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Grand Theftendo – Port of GTA III to 8-bit NES
Thursday, Oct. 28 2004 | Author: derek
“Grand Theftendo”:http://www.grandtheftendo.com/ is a port of Grand Theft Auto III for the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It is Grand Theft Auto III running on an 8 bit, 256×240 resolution, 2 bit colour x 2 bit palette, 1.79 Mhz system, written entirely in 6502 Assembly Language! It includes the entire Portland city!
Unbelievable! Brian is porting the entire Portland City from Grand Theft Auto III (the PS2 version) into a homebrew game that runs on the original NES. All of the original missions from the PS2 version of GTA III will be included as well. He wrote his own compiler, map editor, graphics tool, a road editor, a message editor, and a bunch of other “tools”:http://www.grandtheftendo.com/index.php?page=tools.
He drew the entire map on “paper”:http://www.grandtheftendo.com/index.php?page=design before finally drawing the entire thing pixel by pixel on the computer.
It’s already been in development for 2 years, solely in the free time of one person, Brian Provinciano. There is no release date, but from the screenshots it looks like it’s coming along nicely. I assume you’ll be able to play it with an NES emulator once it’s finished. I can’t wait!
Related posts:
The History of Grand Theft Auto
GTA for the DS coming this March
Time names GTAIV year’s best game
McEnroe to appear in EA’s Grand Slam Tennis
“GTA made me do it!”
Hope you like that post!
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61 Responses for "Grand Theftendo – Port of GTA III to 8-bit NES"
October 28th, 2004 at 2:38 pm
1I sure hope his source doesn’t get leaked…
October 28th, 2004 at 2:44 pm
2I just hope he doesn’t get sued by Nintendo or Rockstar before he can finish it and release it…
October 28th, 2004 at 3:42 pm
3Wait, so it’s not out yet? Good call announcing it so Rockstar can get their lawsuits ready ahead of time. Much better to just release it unexpectedly and post a torrent on slashdot. It’ll probably never make it out.
October 28th, 2004 at 3:44 pm
4Am I the only one thinking that this is a waste of talent? Blasphemy, I know.
October 28th, 2004 at 3:46 pm
5Well since he’s not making any money off of it, and it doesn’t hurt their respective properties, I don’t see how they can sue.
Well, I guess you can sue for any reason, if you choose to. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Godspeed and good luck.
October 28th, 2004 at 3:46 pm
6How can someone’s hobby that they do for fun be a waste of talent? He should be able to do whatever he wants with his talent. What would you suggest, curing cancer or something?
October 28th, 2004 at 3:51 pm
7Unlikely he’ll get sued as he hasn’t released any specifics or any code. Unless, of course, Rockstar pulls a Lindows and forces a name change.
As for Nintendo, there are GBA SDKs around without a hint of lawsuits, so I doubt they’d go after someone creating games for a 10 year old system, nor have they gone after the people who write emulators for that matter.
October 28th, 2004 at 3:51 pm
8Since Grand Theft Auto III is under copyright, they can sue him for a cease and desist even if he’s not hurting their profits.
If RockStar is smart, though, they’ll let this go because it’s free publicity. Or better yet, hire him on to develop an NES-like minigame version of GTA III to go into the next GTA.
October 28th, 2004 at 6:31 pm
9Sometimes they HAVE to sue to protect the intellectual property. In other words, if they let it go, then it opens the door for other violations. At least, this is what I heard about in one case, I don’t really know copyright law. Posting it in a torrent without warning could be worse, because they would still track you down and sue you. At least now they have a chance to tell him to stop without ruining him instead of suing him for all he’s worth. On the other hand, they will probably never hear of this, and it may easily slip under the radar.
In any case, this is talent in action. Just goes to show you how you don’t need heavy duty hardware for great gameplay.
October 28th, 2004 at 6:51 pm
10Maybe they can “hire” him for $1 and technically consider this an official promotional product.
