If you go back to yesterday, you will recall that the original "Grand Theft Auto" was based on a technology demo (opens in new tab) in which "dinosaurs walk around and destroy buildings". This news was told to the BBC by Colin MacDonald, a former developer for DMA (now Rockstar North) in the 1990s (opens in new tab). However, this story has now been debunked by Mike Daley, the creator of the original prototype of "GTA 1"

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"Colin got the details wrong," Daley told PCG. 'The dinosaur tech demo never existed. Instead, elements of the code framework of the first GTA prototype were copied from an earlier prototype called Attack, which was "based on cavemen and dinosaurs." In other words, "GTA 1" eventually took over the "dino.bat" file and was released. Somehow, through the grapevines of a long history, this led to the story that "GTA 1" was born out of a game in which you were a giant dinosaur stomping through a city.

MacDonald told the BBC that "GTA 1" was born because someone suggested shifting the player's control from the dinosaur to one of the cars that whiz by the dinosaur's feet, which, according to Daley, is "totally inaccurate." Rather, "GTA 1" had two demos, the first an isometric view and the second a side-on view, with the familiar top-down view from "GTA 1" and "GTA 2" coming a little later. Dailly "was talking to John White, the coder at DMA, and he said he was going to give the racing game to (DMA co-founder) Dave (Jones)," Dailly said, "Put a wall in the distance and draw a road there, and you have a top-down engine. ...... That's a start," he realized.

Shockingly, Dino doesn't come out with the story, but if anyone properly remembers how "GTA" began, it's the guy who built the first prototype; Dailly tried to correct the record on Twitter (opens in new tab), to which Macdonald responded with his Macdonald, in turn, seems to have conceded his point (opens in new tab). Apparently, the BBC contacted Dailly for the original article that started this Dino fiasco, but he had to decline due to a cold.

So it turns out that the GTA series did not begin as Godzilla Theft Auto, but was actually a much more standard story of code reuse and office banter between developers. But just because the first GTA wasn't a dinosaur game doesn't mean that GTA 6 can't be a dinosaur game. Rockstar, you can still make the right decision.