To date, Grand Theft Auto III is the biggest selling PlayStation 2 game in the system's 23-month history and has performed better in sales numbers than anybody could have predicted, with upward sales of 7 million units worldwide in less than a year on retail shelves. Sony, Rockstar, Microsoft, Nintendo, Joe Lieberman, your mom, it doesn't matter -- nobody could have gauged the game's bloody runaway success.

Funnily enough, irony plays a large part in Rockstar's newfound -- and old-found -- success. While Grand Theft Auto III was a brilliant non-linear and mature game with a style and presentation all its own, there is a little known secret about its design -- in its basic fabric it wasn't that much different from its brethren. Not to take anything away from the series mind you, but on the most basic of levels, Grand Theft Auto III was a 3D version of Grand Theft Auto 1 and GTA II. But, rather than argue this point (which is actually entitely worth arguing at the right time and place), let's step back into history a bit to see what preceeded Grand Theft Auto III.

In 1997 ASC Games published the first Grand Theft Auto on the PC. The console world was lit up with Final Fantasy, the early hype of Metal Gear Solid, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Few console gamers noticed the top-down, primitive looking game that enabled players to take on the role of a down-and-out thug who had to work his way up the crime ladder.

	Grand Theft Auto 1

But the game was an unmitigated smash hit. And it was noticed by the mainstream press which, quite quickly, lauded it as an ultra-violent game that was bad for the kids. The irony of it is that when Grand Theft Auto III hit the stands parents were slightly more aware or perhaps slightly more interested in the violent game's capabilities. Radio and TV stations, comic strips and the entirely of the mainstream press were caught up in the naughty nature of Grand Theft Auto III. But this time they liked it, even if it was definitely rate M for mature.

	The top-down look at GTA1 in 1997.

The original Grand Theft Auto took place in Liberty City. It enabled players to select one of four characters and set you up with everything you needed: payphones, cars to jack, innocent pedestrians to run over (or simply watch), gangs to fight, and mob bosses to nail. The top-down viewpoint gave distance to the comic characters who were puny, making it hard to think of them as real people. There was a sense of irony and comic flair in the game's very basis. DMA (now Rockstar North) created the game as an entirely open-ended title that parodied the perceived world created by movies. All you really needed to succeed was to make money...and steal cars, run drugs and laugh at everyone's jokes. And then kill them (or at least it offered the option, anyway).

The original game offered more than 200 criminal missions. Every vehicle in the game was drivable and offered radio station to switch on and listen to. You could do almost anything you wanted, and the payphones were always there when you needed them. The game sold in the millions and never left the top 20 videogame charts in the UK for two years.

	Grand Theft Auto London 1969

In 1998, Take-Two formed Rockstar, a slick new label under the Take-Two name that aimed at producing top-notch games brimming with cool gameplay, attitude, and that well, made you feel like a rockstar. OK, just kidding on that last one. One of its first major games was Grand Theft Auto: London, which appeared on PlayStation in May 1999. Although it was an entirely new game, Grand Theft Auto: London played much like GTA 1, only it took place in the swinging '60s in London. The maps were all based on the complex streets of London, and the music was like a British '60s revival of excellent, hand-picked tunes that best reflected the era.

	One of your first bosses in GTA London 1969.

The game was an add-on disc, so you had to have a copy of the original Grand Theft Auto to play it. Later on Rockstar released GTA: The Director's Cut, which included both Grand Theft Auto and the add-on GTA: London 1969. This made it easier for gamers to play both games, rather than trying to find the first game somewhere in the retailer bins.

	Grand Theft Auto 2

In October 1999 Grand Theft Auto 2 was released for PlayStation and PC, and Rockstar was very confident in its potential success. The premise behind Grand Theft Auto 2 was similar to its predecessor. Set in the immediate future, GTA2 once again enabled players to slip on the shoes of an dishonest opportunist ready to make money by climbing his way of the mob ladder.