October 28th, 2004 at 7:14 pm
11an update from http://www.grandtheftendo.com/ :
Update (2004-10-28):
Just thought I would clarify that this game is not going to be for sale! It will be available for download for free when it is done. I am not violating copyright, nor making profit from Rockstar’s game. All of the code, graphics, etc. are done from scratch by me. The dialogue will be original as well when it’s released, so it will not infringe on GTA. I did not reverse engineer anything to create it, trace any graphics, convert any audio, it’s all original. Grand Theftendo is simply a spare time, fan project for fun, and to pay tribute to Rockstar Games and Grand Theft Auto.
October 28th, 2004 at 10:46 pm
12“As for Nintendo, there are GBA SDKs around without a hint of lawsuits, so I doubt they’d go after someone creating games for a 10 year old system, nor have they gone after the people who write emulators for that matter.”
That’s because you can’t do anything about SDK’s and emulators, they are both perfectly legitimate non-copyright infringing things.
October 29th, 2004 at 7:01 pm
13“Or better yet, hire him on to develop an NES-like minigame version of GTA III to go into the next GTA.”
Genius!
October 29th, 2004 at 7:23 pm
14welll shit, hopefully this comes out
http://www.worstluck.com
http://www.worstluck.com
October 30th, 2004 at 2:03 am
15It’s a parody, so it’s legally protected. It’s also not damaging the name of Grand Theft Auto at all. Nobody’s not going to buy GTA 3 because they can download this instead.
And no, Nintendo cannot sue because he created a product that could potentially run on their system. ROMs are only illegal if they are copies of games. Original content is completely legal, as are emulators.
October 30th, 2004 at 4:48 am
16This game is better than original!!! NICE!!!!
October 30th, 2004 at 1:02 pm
17“That’s because you can’t do anything about SDK’s and emulators, they are both perfectly legitimate non-copyright infringing things.
Draconx”
It’s against the law to reverse-engineer
most copy-protected hardware. It’s also against the law to rent out games and systems (Read the first page of their books) It’s also against the law in Ohio to sell corn flakes on Sundays. Just because it’s against the law doesn’t mean the law is or can be enforced. And if it does go to court, it’s not what the law says, it’s how the judge (Who can’t tell the difference from a nes and a toaster) views the laws.
Anyone remember Zelda Online? It used the sprites from Zelda on snes, and had http://www.zeldaonline.com Nintendo sent them a letter and they had to change the name. It never said anything about the sprites though. Same thing happened just a few months ago to open zelda, now their something like open adventures.
Also, remember nes had a lock out chip. They sued, and won, almost every 3rd party developer who didn’t pay the rights to release a nes game. In order to release a nes game, you have to use their trade marks, and you have to use their copy-righted code to bypass the lockout chips. A few company thought they could get around the law, like Tengen (Atari) and Color Dreams (Steaming pile of crap) but they all lost or folded under the Nintendo law offices. Only one who was never touched was an offshoot of color dreams, Wisdom Tree. Nintendo didn’t want to touch them with a 10 foot pole.
Also to people who think emulators are not against the law, remember Bleem? If it was 100% legal, then Sony’s cases wouldn’t have made it to court. If it was set in stone against the law, they would have won easy. But like most tech areas, it’s a gray area, and if you know much about laws, generally the first judge who makes a ruling is the one who sets how the law is viewed. That’s one of the biggest reasons why you never see much about roms and emulators in court, because depending on the judge, they may rule against the companies who own the copy rights, and then they would have one heck of a fight to change that ruling. As it stands now, Nintendo and Square\Enix only go after people serving their own roms, even though Nintendo could sue for any roms that even say âFor use on the Nintendo entertainment systemâ Doesn’t mean they would win if they did sue mind you, just that they have enough of a case to take it to court.
Also, companies can patient damn near anything to do with electronics, so much so it’s just sick. âLater-on Atari has made a lot of money for its patent for scrolling video game displays that rose from Football.â Yes, that’s right. SCROLLING VIDEO GAME DISPLAYS……
For more fun, use google to look up patents and other game companies. There’s some really bad ones out there.
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/10NES
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Nintendo_Entertainment_System
November 2nd, 2004 at 2:38 am
18What a great Idea!
I’ve always wanted to make a ‘GTA’ my self but never could figure out how to do it on my crappy software.
