Grand Theft Auto III is, without a doubt, one of the most revolutionary video games of all time—not only for marking the series’ debut in three-dimensional environments but also for breaking new ground in open-world gameplay. DMA Design achieved a monumental feat with its fairly realistic 3D representation of New York City, completely explorable on foot or by vehicle, where players could roam the streets, fight its residents, and enjoy countless other possibilities. Its launch on the PlayStation 2 in 2001 unquestionably set a new benchmark for the gaming industry.
At that time, Rockstar Games considered porting the game to the Dreamcast. However, this idea was scrapped for commercial reasons. The SEGA console was nearing the end of its lifecycle, and investing significant effort and money into a port was deemed unlikely to yield profitable returns. Fortunately, decades later, a group of passionate fans took matters into their own hands, making the dream a reality. For several months, members of this development team shared videos of the game running on a Dreamcast and launched a website where it can be downloaded for free. That said, you will need a copy of the PC version of GTA III to run it, as the team aimed to avoid legal problems related to copyright infringement.
Even though the project may look a bit rough around the edges, unleashing GTA III on the Dreamcast is an extraordinary technical accomplishment given the hardware limitations. For an unmodified Dreamcast to run the game, it took not just time and effort but also clever resource optimization.
SURPRISE SURPRISE! The alpha release of Grand Theft Auto 3 running on the Sega #Dreamcast (DCA3) is here! Here is an actual hardware capture I took from my DC while doing some physics engine optimization work.
— Falco Girgis (@falco_girgis) December 30, 2024
Over the last several months, a rag-tag team of indie DC developers… pic.twitter.com/IKbbi1cloM
Optimizations to Overcome Technical Limitations
To put things into perspective, the PlayStation 2 had a vector unit and a DMA (direct memory access) controller responsible for sending all game data—including models, textures, audio, and physics—to the bus, allowing the map to be rendered in real-time without loading screens. The Dreamcast, on the other hand, lacks dedicated coprocessors. Instead, its hardware chips handle data transmission via a bus, which has just 16 MB of memory, half of what the Sony console offers. This limitation is evident in open-world games made for the Sega console, such as Shenmue, which relies on loading screens to transition between areas.
Due to these constraints, heavy optimization was necessary to make this project a reality. The PC version of GTA III had to be modified extensively to run smoothly. Since the Dreamcast features only 8 MB of VRAM for the framebuffer, textures, and display list, one solution was shrinking all textures to lower, more manageable resolutions. Audio files also underwent transformations, with WAV files converted to PCM and resampled from 12 kHz stereo to 6 kHz mono.
With these adjustments, the game runs fairly smoothly, achieving between 17 and 25 frames per second. Although it was designed to run at 30 fps, the result is not perfect but remains playable. A minor issue occurs when switching radio stations, as there’s a brief pause in the music when running the game via CD due to format limitations. However, this issue disappears if played on an emulator or if the console is modified to run games via flash memory. While the port does have some flaws, it’s important to note that this is the first alpha version available, meaning improvements and fixes could come with future updates.
How Was the Original Game’s Source Code Obtained?
Obviously, this ambitious project didn’t happen overnight and required several critical steps to make it feasible. The first step was gaining access to the original game’s source code. Around 2020, a group of programmers reverse-engineered the RenderWare engine that powered games like GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas, among others. This project wasn’t limited to the world’s once-most-used game engine. Rockstar’s famous trilogy also had its repositories and source codes leaked by similar methods, and the material spread widely across the internet.
Take-Two, the parent company of Rockstar Games and owner of all its IPs, responded fiercely, taking legal action against these projects and having them, along with their repositories, taken down. They even went as far as suing developers for copyright infringement. Fortunately, in 2024, someone managed to recover the source code for GTA III, re-uploading it online. Without this critical step, the DCA 3 project (as the port has been named) would not have been possible.
Potential Legal Repercussions
Take-Two’s reputation for aggressively protecting its intellectual property is well known, and it wouldn’t be surprising if legal action is taken against DCA 3, as has happened with other fan projects in the past. For this reason, the team behind the port has taken certain precautions.
The first precaution is that the developers do not provide the necessary resources to play the game. This port requires a copy of the PC version of GTA III, which must be modified following instructions outlined on the project’s website. The website stresses that users must already own an original copy of the PC version to proceed, distancing itself from liability regarding the source of said copy.
Another precaution is that the project is entirely non-commercial, as they do not accept donations or any form of monetization. Many fan initiatives have been taken to court due to generating monetary gains, whether through donations or other means. By keeping the project nonprofit, it’s harder to accuse them of benefiting from the original intellectual property. However, these strategies are not foolproof. While Take-Two has taken no action or issued statements at this time, it’s possible they will as the project garners more attention.
Hopefully, that won’t be the case. After all, the Dreamcast was discontinued over 20 years ago, and this port doesn’t present any commercial threat to the GTA franchise’s revenue. For now, fans can enjoy an incredible project that pushes the Dreamcast’s graphical capabilities to their limits. Here’s hoping this port lasts forever and doesn’t fall victim to corporate bureaucracy.
