In 2011, the protagonist of 1980s crime saga Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Tommy Vercetti, would be 55.

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GTA: Vice City 2011 [Patrick Brown Thanks, Morris!]

Grand Theft Auto, the controversial and violent video game series that has sold in excess of 100 million units, began its life as a simple design document in 1995, back when the game was still known as Race'n'Chase.

Reading that design doc isn't nearly as much fun as playing a Grand Theft Auto game, but to see the simple concepts that became one of the biggest video games ever, the humble beginnings of Liberty City, San Andreas and Vice City, may be of historical importance... or at least interesting.

Mike Dailly, programmer at DMA Design where GTA was born, uploaded the 12 page Race'n'Chase design doc to Flickr today, offering a look at the original concept behind the game. Here's how he described it, based on meetings with other DMA Design staffers:

The aim of Race 'n' Chase is to produce a fun, addictive and fast multiplayer car racing and crashing game which uses a novel graphics method.

Dailly writes a low-key description of the series' most memorable character, its major cities:

There will [be] 3 cities with a different graphic style for each city (e.g. New York, Venice, Miami). There will be many different missions to be played in each city. This is so that players an get to know the routes through a particular city.

Here's how he describes the gameplay of Race'n'Chase.

Players will be able to drive cars and possibly other vehicles such as boats, helicopters or lorries. Cars can be stolen, raced, collided, crash (ramraiding?) and have to be navigated about a large map. It will also be possible for players to get out of their car and steal another one. This will mean controlling a vulnerable pedestrian for a short time. Trying to steal a car may result in an alarm being set off which will, of course, attract the police.

Dailly outlines the core team behind the game, only a dozen developers, which was planned to ship on PC (DOS and Windows), PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 (when it was still known as the Ultra 64). The game's code and sound were designed to fit within 1MB of storage each and DMA gave themselves an aggressive development schedule, originally planning to have the game wrapped up in the summer of 1996.

Grand Theft Auto would eventually ship on the PC and PlayStation in the fall of 1997.

Read the whole thing at Flickr at the link below.

GTA [Flickr - thanks, John!]

We will never see official LEGO versions of Resident Evil, Modern Warfare, Max Payne, Gears of War, Final Fantasy or Killzone. That being the case, we'll have to make do with Andy Pescovitz's customised renditions instead.

Pescovitz has amassed an impressive collection of figures that he's both painted and in many cases scultped to look like miniature versions of some video game favourites.

There's a selection of some of the better figures here, including those from Halo: Reach and Uncharted 3, with plenty more at the link below.

[pecovam's photostream] [thanks Chris!]

Video games are meant to be an escape from the real world. Yet sometimes, escape be damned, they do such a good job of depicting real locations that the player can't help but want to pack their bags and go travelling.

Whether that be because a game is set in a painstakingly realistic simulation of an actual place or just nails the "vibe" of a city or country, it doesn't matter. The end result is the same: you kick back for an evening spent with a game and by the end of it you've got the itch to go and see it in the flesh.

Below I've included some of the more notable examples of a game that's given me the travel bug. Strangely enough, rather than convince me to set off and truly explore, they're all places I'd already been and suddenly wanted to return to, the games serving as a reminder of past travels and, I guess, the experiences that went with them.

If you've got more — and I'm positive you do — let us know in the comments below!

Tokyo (Jet Set Radio)

Sega's Dreamcast (and Xbox) classic, about a gang of roller-blading kids with a penchant for graffiti, is a love letter to Tokyo youth culture at the turn of the millennium. What it lacks in photo-realism it more than makes up for in serving as a caricature of the mega-city, somehow able to perfectly capture the vibrancy and colour of one of the largest cities in the world.

And those are exactly the reasons I love visiting Tokyo. The stores, the bars, the sense that as dull and boring as my hometown can get, Tokyo will always exist as the exact opposite.

An example: the first time I saw Shibuya in the flesh, I did not think "man, that's a big intersection", or "gee, this is a lot of people". I thought "hey, this is that bus terminal level from Jet Set Radio".

Florence (Assassin's Creed II)

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One of the best things about Italy is that, like few other places on Earth, there is history all around you. Unlike other parts of Europe like, say, France or Germany, much of Northern Italy has remained untouched by the horrors of modern war, meaning the buildings that were there in the 15th century are, in many cases, still there.

This is especially true of Florence, whose landmark features — like the Palazzo Pitti and Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore — are as important (and in as good condition) today as they were in the time of Ezio Auditore. As you'll see in this clip below, courtesy of Gameon.

It's great, then, to run madly through the streets of 15th century Florence in Assassin's Creed II and know that, when you get off a plane and wander those same streets over 500 years later, little will have changed. Just don't go running across the rooftops. It's a little harder in real life.

New York City (Grand Theft Auto IV)

It may not be a picture-perfect recreation, and the names may have changed to avoid lawsuits, but make no mistake, Grand Theft Auto IV is as New York as video games get.

Anyone who has walked its crowded streets, bought an awful hot dog, been bumped by a rude stranger or wowed by the lights of Time Square will instantly feel that all come rushing back to them when they stroll (or, drive too fast) around Liberty City's grey, drab streets.

That's why GTAIV is such a good travel agent for New York. It doesn't try and "sell" the city, nor does it paint it as some present-day Gomorrah. It's just...a city, and even when it's raining and the people are mad, you don't care, because that's all part of New York's attraction.

That's some of mine, then, but what about you? Did Vice City make Miami look like a safe, pleasant place to visit? Does Gran Turismo 5 get you interested in checking out Picadilly Circus, albeit at a slower pace?

[lead image: Getty]

Seems ridiculous, what with Rockstar's epic crime series still a benchmark for open-world gameplay, but did you know that the very first GTA came close to never being released?

It had nothing to do with politics, or censorship, either. Instead, it was regular old-fashioned development troubles that nearly robbed the world of one of its most cherished and influential franchises.

"It never really felt like it was going anywhere. It was almost canned", says Gary Penn, who worked at original developers DMA Design on the game. "The publisher, BMG Interactive, wanted to can it, as it didn't seem to be going anywhere."

"There are probably two key things it fell down on. Two critical things. One of them is stability, which is a really boring one but it crashed all the fucking time. So even if you did get something in the game, you couldn't really test it."

The other? The cars.

"Now the other thing that was a problem was the handling — the car handling was appalling...the core of playing was fundamentally broken."

Luckily a few tweaks were made, such as making the police car AI psychopathic, and the game was good to go. Millions of copies and nearly fifteen years later and it's still going!

The Replay Interviews: Gary Penn [Gamasutra]