Having just made it back to the streets of Liberty City after a long stretch inside, Tommy Vercetti is sent to Vice City by his old boss, Sonny Forelli. But all doesn't go smoothly apon his arrival in the glamorous, hedonistic metropolis of Vice City. Tommy is set up, and loses everything. Sonny wants his money back, but the biker gangs, Cuban gangsters, and corrupt politicians stand in his way. Most of Vice City seems to want Tommy dead. His only answer is to fight back, and take over Vice City himself.
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Motorcycles make their series debut here, something that sounds minor now but was a genuine first for the franchise. Once you've weaved a PCJ 600 through Ocean Beach traffic at full throttle, it's hard to imagine the open-world GTA formula ever existing without two-wheeled chaos as an option.
When Sony struck its deal with Take-Two back in 2002, it wasn't just for GTA III, it locked in GTA III, Vice City and the then-unannounced San Andreas as PlayStation 2 console exclusives through October 2004. Xbox and PC owners eventually got their turn, but for a good while Vice City was strictly a PS2 thing, and the gamble clearly paid off for Sony.
Donald Love, the eccentric businessman from GTA III, was apparently meant to have a far bigger part to play in Vice City's story. He ended up quietly shrunk down to a background cameo instead, most likely because Kyle MacLachlan, who voiced him, wasn't available to come back for more recording sessions.
There's a road sign on the map that points toward somewhere you can never actually reach, it just dead-ends at a low wall by the sea. Leftover phone call audio reveals Avery Carrington was originally going to send Tommy on a job to a Florida Keys stand-in called Gator Keys, an area that got cut before launch. Oddly enough, a Scarface game years later had players buying a seaplane to visit the real Florida Keys, which makes the abandoned idea feel almost prophetic.
The opening of the G-Spotlight mission has Tommy launch a PCJ 600 off a rooftop to grab hold of a helicopter mid-flight, which is basically a straight lift from the scene in Terminator 2 where the T-1000 leaps onto a police chopper the same way. It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it homage buried inside an otherwise ordinary promo mission.
Kevin McKidd voices Love Fist frontman Jezz Torrent in cutscenes and dialogue, but the actual vocals on Love Fist's songs belong to a different performer entirely, musician Paul Mackie. It's a small behind-the-scenes swap most players never notice, since the speaking voice and singing voice blend together so well on the radio.
Wildstyle Pirate Radio, the station playing old-school hip-hop and electro, is hosted by Mr. Magic, who wasn't some voice actor playing a part, he was an actual legendary DJ from New York's early hip-hop scene. Having him front the station gives it a layer of authenticity that a scripted character just couldn't match.
Between the nine proper radio stations and the extra custom one, Vice City's soundtrack runs to about 103 licensed songs in total, spanning disco, hair metal, mambo, new wave and everything in between. It's still held up as one of the most ambitious licensed soundtracks gaming has ever put together.
Music licenses eventually expire, and a chunk of Vice City's soundtrack had to be pulled from later re-releases once the original ten-year deals ran out. Wave 103 is the lone exception, somehow keeping its entire original tracklist intact across every single version of the game, from the PS2 original right through to modern remasters.
V-Rock's station mascot is a cartoon vulture plastered all over its logo and jingles, and DJ Lazlow would regularly grumble on-air that the bird somehow got more screen time than he did. It's a tiny running joke buried in the radio chatter that most players only ever catch by accident.
