Grand Theft Auto: London 1969

Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 moves the action of the original Grand Theft Auto from American metropolises to a fictionalized late-1960s London. Studio DMA Design kept the bird's-eye view of the city and the same principle of running jobs for local gangs, but wrapped it in period music from the Beatles era, telephone boxes, and double-decker buses. Cars drive with the steering wheel on the right, and characters speak in pronounced British slang, giving the game a noticeably different mood from the original's New York, San Francisco, and Miami campaigns. Period black cabs and police cars with ringing bell sirens also cruise the streets, setting the London of the era even further apart from the American cities of the first game.

On PlayStation, unlike the PC version, the London spin-off was released as a standalone title on a single disc that required no ownership of the original game. The controls were reworked for a gamepad – the directional buttons and shoulder buttons handled vehicle movement and aiming, which was less precise than the keyboard-and-mouse combination on PC. Loading individual missions from the CD also slowed the game down compared to the faster drives found in period PC setups. Content-wise, though, the console version offered the same trio of London districts and the same missions as the PC add-on, so console players didn't miss out on any content. It was also one of the series' last titles before Grand Theft Auto III moved the series into 3D two years later.

Why play it: For PlayStation owners without a computer, this was the only way to play this British spin-off of the series without having to track down and install the base game. Players who prefer gamepad controls and playing in the living room over sitting at a computer will find identical content to the PC version here, just in a more convenient and accessible form on a single disc. It's also a memento of the era when the series' two-dimensional graphics were headed for their final farewell, two years before the three-dimensional world of Grand Theft Auto III replaced them.