But things were far worse in the crumbling society that has degraded drastically since you ran the streets in GTA1. Seven gangs run the lurching metropolis that is haunted daily by political executions, moonshine brewing, and massive street wars. The level of chaos and disorder is so extreme that the FBI, SWAT teams, and the army get involved in keeping the peace. Your job was to take over the city, overpowering each and every gang, while carefully threading through the legal forces. And if you were smart, you could turn the gangs on themselves.

	Chaos in the gang-ridden streets of GTA2.

The game was bigger, more packed with missions and more sophisticated with regard to the level of well, "violence management" that one had to perform to keep from getting pummeled by a gang or four. Moving Shadows created music for the game and the catchy phrase "Respect is everything" made for an excellent marketing campaign. But the game wasn't as well received as its predecessor, as the gaming press presented mixed opinions on its outcome, and sales weren't as rampant as the first, either. Clearly, the world had moved on from the top-down camera perspective and comic take on little tiny civilians bashing each other's heads in.

	Grand Theft Auto III

Time passed for Rockstar. The next Grand Theft Auto title, whatever it would become, was going to be hush hush, and hopefully something that had brewed in the pot, cooking for a long time before appearing on any system. The Rockstar label produced other equally intriguing games that somehow were related to smuggling, guns, or at the very least, breaking the law. At the launch of PS2, Midnight Club and Smuggler's Run caught many an eye with their excellent use of next-generation technologies and the successful blending of genres. In early 2001, Oni arrived to mixed fanfare, and later in the year Max Payne arrived on multiple sytems to almost unanimous acclaim.

But it was on October 22, 2001 that Grand Theft Auto III hit the retailer stands for PlayStation 2. For those who regularly read ps2.ign.com, there should have been no doubt in your mind what was running through our soaked heads. We knew it and you proved it later, by making Grand Theft Auto III the biggest game of the series.

As many gamers already know, GTA3 sold like wildfire and was applauded for many reasons. Everything about GTA3 was excellent and new (and yet based on the same framework that the first games were based upon): The open-ended game design, the phenomenal level of detail, its huge worlds, the closer, third-person perspective camera, the sophisticated AI, the sexy and sometimes dirty cutscenes, and moreover, the way in which the game aimed itself at a sophisticated gamer who wanted more than just to save a princess from a cranky dragon.

	Known only as "kid," GTA3's enormous game enabled you to play as a thug in full 3D.

Our 50 articles, consisting of features, interviews, specials, in-depths previews, and a massive review chronicled the creation of what will genuinely be considered one of the best games on PS2.

On October 29, 2002, Rockstar will deliver Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the details of which we will bring you in the upcoming days. For the record, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a full prequel of sorts, a game in its own right, twice as large as GTA3, and taking place in Vice City (a city which was playable in the original game) during what appears to be the neon, coke-crazed new age of the '80s. The game will feature numerous additions, from rideable motorcycles, helicopters and more boat useage, to gameplay that takes place outside as well as inside buildings.

	Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Once again blowing away everyone's expectations, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has apparently already pre-sold more than 4 millions copies, according to retail sources. Yeah, 4 million. Have you pre-ordered yours?

	GTA: VC introduces a neon '80s feel plus numerous new vehicles to drive...or pilot.

To date, there have been other versions of the game, namely those on the PC and the Game Boy (and there is one coming to Game Boy Advance this fall), but as the years have progressed, the game has transformed from a PC title to a console game, with Grand Theft Auto III becoming so popular that Sony Computer Entertainment America has landed a major deal with Rockstar to keep the series exclusive on PlayStation 2 for the next few years.

As a series, Grand Theft Auto has transformed its once dynamic open-ended 2D design to a fantastic, open-ended 3D game that retains the brilliance of its earliest days but also brings the whole concept into a more visceral, more engaging, more immensely satisfying gameplay experience (while still enabling die-hard fans of the earlier games to play it from a top-down perspective).

There is no doubt in our minds that Grand Theft Auto III, much like Nintendo's Super Mario 64 before it, has ultimately changed the way we look at and play games. It's ironic that two such drastically different games would do this, and we expect that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City will indeed bring more to the table than we found in Grand Theft Auto III. Here's hoping that history will indeed repeat itself this October.