So Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is hitting the PSP. GTA: Chinatown Wars came out for the Nintendo DS last year and was well received for it's graphic style, and most importantly it went back to it's predecessors and became a birds eye view game. This isn't the first time a GTA series that has been on a portable, the PSP received two versions which brought you back to Liberty City and Vice City and played much like GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas. Both of them had full voice acting and a fresh story and did fairly well.
Exciting as it may be for PSP fans, you can't help but wonder how Rockstar and TakeTwo Interactive are going to go about emulating a game that was built from the ground up for the Nintendo DS. GTA: Chinatown Wars used a fair amount of touchscreen interaction and most likely hit the limits of the Nintendo DS. In terms of hardware and disk space, the PSP is far superior to the DS. Is Rockstar/TakeTwo going to just make a direct port and just change the touchscreen parts to button pushing? Or will they make it a “directors cut” and add more content, full voice acting and do some graphical changes? So far Rockstar and TakeTwo have had a great track record when it comes to this generations portables, and it would be a shame if Chinatown Wars isn't as good as it could be. While there is no release date yet, the article does mention that it will be available for the PSP Go as well as regular PSP systems.
I always thought that the concept of GTA on the DS was kind of dumb. I don't know how many people would buy it, given that most of the people who own a DS are kids who like to play games in the back seat of their car on long rides. It's probably better for the PSP, but like you said, porting something from the DS to the PSP seems kinda dumb. They're both so unique and different from each other that I can't see a port from one to the other working.
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