This is Grand Theft Auto's 3D era, the run of games that turned a top-down crime game into a cultural lightning rod. Grand Theft Auto III (2001) made the open city itself the attraction, a fully navigable world you could simply drive around and cause chaos in. Vice City pushed it into a neon 1986 Miami, and San Andreas, the high point of the run, sprawled across a whole state with a gang-revenge story at its center.
The handheld entries (Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories, the divisive Advance) kept the formula alive on smaller screens, while the short promotional film The Introduction fleshed out San Andreas's backstory. The throughline is satire and scale: pulpy crime stories told through radio stations, parody adverts, and the freedom to ignore the mission and just live in the city. This era is where the series found its identity and its controversy.
The 3D universe franchise spans 6 games, 1 movies in the CrossBinge catalog.
Part of Grand Theft Auto.