Sex! Drugs! Violence! My kinda DS game!

Dan Houser, one of the Dons of Rockstar games, has said today that the DS version of GTA will not be the watered down, nimbly-pimbly effort that we all feared it would be when its existence was announced at E3.

Speaking to Edge Magazine, Houser stated that GTA : Chinatown Wars "can’t be softened to make it family-friendly – that’s not the game we’re making. We’ve never not done well by sticking to our guns.”

Never not done well, eh?

Houser also revealed that everyone's favourite nimbly-pimbly, watered down game company are totally down with the mature direction they are taking, "Nintendo wanted us to make GTA, and we wanted to make a game on their platform. They didn’t want us to make a GTA for kids, and we weren’t interested in making a game we wouldn’t normally make.”

This news is hardly surprising given that Rockstar are hardly renowned for compromising on their games (Manhunt, Bully) and that there are already a number of mature rated games on the DS (Dementium : The Ward, Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil : Deadly Silence), but im sure that this is a fact that The Mail will gleefully ignore if they ever get hold of this info. Shhhh, please don't tell them....

I am aware that my burgeoning blog is turning into a GTA : Chinatown forum for my excited DS sandbox rantings, but I will make sure I will write about something else soon. Maybe about how tickled I am that Phoenix Wright : Trials and Tribulations is coming to Europe next week. It's almost time to stand in my underwear and shouting "objection!" at my DS again. I cannot wait.

UPDATE 25/09/2008 2241 : Oh golly gosh. It looks like the Sun got there first, proclaiming "FURY OVER DRUG DEAL VID GAME".

GTA : Chinatown Wars images

Some slightly wonky and mostly grainy images of the GTA : Chinatown Wars have started popping up on the tinterweb.

The screens which appear on Nintendo Everything show that the DS version is played from a similar top down perspective of the original PC versions and subsequent Game Boy Advance iterations of GTA, which was to be expected given the limited graphical power of Nintendo's plucky little system. The game will also have a cel shaded art style, and it seems that the story will be related through comic book panels on the touch screen, with dialog appearing on the top screen.

The mini-map looks as if it was lifted from straight from GTA 4, but it does appear to lack the sat nav that was so very useful in the last game, so I expect to be consulting an actual old-school map, which might be a bit awkward on the train. The images also reveal some of the touch screen interaction we can expect in the final game with what appears to be a tattooing mini game and a machine gun being retrieved from a dumpster.

Everyones favorite murder simulator is being developed by Rockstar Leeds, it will be corrupting young minds early 2009 and it's looking pretty neat.