Original Grand Theft Auto devs dish on rough road to launch

Despite the Grand Theft Auto series' lurid flag firmly planted atop Games Mountain, it would seem the series wasn't always destined for massive success. Many developers espouse the idea that the first game was pretty much a hot mess – it took about four years of iteration for the game to become something worthwhile.

So say many of the developers who worked on the first game and happily offer their own skewed trips down Memory Lane in this special piece from The Guardian. In fact, the game was originally meant to be a cops and robbers affair, but nobody ever wanted to play the cops, so it became a game just about crime.

Apparently parent company Take-Two wasn't too keen on Grand Theft Auto at first either. The developers would have to essentially argue its merit on a weekly basis and it didn't help that many of the people working on GTA never even shipped a game before. But the team eventually figured it out and a game took shape – one that would go on to become arguably the most influential video game series of all time.