Just hope he’s not far from finishing it.
As for copyright, he could make and entirely “original rip-off” ie. not use Portland or any of it’s missions and he’ll be fine if he gets into trouble for this.
November 4th, 2004 at 9:08 pm
19Sill could get suied then, but probely would win. Remember capcom vs data east over data easts crappy “street fighter clone”?
November 16th, 2004 at 3:49 pm
20All this talk about how the creator can be sued is probably going to give Nintendo some big ideas, don’t you think?
Can’t wait for the GTANES, It looks great, plus it wont be so big (In Filesize) ^.^
November 20th, 2004 at 11:01 am
21One thing is for sure. HeÂŽs a true HERO. Not many people makes a hitech game running on a stoneage system, on their SPARETIME !!! WITH NO PROFIT !!!!!!
November 20th, 2004 at 2:49 pm
22this guy is a legend cant wait for it to cum out
November 23rd, 2004 at 1:27 pm
23When can i get it for my classic nintendo system it would look good with my 80 old nintendo games that i have and yes i need it and also is it violent??
December 17th, 2004 at 11:37 am
24hey i want to know when it will be release
thx
December 18th, 2004 at 11:16 am
25I would love to see this game pressed and produced, boxed up and all…
I would actually buy it for collecting purposes.
January 28th, 2005 at 9:08 am
26Bleem was commercial you idiot it cost money thats why it got fucked over.
April 21st, 2005 at 11:02 am
27w caparezza limorte….alla facciaccia vostra
me lo so comprato
forza roma!!
se vedemo quanno me compro gta SA
April 22nd, 2005 at 7:44 pm
28GTA 1 is free now, so I doubt they would care.
April 25th, 2005 at 10:46 pm
29Iiidiots!
Ok, not really, but there is a lot of misinformation here about legal stuff. IANAL but apparently I know more than the average reader.
First of all, it looks like he’s writing the code from scratch. Good. Same with the graphics. Great.
Some people said that because he’s not selling it and/or that it wouldn’t cause lost sales that he can’t be sued. That’s 100% wrong.
Other people said that he’s reverse engineering their software and that that’s illegal. The first assertion is questionable (depends on your exact definition). The second is false. You can’t be sued because you reverse engineered something.
So what are the actual problems?
Ok. Let’s start by talking about the different types of intellectual property:
copyright
patent
trademark
trade secret
publicity rights
DMCA rights (access controls)
I don’t think there are any patents involved here. Those are not an issue. Trade secrets would only be an issue if he had worked for Rockstar or stolen internal documents or something. No sign of that here. Those are out. Publicity rights really only apply to celebrity images. Nothing like that here. Access controls aren’t involved. He’s not bypassing encyption or an authentication mechanism or anything like that.
We are left with copyrights and trademarks.
Copyrights can be a problem even if you aren’t making a literal copy. For example, it would totally be copyright infringment if he used their code, images, or dialog. He’s not. But his work is still based on their code and images. The question is if you are copying a protected expressive element of the original work. Since the map is closely based on the original I think that could be a problem. The same thing with the characters and the missions. They could even claim some kind of crappy look-and-feel copyright or trademark like Apple did against Microsoft. (Apple lost.)
The other thing is trademarks. Certain aspects of the game, music, logos, etc. can be protected even if you don’t make a literal copy. And the name of the game…. that’s a real problem. Don’t make it easy for them. Change it to something completely different.
And finally, they wouldn’t “sue for a cease and desist”. They would proably start by mailing your ISP a takedown notice under the DMCA claiming copyright infringement. They might send the author a cease and desist. If he didn’t take it down and stop development then they might file an infringment claim with the courts. Once this happens they tend to “pile it on” by adding claims for every crazy thing they can think of. The court will sort them out…. many years and thousands of dollars later. They would probably also ask for a preliminary injunction to stop development while the court case drags on. You don’t want to get to that point with a big company. They have lots of expensive lawyers who make everything difficult.
That’s my two cents on the legal stuff. Be careful because this software is way too cool to lose to IP concerns.
