Grand Theft Auto: London 1969

After Grand Theft Auto developer DMA Design hit the big time with Lemmings, they put out a very similar follow-up called Oh No! More Lemmings. It had new levels, and new looks which made no difference to gameplay, and it was a cheap and easy way to extend the success. Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 wasn’t released as a standalone but as an add-on, but it’s basically the same situation.

It still provides the same carefully incentivised chaos as Grand Theft Auto, and all the same issues about crashing into pixel-thick signposts. But while whether lemmings were crossing hell or tundra made just a cosmetic difference, the same should be less obviously true for taking a more narratively complex game set in a version of our world and changing its whole setting. Grand Theft Auto transported from fictionalised places based on American locations to a fictionalised London shouldn’t be the same game. And yet.

Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 includes a spy story at points and you can drive around in an open top car painted in the Union Jack, and so contemporary reviews from IGN and Gamespot both mention Austin Powers, but neither notes just how fitting the comparison is. The game was developed not by DMA (soon to be Rockstar North) but by Rockstar Canada. Grand Theft Auto was not yet a global success on the scale of James Bond, but like Austin Powers this is a satirical Canadian view of ‘60s Britain leapfrogging on a British success story.

The time was ripe. Britain was at the end of the BritPop era, a period of wrapping ourselves in the comfort and safety of a past when British culture was a successful export, but this time more focused on ourselves. “I know that was then, but it could be again” and so on. That glib nostalgia was ripe for mocking. Unfortunately, London 1969 barely manages to hit accurately enough to glorify, never mind to mock.

It’s Grand Theft Auto filled with easy references to British gangsters and gangster films, and with exaggerated cockney slang, and that’s it. You can go “look, that’s Michael Caine” and “look, that’s the Kray Twins” but that’s the same level of humour that Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge operated on a decade earlier with it’s Nigel Mainsail and Ayrton Sendup, and that was an incidental detail. There’s no attempt to say anything about Britishness whatsoever. It’s little more than a find + replace run on the script, and every ‘nicked’ or ‘filth’ feels pandering as a result.

When it comes to the place, it’s even worse. The road markings are different from the original but the layout doesn’t ever feel like London of any time period. London laughs at the concept of a grid system. The game’s places have real names in roughly real orientation to each other, but Chelsea and Bow don’t mean anything in this world. If you dropped me anywhere on the map other than Hyde Park or the other couple of major landmarks, I would never be able to tell without labels where it was meant to be. It’s just the same caricature cinematic America with an ill-fitting novelty paint job. One the whole, Austin Powers is higher than London 1969 ever dares to aim.