Grand Theft Auto (GBC)

The notion that the entire original Grand Theft Auto could fit in the palm of your hand sounded almost absurd in 1999 — and yet Grand Theft Auto (GBC) exists and works. This cult curiosity brought the bird's-eye, top-down version of the controversial hit from DMA Design (later Rockstar North) to the Game Boy Color, and technically alone it's a remarkable piece.

The game preserves the original's core spirit: you move around open cities from above, steal cars, carry out missions for criminal bosses, and rack up points for the chaos you leave behind. Bringing it to such weak hardware naturally required concessions in the size of the cities and in the details, but the core of that anarchistic, sarcastic experience remained surprisingly legible. On a small console that most people associated with Mario and Pokémon, such a game felt almost provocative.

That's why the retro community keeps it in memory more as a fascinating rarity than as a full-fledged replacement for the PC version. It's a beloved proof of the developers' courage to attempt the impossible and an interesting coda to the era when GTA still ran in a bird's-eye view, before the series was reborn into three-dimensional form.