May 3rd, 2005 at 7:21 am
30yo yo i wanted i psp for sence it came out
May 12th, 2005 at 2:58 am
31rocketstar would not sew him for this in most of there games they use a public general license theres loads of mod’s out there for gta vice city as well as gta3 when you open any of the config files in a gta game it says wrote by so and so tweek @ your own risk rocketstar isnt one of those stuck up groops that lashout @ there fans like tamco does for mods to there games infact i think rocketstar kind of likes the hole mod and make your homebrew code type thing on there games i think it keeps them coming up with ideas if anthing i would think that rocketstar would ask this person to make it for handheld systems and such or pay him for the rights to it to preduce it but rocketstar sew? never you dont hear about it in the news and on the internet but tamco they sew every1 for any mod or any likeness to there games or carters i think its coes they make more $ off law sutes than off games not rocketstar tho when the new gta hits stors imm sure you will buy it its got a big enuff name and you know its going to get moded new cars and skins rocketstar knows who there trew fans are and mostdefntly respects them as they respct rocketstar
August 31st, 2005 at 6:03 pm
32hmm…:?
November 4th, 2005 at 5:57 pm
33Type that in english not in bullshit
January 21st, 2006 at 2:32 pm
34Sweet Jesus!! Jesus!!!
June 7th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
35your ass is gonna get sued
July 28th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
36This is a very informative site.
July 28th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
37I amglad to put my step on it.
July 29th, 2006 at 8:24 am
38Hi, nice site! Your hard work paid off.
July 30th, 2006 at 5:21 am
39Keep up this great resource.
July 30th, 2006 at 7:10 am
40I bookmark your site.
July 30th, 2006 at 8:43 pm
41I saw you website.
August 1st, 2006 at 7:32 am
42Very good website you have here
August 5th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
43I found it very interesting
August 8th, 2006 at 10:51 am
44Hi, nice site!
August 10th, 2006 at 9:30 am
45I found it very interesting
August 11th, 2006 at 10:38 am
46I found it very interesting
August 21st, 2006 at 4:00 pm
47Nintendo and Rockstar are assholes like Sony. They want sue, unless he tries to charge for grand theftendo. If it’s free, they will consider it a cool tribute. They honestly don’t care, unlike sony who cares when fans make tributes to there games. Sony is a disgusting company who overcharges for there products (psp, psp memory cards, and ps3)
Yet, for some retarded reason people still buy sony’s rip off hardware and ridiculous priced memory cards for there psp.
August 21st, 2006 at 4:01 pm
48Nintendo and Rockstar aren’t assholes like Sony. They wont sue, unless he tries to charge for grand theftendo. If it’s free, they will consider it a cool tribute. They honestly don’t care, unlike sony who cares when fans make tributes to there games. Sony is a disgusting company who overcharges for there products (psp, psp memory cards, and ps3)
Yet, for some retarded reason people still buy sony’s rip off hardware and ridiculous priced memory cards for there psp.
September 17th, 2006 at 7:40 pm
49archy it i
October 4th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
50I live in 57135 Las Vegas, Nevada. Have you been here before?
October 5th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
51i guess it’s over
November 27th, 2006 at 10:39 am
52It’s been a year since, when the f*** is Grand Theft Endo coming out? Or have you been discouraged?
November 27th, 2006 at 10:40 am
53It’s been a year since this game was SO CALLED being made. When the f*** is Grand Theft Endo coming out? Or have you been discouraged?
December 2nd, 2006 at 3:55 pm
54It was a great pleasure for me to visit and enjoy your site. Keep it running!
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:04 pm
55SPAM!
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:04 pm
56SPAM!
January 8th, 2007 at 4:23 am
57Hey, I am actually working on a GTA game also 8-bit…
Probably not a NES rom…
Just an Executable!
Ill let u guys know more about it later…
January 9th, 2007 at 1:41 am
58A virus no doubt.
February 14th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
59I would like to know when Grand Theftendo is coming out. When it comes out will you e-mail me?
February 19th, 2007 at 6:51 am
60GTA III
February 28th, 2007 at 3:03 am
61so,wuts up with the soundtrack on this game?wut songs are you putting in there?and how about making a san andreastendo game or something?vice city?
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