24 years after GTA 3 ditched Dreamcast for PS2, fans are building the "impossible" port, and the original devs have noticed: "These guys are actually doing it"

A group of fans are in the process of porting the PS2 classic GTA 3 to the Sega Dreamcast - the platform the open-world game was first intended for. The results are even impressive to the game's original developers.

"Actual hardware capture showing some of the latest progress on our 'impossible' GTA 3 port to the Sega Dreamcast," developer Falco Girgis says on Twitter. "No more clipping issues, solid 30fps framerate, most effects are present. Very playable at this early stage. Still have a lot of work to go, but she's shaping up quite nicely!"

You can check out the full footage below. The port is still clearly in rough shape with a host of major graphical glitches, but all the basic action appears to be in place. If you can already climb in a fire truck, cause a massive car crash, and get into a police chase, that's all you really need out of the GTA 3 experience.

"There is an impressive effort going on to make GTA 3 run on the Sega Dreamcast," former Rockstar dev Obbe Vermeij says in response to the video. "The first months of development of GTA 3 (back in 99/00) were done on the Dreamcast. For commercial reasons we switched to PS2. At the time we did think it was technically possible to pull it off on the DC and these guys are actually doing it. Nice one."

Based on older comments from Rockstar devs, it doesn't seem that the original Dreamcast version made it much past the prototype stage. Earlier this year, Vermeij estimated that the Dreamcast version was in development "for about four months before switching to PS2." But that decision was made as it was becoming clear the PS2 would replace Sega's then-failing console in the marketplace, not because of any technical limitations. Yet it's only now - a quarter-century later and thanks to fans - that we finally know for sure that the Dreamcast could've handled it.

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