Patrick Kerr, a former DMA Design programmer, rebuilt his 2D vehicle simulation in JavaScript, Creative Bloq reports. You can play it in a browser.
Image: Rockstar Games / YouTube
Sources creativebloq.com
While everyone marvels at GTA VI's graphical fidelity, a DMA Design veteran reopens the drawer of the very beginning. According to Creative Bloq, Patrick Kerr, a programmer at DMA Design before it became Rockstar North, has recreated the 2D physics simulation that became the basis of the first Grand Theft Auto's vehicle system. It is playable online.
The story Creative Bloq tells is that of a small technical object: the simulation began as a wireframe demo written in GFA BASIC on an Atari ST, then was ported to C for the game. Kerr has rewritten it in JavaScript with a sleeker presentation.
Controls are on the keyboard. Car mode is the default (key 1); you can switch to a ship (2) or a brick (3). B toggles the side barriers, G the vertical gravity for ship and brick, Z the camera dead zone, and X the speed-based zoom, just like in GTA. Kerr explains how it works in a post on his website, and the demo can be tried on Motion Lab, the source says.
Creative Bloq recalls that the 1997 original was already praised for its varied pedestrians and emergent gameplay, and that you could enjoy simply driving around and looking at things. That idea runs through the series up to Vice City, whose radio and drives define its identity, and it carries into GTA VI.
Technically the comparison is almost comic: a top-down car skidding on a plane versus open-world physics in 2026. Yet the question is the same, the feel of weight and slide. Rockstar has not detailed GTA VI's vehicle physics, and nothing in this demo says more.
Nothing for November 19, a lot for the series' memory. For anyone waiting for launch, it is ten minutes of well-spent patience, and a reminder that 29 years of evolution start with a square skidding on an Atari screen.
Sources creativebloq.com
By Daniel Jasner · VI Countdown newsroom, OKALAM Studio