GTA1

The original Grand Theft Auto

You can work around some of the compatibility problems by running the Windows version in a Virtual machine like VirtualBox or VMWare. The DOS version works in DOSBox.

Q: Why are cop sounds played when I’m on foot?
A: The free classic version has the radio files named wrong. I think you have to open your GTA1 music folder, rename track1.wav to track11.wav, rename track10.wav to track1.wav and then rename track11.wav to track10.wav.

Q: Is there anything I can do to speed up singleplayer in the Windows GTA1?
A: In Windows XP, you can click start button > run > dxdiag > sound > change sound acceleration to basic or none (that option isn’t in Vista/Win7).  Remember to change it back for other games.  Push F8 to turn the frame rate limiter on or off.   Push F11 to change resolution.

Q: How to fix corrupt graphics in GTA1/London 1961/London 1969 Windows versions?
A: You can use old drivers or try renaming the exe to “Grand Theft Auto.exe”, this will may enable a work around for a driver texture bug.

M1Win, Junction25 map editors and various other GTA1 tools

GTA1 development video from 1996!

OpenGTA – An open source clone of the GTA1 engine (written in C++ and SDL). You can walk around the GTA1 cities and fire some weapons but you can’t drive cars yet and it’s just singleplayer for now. Feel free to improve it.

GTAFixer.rar 23KB
On some systems, GTA1 has a bug that corrupts PLAYER_A.DAT after the first run. Extract gtafixer.exe to your GTA1 folder and run it every time before you play GTA1. It changes a single byte in PLAYER_A.DAT and renames the free version music files to the correct filenames. GTA1 Launcher also fixes the PLAYER_A.DAT file.

GTA1 Game Finder – Steven Day created this in 2007 but very few people used it and now the default server is down, so it doesn’t work any more. The Java source code for the client and server are still available for any Java programmers who wish to revive it.

GTA1 INI Pad mission editor for GTA1. Created by Jernej.

GTA1 modified executable will run music from any audio CD. This exe doesn’t support higher than 800×600 but since GTA1 just stretches 640×480, it doesn’t really matter. This is usually the best executable to use.

GTA1 London 1961 no cd exe – 1961 isn’t compatible with some retail versions of the London CD since they changed the layout of the disc. This exe should work around that issue. This requires GTA1, London 1969 and 1961 to already be installed.

gta1patch.zip 385KB – This exe was taken from the free Rockstar Classics version of GTA1. It can only run music from the hard drive in the folder GTA\music, named track1.wav to track10.wav. It has the player_a.dat corruption bug. It supports resolutions higher than 800×600 but there’s really no point using them since it just stretches low resolution images anyway.

GTA1 official manual 188KB. The manual that used to come with GTA1 retail, it’s in PDF format.

GTA1 scanned maps 3MB. These maps were scanned by ReplacementsDocs.com. They include the whole image and aren’t cutoff like the ones released on CD with budget versions of GTA1.

GTA Wave 4.0 1.92MB, audio editor for GTA1 and GTA2 by Adrian Grucza. It can also export GTA3 sounds.

CityScape Data Structure (cds.doc) – Technical details of the GTA1 map format (.cmp) by DMA Design

Mission Template Description (mtd.doc) – GTA1 mission.ini documentation (must read for GTA1 mission makers)

GTA1 mods

Las Vegas, Venezia and Machine GTA1 mod created by RoLaND

Space Station Aftermath GTA1 mod created by illspirit

Snowball City GTA1 mod created by illspirit

GTA1 multiplayer bomb shops created by Sektor – This enables the bomb shops in multiplayer.

GTA1, London 1961 and 1969 Multiplayer Notes:

There is an out of sync problem playing Windows 98 vs Windows XP. Whatever they used to seed the random city must have changed on XP. I have played GTA1 Vista vs XP and that worked fine.

Chat messages (F1-F4) work in the DOS version but they never appear on the Windows version. If you must chat during GTA1 then could use a third party voice chat program like Teamspeak or Ventrilo but it may slow down GTA1.

GTA1 works fine in true DOS with DOS network drivers but London 1969 and 1961 spit out the same error on all my machines if DOS network drivers are installed.

“GTA24 v11.5

(c) 1997 DMA Design Ltd

Error 17.12: Int 31 fn 301h call failed”

All the DOS versions work under Windows with the Windows IPX drivers (at least they did years ago when I tried).

The Windows version can’t play against the DOS version and 24bit can’t play 8bit. GTA London will connect to the GTA1 but it isn’t going to work properly.

67 thoughts on “GTA1”

  1. I downloaded GTA 1 from rockstar classics website and it does bring back memories,but it either goes WAY too slow (Frame Limiter ON) or 2x speed (Frame Limiter OFF).I have tried all resolutions,transperancy effects and so on,but it won’t work properly.I am using Vista,and have run the directX diagnosis but the information listed is un-changeable.PLEASE HELP ME!

  3. hey there, just wanted to know if there is any way you can backup your status in GTA1

  4. Hey. Can anyone tell me how to play GTA 1 over network. It has serial, modem and TCP/IP as options but not network. Tried TCP/IP with exact IP address – no luck! Any help?

  5. Hi, I would just like to thank whoever was putting this together. really gratefull. does anybody know if there is a patch for this game so that the ‘frame rate limiter’ is working on LCD?

