Hilary Clinton isn't too keen on mature video games, but who knew that they were going to be her main target upon winning the election? Yes, that's right, if Hilary is elected she isn't going to focus on America's big issues, like the Iraq war, economics, or health care.
She's going to target mature rating video games.
(go to source for full article)
"How close was this deal to happening? Reporters at Variety (and, I have since learned, other publications) were preparing their stories based on conversations with the studio in question. Internally at Take 2, people were talking about it as a done deal. Then at the last minute, it all fell apart. I'm told Take 2 couldn't finalize terms with the studio, though I'm not sure if it was a purely financial issue or if, in the end, the publisher got cold feet about giving away rights to its baby.
..."
While reading the Sunday January 6, 2008 edition of the Houston Chronicle I came across an ad in Parade Magazine I found very interesting. On page 8, there's an ad for a class action settlement proposed against Take-Two Interactive Software and its subsidiary Rockstar Games for the "Hot Coffee" hidden content in GTA San Andreas.
Needless to say I was somewhat shocked by this and a little angry. I find this class action to be overkill and unnecessary. See the web site for complete details.
Reported by HDGameNews that the 7th installment in the Grand Theft Auto series will be a PS3 Exclusive because Rockstar wants to take full advantage of Cell and Blu-Ray is totally fake. The article continues and supplies us the reasons to why it's wrong. First of all it's because the next Grand Theft Auto will not be the 7th installment in the series and this is also not counting Grand Theft Auto London.
1. Grand Theft Auto
2. Grand Theft Auto 2
3. Grand Theft Auto 3
4. Grand Theft A...
Today's a sad day for Grand Theft Auto fans, for one of the game's developers, Joseph Howell, is dead at the age of 35. He had a hand in GTA III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Manhunt, and even Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
R.I.P. Howell, I'm sure the fans will miss you.
"The recent trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV portrays Liberty City as looking more like New York City, raising concerns among politicians over the inclusion of their city in a notoriously violent game. So, we investigated the cities of Grand Theft Auto (GTA) to find out which streets were the most dangerous to walk down as a gaming bystander."
![Box shot of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas [Europe]](http://i.neoseeker.com/boxshots/R2FtZXMvUGxheXN0YXRpb25fMi9BY3Rpb24vQXV0b21vYmlsZQ==/grand_theft_auto_san_andreas_frontcover_small_b85qPGMWgdnkEqK.jpg)