Decompilations have opened up all kinds of possibilities and technical wonders when it comes to porting games to other devices that they weren't officially designed for, and one of the most impressive and notorious examples of this are the ports to the SEGA Dreamcast of both Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, which took some major reworks and technical prowess to achieve them, and much more so to get them running at playable framerates.

But there are times when porting a game goes beyond video game consoles, and sometimes it gets ported to the most interesting of places, with the latest being browser port of Vice City, meaning the game runs entirely through the internet browser, all thanks to the reVC decompilation.

Gaming website DOS Zone has achieved such an endeavour, with their efforts being worked on making the entirety of Vice City playable through an internet browser. DOS Zone is a website ran by gaming enthusiasts in which they "adapt historical gaming heritage" by porting titles to browser and making them accessible to everyone.

While the guys over at DOS Zone have indeed ported over the entirety of Vice City, playing the game through the browser does come with some caveats, as DOS Zone does try to work alongside copyright law:

The game is given as a limited demo. You can travel and enjoy the gameplay as much as you want but upon going to the 1st story checkpoint (Hotel Ocean View), you're required to upload an original game file to continue. For example gtavc.exe The fact of uploading the original files of the game is checked by checksums.

By this, you are proving that you have bought the game. This version of the game is provided solely for educational and research purposes and demonstrates the technical capabilities of running complex game engines in modern web. The port is created using open source code available on the internet (Github repos, projects re3 / reVC), in accordance with the licenses.

As mentioned above, players can play a demo of the game running through the browser, and those that do wish to continue playing through DOS Zone the full game, can do so by providing the original files for Vice City, in this case, "gtavc.exe", and the website will perform a checksum run-through to verify that the provided file is correct, and then let the player continue playing with the full game unlocked.

DOS Zone also provides multiple videogames aside from Vice City, so for those interested in checking out what other videogames are there to play through, be sure to visit DOS Zone's website.

"Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" on DOS Zone
DOS Zone Website

Update: it got taken down by DMCA, Taken down. you can see it on the website itself.

 

[MonkeyDKid]

taken down already

 

[NostalgicMillennial]

The website was taken down.

Fuck

Wish someone would finish the decomp projects and then vanish. Or upload it to gitflic or somewhere that github won't be a cuck

 

[Karoi]

Funny enough GTA 1, GTA London and GTA 2 are still playable.

 

[Robert Newbie]

GTA3 is just such a fun rabbit hole, too!

So true. The game went through so many changes during development that it feels a bit like Ocarina of Time. Stylistic changes, unused pedestrians (Such as street musicians), online multiplayer- The developers had a lot in mind. It's amazing the final product feels as polished as it is, despite all the different directions the developers wanted to go in.

I cannot explain how intriguing the game was back in 2001, though it seems so primitive now.

 

[LanHikariDS]

So true. The game went through so many changes during development that it feels a bit like Ocarina of Time. Stylistic changes, unused pedestrians (Such as street musicians), online multiplayer- The developers had a lot in mind. It's amazing the final product feels as polished as it is, despite all the different directions the developers wanted to go in.

I cannot explain how intriguing the game was back in 2001, though it seems so primitive now.

For me it's all the wierd stuff that slipped through the cracks- the Give Me Liberty police vans still having their colors set to blue, the platform changes on Under Surveillance, a whole original song only showing up in a short radio ad...

 

[eduall]

R.I.P u.u

 

[Robert Newbie]

For me it's all the wierd stuff that slipped through the cracks- the Give Me Liberty police vans still having their colors set to blue, the platform changes on Under Surveillance, a whole original song only showing up in a short radio ad...

That just adds to the intrigue. Ocarina of Time didn't have so many small details lying just out of reach, since it was so polished. As an early open world game, GTA3 has more random details sitting in plain sight.

Even the inaccessible areas became points of interest, like the tops of the Donald Love building and the casino. Like Luigi in Super Mario 64, people theorized that Carcer City was accessible through the tunnel. The real holy grail was the Ghost Town, which is the nickname for the area shown in the opening cutscene. Once I could fly the Dodo competently, I went for it only to find that it lacked collision. Every time I do the S.A.M. mission, I pass by it and give it an extra glance.

 

[Viri]

It's funny, I waited a night, and planned to download GTA VC via Steam to get the files, because I own it legit. But NOPE, before I got a chance to even try it, removed.

 

[Treychik]

sadly....not anymore. I told people, that it won't last long, BUT! I mean...the code is out there, so I don't see an issue to host it yourself somewhere just for friends or for yourself. 99% of people own the game anyway

 

[The Catboy]

And it’s gone
https://www.tomshardware.com/video-...riginal-copy-of-title-to-run-full-game-online

Fuck

Wish someone would finish the decomp projects and then vanish. Or upload it to gitflic or somewhere that github won't be a cuck

Too bad Take Two is worse than Nintendo when it comes to ignoring Fair Use

 

[Flame]

I updated it: it got taken down by DMCA, taken down from take two.

 

[The Catboy]

I updated it: it got taken down by DMCA, taken down from take two.

People don't hate Take Two enough

 

[Skv0ra]

In practical terms playing with a web browser can be useful for systems with more limited capabilities e.g. ChromeOS.

