Yesterday, we shared the news about first GTA game being a “dinosaur-themed tech demo” in the beginning, as claimed by former DMA developer Colin Macdonald. Apparently it was not the case, as creator of GTA 1 Mike Dailly disputes the story.
Mike Dailly says that there was never any Dinosaur tech demo. Code framework of the game’s prototype was copied from an earlier prototype called Attack, and it was based on cavemen and dinosaurs. So GTA 1 actually had a file with the name “dino.bat”, even stayed with the game at launch. This was the reason of entire story.
Actual story according to Mike Dailly was that GTA 1 had two demos, one being with the isometric view and the second with a side-on camera. Obviously, the top-down view was adopted for the game. Mike Dailly says that he realised if he “put a wall in the distance and painted roads on it, it would be a top-down engine”. It was how the entire thing started.
Sadly, there were no dinosaurs there. But developers had a lot of great stories, that is quite clear.
