Nothing can bring the gaming world to such a screeching halt quite like a Grand Theft Auto trailer.
Ever since 2001’s landmark Grand Theft Auto 3, the series’ developer, Rockstar Games, has simultaneously become one of the industry’s most venerated studios — and one of the quietest. It doesn’t do much of the usual hype cycle that engulf most big-ticket games, and with $8.3 billion worth of Grand Theft Auto games sold, it doesn’t need to.
Rather, Rockstar reserves its focus for the mini-movies that it publishes months ahead of a game’s debut: its reveal trailers. The tradition started with Grand Theft Auto 3, with Rockstar using it to show off the game’s new three-dimensional graphics. As the franchise’s fandom exploded from there, Rockstar’s trailers have become mega media moments — more closely watched, examined and discussed than most film or television previews.
Look at what happened last month when Rockstar did nothing more than say a trailer for its next Grand Theft Auto game was coming soon. Just that Panto-size announcement received over 3 million likes on Instagram and 1.5 million likes on X. (We now know it’s coming on Tuesday.)
As we wait to see what’s down the road next week, let’s buckle up, pop a can of Sprunk and take a spin through the series’ iconic trailers.
7. Grand Theft Auto 3 (2001)
Ah, what a time capsule. Grand Theft Auto 3‘s trailer feels very 2000s — complete with a techno soundtrack that seems ripped from a Matrix DVD. It has a few flashes of the zany, trend-setting features that would become series hallmarks: high-speed police chases, carjacking, liberal use of rocket launchers and flame throwers.
It’s fun to revisit this version of Liberty City, back before we’d come to know every inch of its crime-ridden streets. (It’s also the setting of 2005’s Liberty City Stories and 2008’s Grand Theft Auto IV.) But what’s missing here is much of what helped transform the series into a pop-culture staple, including its barbed wire-sharp satire of American culture and celebrity casting. (Michael Madson, Robert Loggia and Kyle MacLachlan all play major characters in this game … but they’re not in the trailer.) After this, Rockstar’s trailers got considerably more slick.
6. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (2005)
This one hit at an opportune moment. Building off the success of the initial three Grand Theft Auto games on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, Rockstar wanted to do the impossible: bring the same experience to a handheld platform. This trailer dropped just months after Sony’s brand-spankin’ new PlayStation Portable hit stores. And Liberty City Stories would prove a proper showcase for that device’s impressive graphics as it returned to the franchise to the city that put the series on the map four years prior.
The 80-second trailer had just enough to convince people to buy PlaySation’s new gadget, with a gritty guitar track produced by Danger Mouse (later the game’s theme song) and the appearance of fan-favorite characters (Salvatore Leone, Donald Love). And just enough to excite people about another depraved trip to Liberty City.
5. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (2006)
A melancholy pervades Vice City Stories, a prequel to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002). It feels glum, and maybe it’s because you’re playing as ex-military corporal Victor Vance, one of the few Grand Theft Auto protagonists who breaks bad out of necessity. Or maybe it’s because we already know it doesn’t turn out well for Victor (he gets bumped off in the opening minutes of the earlier Vice City). Such somberness is not what gets people jazzed about a new Grand Theft Auto game, and Rockstar seemed to later realize that: A few months later, another trailer featured a digital Phil Collins performing “In The Air Tonight.”
Still, with Foreigner’s “I Want To Know What Love Is” blaring in the background of this trailer, it credibly demonstrates Rockstar’s skill for recreating places and periods in American history with nostalgic love and care.
4. Grand Theft Auto V (2013)
An opiate for the gaming masses! The trailer introduced a captivating main character, former career criminal Michael De Santa, while simultaneously highlighting Rockstar’s love for 2010s southern California — full of canyons, golf courses, hiking trails and winding, Route 101-style highways that would serve as perfect escape routes.
With over 92 million views on YouTube, there’s no denying how exciting it was to see Rockstar close out the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 era with a bang. Still, the trailer’s luster has dimmed a little in the years since we’ve been stuck in Blaine County awaiting another Grand Theft Auto game. The setting also seems less exciting considering that we’ve spent years exploring it in Rockstar’s GTA Online.
3. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)
After the runaway success of Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City, this feels like a victory lap, and San Andreas would go on to become the best-selling game on the best-selling platform of all time, the PlayStation 2.
Here, Chakachas “Jungle Fever” sets a celebratory tone as Rockstar shows off an absurd amount of new features: bicycles, graffiti, basketball mini-games, the ability to fly a jet liner. It also had a shocking plot twist. The series tossed out the gabagool and turned from mobster stories to homages of Black gangster flicks from the 1990s, like South Central and Boyz In The Hood. At a time when the industry seldom featured non-white heroes, this was a ballsy (but welcome) shift.
2. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002)
The sunset and seagulls along the shore of Ocean Beach. The rooftop pool parties. The neon-colored nights at Club Malibu — the debut of fan favorite anti-hero Tommy Vercetti (played by Goodfellas’ own Ray Liotta) in his signature pastel suit.
Miami has never looked better than in this digital facsimile as Vice City. The 20-year-old trailer ages well, oozing with atmosphere and filled with the dulcet bass and echoey synths of Kool and the Gang’s “Summer Madness.” It offers a distilled look at Rockstar’s best weapon: the production values that separate it and its crown-jewel franchise from most rivals.
1. Grand Theft Auto IV (2008)
Around this moment, the arrival of the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 brought the dawn of a new era in gaming. At the same time, Rockstar had paused for a breath after pumping out three genre-defining games in four years. With a considerable amount of time passing since 2004’s San Andreas, questions had piled up about Rockstar: Could it meet the expectations set by its own past excellence? Could it handle the pressure from other recent blockbusters, like Gears of War (from Epic Games) and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Game Studios)?
Those questions were gone in 60 seconds when Rockstar dropped this trailer. It returned us to Liberty City, and while past versions of the town had a Anywhere, U.S.A feel, the trailer showed a faithful recreation of late 2000s New York City. Pedestrians hustled and bustled in fast-walking crowds. Vehicle suspensions realistically tumbled over imperfect roads. A hazy Gotham sun hung in the sky. As the camera glides along, the strings from Philip Glass “Pruit Igoe” prick up — a moody, operatic track that feels appropriately epic.
People liked it. Really liked it. When Rockstar released the trailer, websites famously struggled to keep up with the millions of people hoping to be among the first to see the game — even Rockstar’s own official site suffered.
This trailer signaled a major departure for Rockstar, a hairpin turn away from the previous games’ tongue-in-cheek humor and slapstick sensibility toward a more serious auteur-ness. In the trailer, the game’s main character, Niko Bellic, an Yugoslavian war vet, makes a hopeful vow: “Things will be different.” Turns out, different wasn’t a bad thing at all.