Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a classic game by any measure. It may have initially been released way back in 2002 🍸for the Pla🐓yStation 2, but there are still many gamers who will tell you it is the best version in one of the most beloved video game series of all time.
The combination of the setting in Vice City (Miami) and time period (the 1980s) allowed Rockstar to do things with Vice City that it had not done in previous incarnations of the GTA franchise. The story was fun, the cast of characters was varied and interesting, and the vehicles available seemed to haveℱ personalities of their own. These factors combined and allowed Vice City to step above the myriad of competing open-world and sandbox games on the market.
The game's greatest strength though was that it was dripping with 80s nostalgia. It was a trip down memory lane for older gamers (you can drive a freaking DeLorean!) and it was a stunning contrast to the hood themed GTA games that newer gamers are used to. Throw in an art style and visual look that was di🧸fferent to anything that ⭕had been tried in this genre of game and Rockstar had to know that they were onto a winner from day one.
That is not to say that everything about Vice City and its incarnation of the 80s is perf༒e﷽ct. Rockstar did their homework, and this was obviously a labor of love, but there were still some flaws. Here are 15 things that Vice City gets wrong about the 1980s.
15 80s Cities Weren't This C🌳lean
If Vice City 🐈is to be believed then littering was simply not a thing in the 80s. You can run around the streets for hours on end without bumping into so much as a piece of gum or an empty Coke can.
While anti-littering ad campaigns had been going on in the US since the late 1960s, there was certainly less of a stigma attached to throwing your trash on the ground in the 80s when compared to today. In every city other than Vice City that is.
Obviously, the developers were looking for a clean, stylized look for t💜heir game and opulence is harder to portray with garbage all over the ground🐟. That can be the only reason that this particular 80s city is shown as being so squeaky clean.
14 ꦿ The Excess Is Over-Excess, Even For The 80s
The 80s were known as the decade of excess for a good reason. The levels of greed and indulgence in the 80s - often formed by new wealth - were like nothing that the world had ever seen before. That rise in opuleღnce was part of the reason that the drug trade took off and it was how small time dealers became kings overnight.
The only real comp♉arison in American history would be the 1920s and those years after World War I when business was booming and the population believed that peace was in place to stay. The 80s was like a dirtier version of this.
Vice City tackle♕s this excess head on, but in doing so, it goes just a touch over the top in tying the excess into its storytelling. Scaling it back would have made for better realism, but a less fun experience.
13 Not Every 80s Night Club Was Full Of "Dancers" 𒁃
If Vice City were to be taken as canon, then it wo🥀uld appear thatꦆ every nightclub in the 1980s was full of strippers.
Not every club in the game features performing strippers, but there is a sense that ever🌞y female character in the night clubs is employed in that profession. Perhaps this was true of 80s Miami - though it does seem unlik🍸ely - but the rest of the world had regular night clubs, with regular girls enjoying a night out during the decade.
You also have to remember♔ that mu🌼sic was ever evolving during the 80s. There would have been more of a punk scene and even more of a New Romantic vibe to some of the clubs in the city. We never really get that in the game though, which is a shame.
12 Ronald Reagan Never Shot A Pictu🐼re Of Mikhail Gorbachev ♓
This one is a little tric✅ky, but if you look hard enough under the wall at the Ammu-Nation in Downto⛎wn Vice City, you will come across a rather interesting Easter Egg.
The Easter Egg in question features a picture of Ronald Reagan shooting Mikhail Gorbachev. These were the presidents of the USA and the Soviet Union respectively when Vice City was set.
While there may have been times where Reagan would have enjoyed shooting photos of his USSR counterpart, it is unlikely that the standing US President would ever do sucꦉh a thing. This is especially true in this era when Cold War tensions were at their highest and any diplomatic mistake could (theore𒉰tically) have triggered World War III.
It is still a cool visual though.
11 🌊 Not Everyone In The 80s Owned A Hawaiian Shirt 𝓡
The 80s Hawaiian shirt is a thing of beauty. Tommy wears his with pride, while you will see countless others worn in the game by important characters and NPCs alike. The shirt is so iconic that you can actually buy retro 80s Hawaiian monstrosities a🅰t various clothing stores online.