Typically paired Chrome OS hardware can barely run its own power supply, let alone an empty tab of Chrome. lol

 

[SolidSonicTH]

Having a chance to process all of this, ultimately this seems like it was inevitable.

It's one thing to recompile a game and then distribute that as something people download then supply their own assets to actually make it usable. This is how the RSDK ("Retro Engine" - Christian Whitehead's 2D Sonic game engine) decompilation project and Unleashed Recompiled are distributed (the files you get from the GitHubs are just the binaries to actually run the games, you as a user must provide the assets that the game needs to actually run once you have it so they can't be said to be distributing copyrighted material).

With these web browser ports the whole game must be served to you from the back end, meaning regardless of the front-end efforts the devs try to do to ensure people who have access already demonstrated that they had a valid license to play it in the first place, they are undeniably distributing copyrighted assets (art assets, voice lines, and - in the case of GTA especially - licensed music). The license the user holds to play the game only applies to the distribution means (PS2 DVD, Steam storefront, etc.) that was sanctioned by the publisher and some preservation group giving the game away simply by opening a browser and visiting a URL is undeniably not one of them. Even if the code that interacts with the assets was clean-room reengineered there's really no argument that they're still supplying the copyrighted data that they didn't create themselves.

Now whether or not Take-Two should stay out of it in the interest of not being twats is another matter but it is their right to exercise regardless.

I know a browser port exists for Wipeout and they could just be as subject to such enforcement if there was any interest in doing so from the IP holder. To do this sort of browser port project you really need to know who picks their battles when it comes to their copyrights (like if that Twilight Princess decompilation project comes to fruition then a browser port wouldn't even last two hours; you could set your clock to it), because the reality is there is no legal leg to stand on if someone took notice.

 

[LanHikariDS]

Having a chance to process all of this, ultimately this seems like it was inevitable.

It's one thing to recompile a game and then distribute that as something people download then supply their own assets to actually make it usable. This is how the RSDK ("Retro Engine" - Christian Whitehead's 2D Sonic game engine) decompilation project and Unleashed Recompiled are distributed (the files you get from the GitHubs are just the binaries to actually run the games, you as a user must provide the assets that the game needs to actually run once you have it so they can't be said to be distributing copyrighted material).

With these web browser ports the whole game must be served to you from the back end, meaning regardless of the front-end efforts the devs try to do to ensure people who are already licensed to play the game, they are undeniably distributing copyrighted assets (art assets, voice lines, and - in the case of GTA especially - licensed music). Even if the code that interacts with the assets was clean-room reengineered there's really no argument that they're still supplying the copyrighted data that they didn't create themselves.

Now whether or not Take-Two should stay out of it in the interest of not being twats another matter but it is their right to exercise regardless.

I know a browser port exists for Wipeout and they could just be as subject to such enforcement if there was any interest in doing so from the IP holder. To do this sort of browser port project you really need to know who picks their battles when it comes to their copyrights (like if that Twilight Princess decompilation project comes to fruition then a browser port wouldn't even last two hours, I bet).

Not to mention, some games package their assets into a singular container like Doom, which is easier to require and end user to upload to keep everything on the up and up... this isn't the case with the GTA games, those use a SHIT ton of files, each radio station is a single audio file, a lot of the cutscene audio tracks are just loose .wavs... it's not a great situation

 

[LoggerMan]

I bought Vice City on Switch 2 in the sale last week. And they removed Billie Jean, that's the first song you're meant to hear when driving a car in the game. It sets the mood for the entire game. And they took out it and replaced it with inane radio chatter.

 

[doorbell8423]

.

 

[LanHikariDS]

I bought Vice City on Switch 2 in the sale last week. And they removed Billie Jean, that's the first song you're meant to hear when driving a car in the game. It sets the mood for the entire game. And they took out it and replaced it with inane radio chatter.

Oh man, that remastered trilogy is hot ass

 

[Charli]

Oh man, that remastered trilogy is hot ass

yeah, it's sad Although I've heard that it seems to be passable now, after it got some fixes.. but I guess they won't bring back any missing songs..

For anonye who wants to play Vice City on the PC, I always like to recommend this hidden gem: https://www.moddb.com/mods/gta-vanilla-vice/

The mod pre packages a selection of other mods and configures them so that everything works nicely. It includes everything that's needed to make VC playable on modern system without much hassle (even without providing any other game files ) and has neat QoL features like an ingame map for hidden packages etc. The graphical improvements included from VC releases on others systems and Vice City Stories look great and fit really well (like the cars which now all have detailed 3D engines and wheels), while not changing the classic Vice City feel from all those years ago. Since todays hardware is much more powerful than 20 years ago, limitations like the low draw distance have been removed which is amazing to see ingame. Vice City has such an impressive Skyline

Simply put: imho this is probably the best way to play classic Vice CIty today

I'm still looking for sth similar for San Andreas. Does anyone have any recommendations?

 

[SolidSonicTH]

Admittedly I feel like a remastered GTA is warranted since even for the time the game had rather noticeably underwhelming graphics (especially San Andreas - the game came out the same year as Halo 2 and Burnout 3).

They just half-assed it.