Rockstar Games has never came out with an official online version of any Grand Theft Auto PC game, but since the start, GTA fans have been attempting to make their own third-party multiplayer versions of the games. It all started with GTA III. A group of people got together and attempted to create a modded version of the game allowing you to see other people’s cars. Hackers worked until they found out how to get YOUR player’s coordinates out on the net, and receive other’s X-Y coordinates also. Though this was very crude, it was the start of something that hundreds of thousands of people enjoy today. The development of GTA3-Online FINAL never got released, and was not focused on at all once it’s successor, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, was released for the PC. This time, though, hackers were able to get much further in their effort to make GTA an online multiplayer game.

    The first betas of “Multi-Theft Auto: Vice City”, or “MTA:VC” for short, were released. Though everyone looked like Tommy Vercetti, and everyone drove the same car, it was a definite start for the creators of this mod. Unfortunately, you could not take your player out of his car, and you were stuck driving around playing racing games, and so on. It was very hard to drive anyway, as the cars were not properly ‘synced’ to other players, and all of your opponents cars would jump 10 miles at a time, while it appeared you were driving smoothly. Meanwhile, a different group of people followed the MTA:VC Team’s steps and created “Vice City-Multiplayer” aka “VC:MP”. However, in this variation of Vice City, you could actually get out of your car, and kill other players. As mentioned above, both MTA:VC and VC:MP were slow and buggy as heck, which made for gameplay almost as annoying as those Hoveround commercials (I didn’t waaanna do it!), the reeal action didn’t start until San Andreas was released for the PC.

The creators of both MTA:VC and VC:MP were extremelly excited to start messing with the game’s source, and see what they could cook up. Not so long after the release, both “MTA:SA” and “SA:MP” were in production. Many months later, both MTA:SA and SA:MP are in stable releases, and thousands of people are sitting at their computer right now, playing San Andreas online. MTA:SA still limits users to stay in their cars, but is now a GREAT racing component for San Andreas. SA:MP, on the other hand, lets you do virtually everything you can do in single player—online, with tons of others. Enhanced with IRC chat, money trading, banking, racing, and much more, GTA San Andreas is now better than ever.

If you have San Andreas for the PC, consider downloading MTA:SA or SA:MP. Remember to join the -=GAMER UNLIMITED SERVER=- on SA:MP! ;)

http://mtasa.com/
http://sa-mp.com/