Three classic GTA games are coming to the 3DS

Three of Grand Theft Auto's most beloved 3D-era games are getting an unofficial second life on hardware Rockstar never targeted for them. Another homebrew project by the name of the reGTA Collection is now available that will allow GTA 3, Vice City and Liberty City Stories to be played on New Nintendo 3DS. The handheld's entire life cycle did not provide a solution to the problem.

The handheld devices of Nintendo are not new ground to the series. The release of Grand Theft Auto Advance took place in 2004, while Chinatown Wars appeared in 2009.

But the 3DS itself never received a native mainline GTA release, leaving GTA 3, Vice City, and Liberty City Stories absent from a system built for exactly the kind of open-world action those games offered.

reGTA 3DS collection 

This project is created by the modder EpicReds0817 and involves adaptation of all three titles using the re3, reVC, and reStories code.

Each port gets a dedicated lower-screen interface, touch controls, Nintendo-style button prompts, and a touchscreen keyboard for entering cheats. Support is limited to New Nintendo 3DS, 3DS XL, and New Nintendo 2DS XL, since the ports lean on the upgraded CPU and extra memory those revised models offer; the original 3DS, 3DS XL, and 2DS can't run them.

GTA 3 and Vice City had relatively mature reverse-engineering projects to build from, but Liberty City Stories needed considerably more original work since its corresponding project had been left unfinished.

EpicReds0817 has gotten the full main story running on physical New 3DS hardware, though not every side mission has been fully verified yet. The port works from converted PS2 game data that users supply themselves rather than bundling any of Rockstar's original assets.

This is not a package that you can simply download and play. The source code provided in this repository does not have the original game data, the compiled executable files, nor a build chain; people who want to use it will have to obtain the source games legally and build their own ports.