The truth is though that during the 80s the Hawaiian shirt was only found in the closet of certain types of people. Wannabe gangsters were all about the Hawaiian, while actual gangsters shied away from them. Any Northern European visiting the US would take a boatload home and anyone who watched Magnum P.I. owned a red one or two. The everyday construction or off🐷ice worker𒀰, however?
The everyday construction or office wor🦩ker💞, however?
Not so much. Believe iꦺt or not, Hawaiian shirts just weren't that popular in places like Pittsburgh and 🍌Cleveland.
10 ꩲ The 80s Was Not A Mashup Of Miꦐami Vice And Scarface
Much has been made of how Vice City is essentially a mashup of a number of the most iconic movies and TV shows of the 80s. The most obvious influences for the game are Scarface - as protagonist Tommy Vercetti seems to be almost entirely based on the Tony Montana character from꧟ the movie - and Miami Vice, which lends its overa🍌ll aesthetic and vibe to the game.
While there was a gangster element in the 80s that was more like the Scarface ꦉideology than you would think possible, there were also tens of millions of Americans just livinﷺg their lives as we do today.
The game would have you think that the whole world was living in this fantastical gangster movie and that is just not the reality of 80s living. People back then heldꦚ down mundane jobs to pay the bills just like they do today.
9 🔯 🧸 Neon Was Big In The 80s, But Not This Big
Imagining Vice City without neon is almost impossible. It is as if Rockstar finished the game with a regular color palette and then dumped all the neon shad🎉es they could find in t﷽heir developers kit ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE.
In Vice City, there is no such thing as too much neon and there is no such thing as an understated color. It works for the game for sure, as this vibrant and vivid design choice gives it not only a unique look compared to the others in the GTA franchise, but also a unique look from any other video game ꧙out there.
Obviously, this was not 🔯true in the reality of the 1980s. Yes, there were plenty of people wearing neon colo𓃲rs and buildings so bright they could be seen from space. Still, these were toned down by the bland concrete buildings you see in every big city and small town today.
8 Mos🐓t People In 80s Miam🥃i Would Know How To Swim
Is there aꩲnything more annoying than a video game character dying because the programmers in the game were too lazy to develop the action of swimming?
That is what you get in Vice City as ꦐwhen Tony is completely submerged in sea water he reacts like it is a toxic substance. His health depletes at an almost comical rate, giving the player no chance to escape the water. The official line is something about rip tides in the ocean, but no one is believing that.
This🌄 gets even weirder when you consider that there are so many boats in the game. As a human, why would you get on a boat - wi🐲th no life jacket - if the water was akin to lava?
You wouldn't, and nor should Tony.
7 Little Havana Was Hemorrhaging🍌 Cubans In The 80s 🍌
Little Havana is one of the most iconic districts that people remember from Vice City. While no one would ever claim that the game wasꦬ load❀ed with pedestrians roaming the streets - especially compared to modern games - it was still a place which seemed to be bustling with Cuban activity.
If the game had been⛎ set earlier in the decade, then this would have been a fair reflection of the community. In 1980, Cuban immigrants made up 85% of the population of the district. Since then though the numbers have dwindled as immigrants from other Latin American countries have crashed the party in Little Havana.
A truer representation of Little Havana in 1986 would have seen many more Nicaraguans in t♔he area, but that didn't fit the narrative of the ga𒆙me.
6 ꦚ Later Versions I🐎gnore The Racism Against Haitians In 80s Miami
Any community with a massive immigrant population is going to have its issues with racism. That was as true in the 1980s, as it is today. In Miami/Vice City, that immigrant population was almost exclusively Hispaniꦚc and within those Hispanic immigrant groups, social tiers rapidly developed.
A number of factors - including language, religion, and economic issues - quickly saw the Haitian community fall to the bottom of the social standing. The initial copies of the game at least addressed this issue, bu𝔉t it was in such a violent and "Rockstar" way that lobbyist groups for the Haitian communities had the content removed for later versions of the game.
While this may have made sense given the dialog that was cut from missions, it means that the game really doesn't touch too much on what was a huge social issue in t🐻he game's region in the 80s.
