It's funny how the most of us remember GTA as a childhood memory even that it is a +18 game

[NikoLiberty2008]

Although the coolest thing to say on school back on the day is that you slaughtered peds and exploded the entire city on THAT game, good times.

[Dr Busta]

It's not bad parenting

It's smart parenting by destroying our purity 

I mean we all payed our childhood innocence as the price for being GTA fans as kids

I knew sex since I was 8 ( and I am not proud of this )

[Americana]

To be honest, video games played in childhood can determine later choices. They can shape a character of a person. Even more than movies, or books. 

 

When I was a kid I played a lot of Grand Theft Auto III and then Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I also played a lot of Driver. My favorite game was Mafia. I was really into it. When I was a teenager I played Grand Theft Auto IV. 

 

These games tought me English, but,  what is more important, they made me passionate about the United States of America and the American culture and society. 

Edited February 13, 2021 by Americana

[watersgta3]

I don't get why parents believe that video games inspire children to emulate the actions being depicted there. I mean what kind of kid is dumb enough to carjack a driver just because he/she saw it performed in a video game?

[NikoLiberty2008]

6 hours ago, Americana said:

To be honest, video games played in childhood can determine later choices. They can shape a character of a person. Even more than movies, or books. 

 

When I was a kid I played a lot of Grand Theft Auto III and then Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I also played a lot of Driver. My favorite game was Mafia. I was really into it. When I was a teenager I played Grand Theft Auto IV. 

 

These games tought me English, but,  what is more important, they made me passionate about the United States of America and the American culture and society. 

I know english today mostly because of GTA San Andreas

[Americana]

Yeah, same. It really helped that the publisher didn't bother to translate the game to Polish.

[NikoLiberty2008]

2 hours ago, Americana said:

Yeah, same. It really helped that the publisher didn't bother to translate the game to Polish.

Yeah this pretty sucks, the only official portuguese translation for GTA was just on GTA 5, and as I didn't knew how to download mods at the time, I played for more than 1 year both GTA San Andreas and 4 without understanding sh*t.

[Americana]

It's the same situation here. Only Grand Theft Auto V was delivered with an official translation.

 

I remember that there was a very dedicated group that created a Grand Theft Auto IV translation. However, I'm sure that the group consisted of dedicated teenagers, so I doubt the translation was any good.

[NikoLiberty2008]

3 hours ago, Americana said:

It's the same situation here. Only Grand Theft Auto V was delivered with an official translation.

 

I remember that there was a very dedicated group that created a Grand Theft Auto IV translation. However, I'm sure that the group consisted of dedicated teenagers, so I doubt the translation was any good.

Although I can't say it wasn't useful, this lack of translation helped me a lot to understand english

[Lioshenka]

12 hours ago, NikoLiberty2008 said:

GTA San Andreas and 4 without understanding sh*t.

 

Don't worry, I asked my Dad, for whom English was a first language, to explain what they were saying in SA, and he didn't know. I understood the subtitles, but all the "hoods" and "bustas" and "ruka" left a lot to imagination. We both figured it from the context.

Edited February 14, 2021 by Lioshenka

[Carbonox]

My earlier life would've been pretty bleak without GTA tbh. I also imagine I wouldn't have had any of the appreciation for the older titles that I currently have, if I'd only first played them in 2012, long after a point where they would look "dated" to a modern audience.

[NikoLiberty2008]

13 hours ago, Lioshenka said:

 

Don't worry, I asked my Dad, for whom English was a first language, to explain what they were saying in SA, and he didn't know. I understood the subtitles, but all the "hoods" and "bustas" and "ruka" left a lot to imagination. We both figured it from the context.

The funny thing is that because of this I didn't knew that the N-word was so bad, luckly I learned about it before I started talking english on the internet.

[JaeDan 101]

When I was 5, I heard the word "blowjob" in GTA 2 and I kept on laughing

sorry for mentioning that word

[NikoLiberty2008]

12 hours ago, JaeDan 101 said:

When I was 5, I heard the word "blowjob" in GTA 2 and I kept on laughing

sorry for mentioning that word

lmao

[DarkDayz]

Yeah. I was 9 when GTA 2 came out and I got it for my 10th birthday, my parents had no idea what it was, violent video games for the most part didn't exist back then. At least not to the capacity of running over pedestrians for points and money. They didn't buy me GTA III the following year that's for damn sure. I waited outside stores on weekends asking adults to buy it for me. Eventually someone did thank god. The first GTA I could walk into a store and buy was GTA IV and boy that felt good. A lot of kids played the 3D games, a big part of why they were so desirable was because as kids it was hard to get hold of your copy. But yeah it was a blast, remember stressing for months about how me and my friends could save Lance from the scrap yard in VC. It was so difficult, even with cheats. Lots of heart attacks in my bedroom hoping nobody came in when the loading screens were up.

