GTA Vice City radio stations: nine stations playing the sound of 1986

Every station has its own genre, a host with personality and parody ads between songs. The DJ and ad scripts were written by Dan Houser and Lazlow. According to Wikipedia, there is about three times as much talk radio here as in GTA III.

Sources count the tracks differently: IGN cited “more than 113 songs and commercials”, while GTA Wiki counts 103 songs. The difference is the ads, so the accurate way to put it is more than 100 licensed ’80s songs. Rockstar released the soundtrack with Epic Records on seven discs in October 2002.

Station and host names are as in the game; the actor who voiced the host is in brackets.

A separate news station, Vice City News, was in development according to GTA Wiki, but it was cut.

The complete playlists of the seven music stations in the original game — 103 songs. Tracks, artists and years are cross-checked between GTABase and GTA Wiki, and the lists match. “Cut” means the song is missing from the mobile version, the PS2 Classics re-releases and the Definitive Edition.

Flash FM — 16 songs

V-Rock — 17 songs

Fever 105 — 13 songs

Wildstyle — 15 songs

Emotion 98.3 — 12 songs

Radio Espantoso — 14 songs

Wave 103 — 16 songs

The talk stations play no songs. VCPR’s “Pressing Issues” has three episodes: on morality, positive thinking and public safety. K-Chat guests include Love Fist frontman Jezz Torrent (Kevin McKidd) and former football player BJ Smith (Lawrence Taylor).

Wave 103, according to GTA Wiki, is the only station that kept its entire original playlist in the re-releases.

Music for games is licensed for a fixed term. When those terms ran out, some songs were removed from the 2012 mobile version and from the PS2 Classics re-releases for PS3 and PS4. Rockstar confirmed that the music in the Definitive Edition matches the 2014 re-releases and that Vice City and San Andreas are missing more than 30 songs between them.

For Vice City, eight cut songs are confirmed by two or more sources. They are only in the original PS2, PC and Xbox releases:

A separate case is Lionel Richie’s “Running with the Night” on Flash FM. Most sources say it was only in the original PS2 release (it was not added on PC and Xbox); it is absent from the mobile version and the Definitive Edition.

When the Definitive Edition launched, the press circulated a longer list of “cut” tracks. It was based on Rockstar’s pre-release track list, and some of those songs are in the game, so we don’t reproduce it.

The original can no longer be bought on PC or consoles: where to play legally today is covered in the GTA Vice City section.

Licensing affected more than the radio. According to GTA Wiki, “Billie Jean” played in the intro when Tommy first gets into a car; in the mobile version and the Definitive Edition it was replaced with Laura Branigan’s “Self Control”, and in the mission Spilling the Beans with Animotion’s “Obsession”.

Even earlier, in later PS2 editions, the cutscene of The Driver was changed: Big Country’s “In a Big Country” was replaced with Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message”. Both GTA Wiki and Grand Theft Wiki confirm this.

Besides the nine stations, the game has a custom station, according to GTA Wiki, with a different name on each platform:

That way you can bring the cut songs back into your car too, if you have them as files. The characters heard on K-Chat and V-Rock are covered on the GTA Vice City characters page. The full mission list is on the GTA Vice City missions page, and re-release prices are on the GTA Trilogy – The Definitive Edition page.