  7. Eu adoro gta só que ele um dia no meu computador não deu pra colocar de 2 pra mim jogar eu e o meu irmão 🙁 mais do mesmo jeito eu adoro os gtas eles são bom eles são loucos e de +++++++++++++

  10. To fix police radio on foot with the Steam version of the game, rename each track in the music folder with one number lower. So rename track1.wav to track0.wav, track2.wav to track1.wav etc etc.

    The only thing I can’t get to play is music on the main menu.

  11. I cant get the setup to run on vista,. did anyone else have this problem,. i even tried run as administrator,. and nothing happens., nothing pops up when i click setup.

  16. Free version downloaded from Rockstar games (long time ago). Everything works correctly, even speed is accurate under XP with built-in limiter. But there is one problem – When accomplished first Liberty map there should be cut scene. But whenever it starts (sound of tires) it freezes on first frame of cut scene. I can stop it by space or esc and play next map but it is a little annoying. What to do?

  17. I have the downloaded version of GTA1 running in a notebook with windows vista and have no problems

  18. i’ve donwloaded and install proprerly on a win 7 pro X64 it works finr after launche and apply settings, but it works only one time… The other time I lauch it it doesnt even launch, if i relacunh i have access to menu but once i clic on play after selected libercity it closed and windows give me an alert… Maybe it is due to “There is a compatibility problem with certain NVIDIA drivers. The graphics didn’t display correctly on an NVIDIA 8800 that I tested. NVIDIA might have released new drivers that fix this problem. It works great on my ATi HD 3470.” but i’m not sure…

  21. Years ago I had an AMD Athlon XP processor, and this game was horribly choppy for me on that computer (Windows XP, ATI graphics). I think I recall the same thing happening on my recently deceased AMD Turion X2 laptop, which had Vista and Nvidia graphics. My desktop, however, runs this perfectly smoothly with Windows 7 x64 and an Intel Core 2 CPU. My theory is that the choppiness some people are reporting has to do with AMD processors. Has anyone else experienced this?

  22. Game runs fine with frame limiter enabled on my Windows 7 x64, AMD Phenom 9950 Black Edition CPU (quad core) and nVidia GTX295 GFX card. Thanks for the links.

  23. Ola. Baixei o GTA dos classicos free da RockStar Games, mas de forma nenhuma consigo abrir o jogo. Quando executo o .exe, a tela fica escura (como para abrir qualquer jogo) e depois de alguns segundos volta para o Windows XP falando que um erro foi encontrato. Ja instalei todos os arquivos do Site, mas nada acontece e o jogo nao abre. Será que sou o unico com este problema ? Alguem pode me ajudar ?

  26. game runs fine on windows 7 the first time, then crashes, also the radio doesnt work! please help! i got it from rockstar.com

  31. I have a problem when I finish level 1. GTA crashes and says it has a problem with replay.dat.

    So I wanted to proceed, but when I use DEL to use a cheat, then I have problem with player_a.dat. I tried every fix avaible, but nothing works… :(((.

  32. I have a problem when I finish level 1. GTA crashes and says it has a problem with replay.dat.
    So I wanted to proceed, but when I use DEL to use a cheat, then I have problem with player_a.dat. I tried every fix avaible, but nothing works… ((.

  33. If you still have an original CD copy of GTA, don’t bother with the Rockstar Classics version. Time and again I’ve found that, ironically, this version that was supposedly optimised for newer versions of Windows works a lot worse than the original Windows version. It’s just not worth the hassle, because the original 1997 binaries work very well on WinXP, 7, and 8; even 64-bit versions.

    The only issue I’ve found with playing Windows GTA on my Win7 x64 system is that after a while of playing, CD audio volume starts to intermittently cut out, and it gets worse the longer I play. It returns to normal when jumping back to the menu. That might be a peculiarity of my CD drive or audio interface though.

    In fact, what I would *most* suggest to anyone is to play the original DOS version in DOSBox. This has been by far the least problematic, most stable way of playing GTA for me.

  35. Hi, I have the original GTA game CD (soldout version).

    I really want to put the radio stations (when in car) on my ipod, can anyone tell me if this is possible and what do I have to do to do this?
    Which files do I save/convert etc?

    Someone said to me that you can just put the CD into a normal CD player and skip track 1.
    Is this correct? can anyone shine any light on this?

  36. Gentlemen, I have just tried the game CD in a CD Player. YES, It does play the radio tracks up to track 11 (which is just the normal on foot gameplay music).

    The police scanner is on track 10.

    I would really like to know how to download these from the CD, can anyone help?

  40. GTA 1: THE DAMN CUTSCENES DON’T WORK AFTER COMPLETING AN AREA!!! STUCK ON THE FIRST FRAME. STEAM VERSION OF THE GAME. PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  42. This is more of a gameplay question: what’s the difference between original and Director’s Cut? Also, is there anything to do besides missions, car missions, and kill frenzies? (I want 100% completion.)

  43. Director’s Cut includes GTA London 1969. It was originally sold separately, Director’s Cut is just what they called one of their bundles.

    Missions (phone and pager), car missions and kill frenzies (secrets). That’s about it unless you want to collect every weapon crate but many of them respawn, so I wouldn’t count those. You can also get a GOURANGA bonus.

  45. Hi, can we somehow get someone to continue making GTA1 Mods? They are awesome and I want more!

  46. GTA fixer not working! any suggestions to get rid of crash after initial use of program(GTA1)? Windows 8

  47. Need help making it work on Windows 10 – 64bit. The left half of the screen seems to keep flickering which is quite annoying! I have tried many suggestions from this page but can’t seem to make it work. Any help would be great as I love the old skool classics!

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