 

Edited February 16, 2021 by DarkDayz

[kobeni]

manhunt 1 and 2 were pretty much my childhood games as well im surprised i didnt turn out to become a serial killer or a lawyer at this age

Edited February 20, 2021 by DownInThePMs

[-Gaming4Life-]

On 2/20/2021 at 9:36 AM, DownInThePMs said:

manhunt 1 and 2 were pretty much my childhood games as well im surprised i didnt turn out to become a serial killer or a lawyer at this age

That's how boomers think that video games cause violence lmao

[Skooma Addicted Blade]

When I was in my tweens, GTA was an absolute pop culture phenomenon when III and Vice City came out. Everybody was playing it, and if your parents didn't buy it for you, you definitely knew a kid that owned it and everybody just flocked to their house and played it there.

 

I'm not a parent, and I certainly respect parents who have certain boundaries for their kids, but I'm definitely thankful my parents weren't as prudish as some of my peers' household.

[Kaname Madoka]

My parents never gave two sh*ts about the contents of the game since they had more important stuff to worry about, tbh i was free to play games as long as i did my homework.

 

GTA had a weird "controversy" in my country, it wasn't because of the vanilla content, but due to some pretty stupid mods, someone added a bunch of real life police cars and the media went nuts about it, another mod added some football/soccer fans and made them fight amongst eachother ("GTA Torcidas" for SA), they were covered by a major news channel (Record TV), this was so damn mental that even my parents laughed their asses off.

Edited May 15, 2021 by Kaname Madoka

[VM_1701]

I remember my mother getting mad when i killed hookers. My dad also got annoyed when i killed firefighters since he was one lol.

P.S: My mother is not a prostitute.

Edited May 15, 2021 by VM_1701

[Zello]

 

This was pretty much my childhood whenever I tried to get my parents to buy me GTA. Gamestop employees would give the BS speech about how M rated games are bad and have hookers and my parents would get mad and say hell no we ain't buying it. I got lucky a few times as a kid when the person behind the counter didn't care that's how I got LCS. But IV and RDR were difficult for me to get.

 

Funny thing is my parents never cared about the games I played being that they hardly speak english. My dad was also a bit of a hypocrite since he liked watching Scarface and Pablo Escobar stuff. But whenever the gamestop employees gave them the M rated games are bad speech they would always say no. The one time he did say yes was for Mafia 1 on the original Xbox and I only got that because it was $5  my dad is cheap but the disc ended up getting scratched and it made it worse

Edited May 15, 2021 by Zello

[Zello]

On 2/16/2021 at 9:21 AM, DarkDayz said:

I waited outside stores on weekends asking adults to buy it for me. Eventually someone did thank god. 

I thought about doing that as a kid but knowing the people around here I would probably get scammed and robbed so instead I gave $20 to my neighbor who could always get M rated games and told him to buy Godfather II for me. That ended up being a bad decision as I never got the Godfather II and he kept the money . I ended up buying it years later when I was finally 17 way back in 2013.

Edited May 15, 2021 by Zello

[Algonquin Assassin]

Pretty much all my high schools years were playing the top down GTAs, GTA III and Vice City.

 

My parents were never bothered with those type of games as they had this outlook that they were keeping me busy I wasn’t running amok being a little sh*t in real life.

 

Then again I was also into South Park, Celebrity Deathmatch etc in the late 90s and look at me now. I turned out just fine.

 

[killdrivetheftvehicle]

I didn't play gta when I was a kid, because it didn't exist yet. But I did play Leisure Suit Larry on PC with my friend. I think video games are rated mature too easily. Video games aren't reality, and only thing playing vido games makes you good at is playing videogames. And there's a story to remember in gta games. The moral is: the player wins, if he tries hard enough. But gta games aren't about the moral of the story, they are about the world. It's a satirical world that you only understand if you know most of the references. And that is something that as a kid you don't understand. But later on you will, if you care for such things as enjoying the world of gta.

[universetwisters]

I think we can all agree that all of our parents were irresponsible 

[Americana]

My mom bought me Grand Theft Auto 1 and then Grand Theft Auto 2 for PSX in a store located in some poor neighborhood.

[The Tracker]

14 hours ago, MiamiViceCity1986 said:

Pretty much all my high schools years were playing the top down GTAs

 

Then again I was also into South Park, Celebrity Deathmatch etc

 

 

Now that's a 90's childhood.

[VM_1701]

On 5/16/2021 at 3:14 AM, MiamiViceCity1986 said:

Then again I was also into South Park, Celebrity Deathmatch etc in the late 90s and look at me now. I turned out just fine.

When MTV was good

[Eugene H. Krabs]

My parents were completely fine with me playing GTA (in fact my first game was GTA 2, when I was only three), but they didn't allow me to watch South Park...

[sefus]

3D era gta compared to the games we have now is so tame lol.