No, Grand Theft Auto 3
absolutely flew under the radar until just shortly before release.
Even as late as E3 2001 that May, the big games were MGS2, Jak & Daxter, Halo, DMC, and everything on Gamecube. GTA3 didn't really start to catch attention until August/September of that year (it released in October) when websites started doing feature reports all the little details included in the game (I remember it was a big deal that there were whole radio stations to listen to in the game, which got more ink than the actual gameplay because people couldn't believe a game could do something like that.) Until then, it was just a fun-looking drive-around sequel to that crummy game series that Somethingawful forum kids talked about playing in college...
EGM never gave it a cover. (They made up to Rockstar for missing later next year by putting State of Emergency on the cover, that great big hit there.) Game Informer never even mentioned it in a bulletpoint, much less a cover story. (The title doesn't even show up on their cover until July 22, when they give The Getaway a cover with the line, "
SONY'S ANSWER TO GTA3". OPM put GTA3 on its November 2001 cover (BTW, of all character to feature, why that guy?) Even back home in the UK, GTA3 wasn't topping Edge, they instead did six covers with the consoles (and GBA) on the cover, and awarded the rest of their frontpages to Timesplitters 2, Burnout, Luigi's Mansion (I guess thats what that is?), Crazy Taxi 2, Galleon, EXO, and Sonic (or rather Dreamcast, so that's almost 7 covers.)
Rockstar Games unveiled a few games at E3, 2001, and one of them was a totally forgettable title called Grand Theft Auto III. No one noticed it. The big talk
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Maybe people are misrembering things because, once the game came out, it launched with a megaton of TV commercials (and probably there were magazine ads too) that really sold the game as something extraordinary. But GTA3 was never the game anybody thought was going to be the big game of that year, it wasn't until Rockstar started letting people play it that it sunk in how revolutionary and exciting a game it was.