GTA 1, the first Grand Theft Auto from 1997, is where the series began

GTA 1, or simply Grand Theft Auto from 1997, is the first game in the series that grew into San Andreas, GTA 5 and GTA 6. It was made by DMA Design from Dundee, Scotland (later Rockstar North) and published by BMG Interactive. It launched on PC (MS-DOS and Windows) in Europe on November 28, 1997, and on PlayStation on December 12, 1997. In North America the PC version arrived on March 24, 1998, and the PlayStation version on June 30, 1998. A Game Boy Color port followed in October 1999.

Development began on April 4, 1995, under the name Race'n'Chase. Originally the player was meant to be a cop chasing criminals, but the team found that boring and flipped the idea: now you're the criminal. Even before release the game sparked a scandal over violence, and the marketing, run by publicist Max Clifford, used the uproar as free publicity.

The camera looks down from above, the cities are built from tiles, and jobs come from payphones: walk up to a ringing phone and you get work from a local gang. The goal of each level isn't to finish a story but to score points: $1,000,000 on the first level, more after that. Points come from completed jobs, stealing and selling cars, and mayhem on the roads. Successful jobs raise your multiplier, while dying costs a life and your weapons and resets the multiplier. Getting busted costs your gear and half your multiplier.

Six levels are spread across three cities: Liberty City (a parody of New York), San Andreas (here, a stand-in for San Francisco) and Vice City (Miami). You pick your character from eight (four on PlayStation), but the choice is purely cosmetic. The PC version had network multiplayer over the IPX protocol.

In April 1999 the first expansion came out: Grand Theft Auto Mission Pack #1: London 1969 for PC and PlayStation. It was made by Rockstar Canada. The mechanics were the same, but instead of three American cities there was one late-'60s London: old British cars, slang ("Nicked" instead of "Busted") and the style of that era's spy films. The expansion won a 1999 BAFTA Interactive award for sound.

The second expansion, London 1961, came out on July 1, 1999, for PC only and was free: it was handed out through the GTA 2 website. It's a shorter campaign on the same map with the same characters as London 1969, but set eight years earlier. It required London 1969 to be installed.

In short: no, GTA 1 isn't officially sold anywhere right now. Here's how it disappeared from stores:

• Rockstar Classics. In the early 2000s Rockstar gave away the PC version of GTA 1 for free, along with Wild Metal and, from December 2004, GTA 2. To get it you signed up for Rockstar's newsletter and received a link by email. The program closed long ago: its page now only says free downloads are unavailable.
• Steam. From January 4, 2008, GTA 1 was sold on Steam, but only in the Grand Theft Auto Complete Pack. In May 2013 the game was pulled from both Steam and Rockstar's site. The game's Steam page doesn't open as of October 31, 2026. Rockstar never explained why.
• Consoles. There are no digital re-releases for PS3, PS4, PS5 or Xbox. That leaves used PlayStation and PC discs from 1997–1999.

Sites offering GTA 1 downloads today aren't Rockstar. Nobody checks those archives, so the risk of getting malware along with the game is real. The safest way to see how GTA evolved is through the series' current games that are sold legally: San Andreas (including on mobile), GTA 5 and the mobile Chinatown Wars or Liberty City Stories.

Rockstar never updated the game for Windows 10 or 11 and never published instructions for modern systems. The original 1997 version exists as several executables for DOS and Windows. Players usually run the DOS version through the DOSBox emulator; the Windows version from the discs may need compatibility mode. There are no guarantees: it's a game nearly 30 years old, and everything depends on the specific build and hardware.

Cheats in the first GTA aren't entered during play but as the player name on the character select screen. On PC, delete the default name with the Delete key, type the code and confirm; an engine sound means the code worked. The table only includes codes described the same way by two independent sources (gta.wiki and The GTA Place).

Some PlayStation codes popular online (CHUFF, HANGTHEDJ, GROOVY) are described differently by different guides, so we don't list them. We didn't find any London 1969 or London 1961 cheats verified by two sources. Cheats for later games: GTA 2, Vice City, San Andreas, GTA 5.

Technically the game was outdated by 2001, when the 3D GTA III came out. But this is where the things the series can't do without first appeared: an open city where missions are just one option, stealing any car, wanted levels, car radio, and the names Liberty City, San Andreas and Vice City. DMA Design became Rockstar North, and 29 years after the first game Rockstar is preparing GTA 6, back in Vice City.