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Grand Theft Auto Radio Stations

Bongwater

Bongwater

Are there any players of the GTA video game franchise here?

For those not into the gamer community, The GTA series are a series of open world, alternate reality video games where you are a criminal and you get around town by stealing cars. You earn money by robbing people or convenience stores. You get to use deadly weapons, enter virtual strip clubs and bring whole the whole wrath, up to and including the army upon yourself. (Yes, we'll get to all that in a minute.)

It's set in quite realistic looking surroundings. And you play several missions to unlock new strengths or access to new areas.

Every car has a radio set to one of several parody radio stations. Earlier in the series, they were clever lampoons of actual radio station formats, such as Soft AC ("Emotion 98.3"), Classic Rock (KDST "K-Dust"), 80's Hits ("Wave 103"), Country ("K-Rose", Rebel Radio) Public Talk ("Vice City Public Radio") The last version, GTA V was OK. But mediocre compared to earlier stations in the series.

Any GTA players?
 
a former boss of mine, Jimmy Fishback (yup, his real last name), who owns WGGH and used to work for Clear channel cincy, among other places..... did the voiceover for one of the radio stations

A sample of his work:

Jimmy Fish - The Mix Group Voice Over Talent

By working in a variety of formats and always keeping a focus on production has helped Fish become a versatile imaging voice.
themixgroup.com
 
Iā€™ve played all of the GTA games since #3, but I stream my own music on my phone or listen to podcasts while I play.

Now letā€™s wait for the first person to complain about the GTA stations ā€œplaying the same songs over and overā€ā€¦.
 
When Rockstar Games came out with this, I thought they consulted with radio pros because of how realistic they made everything from the advertising to the station imaging sound virtually indistinguishable from actual radio. I know they got some major voice talent (including one KOMO voice-over for GTA V's Blaine County Radio 96.5) and the late Ken Nordine to voice the Classic Rock "K-Dust" imaging (which he knocked straight out of the park.)

The limited playlists and talk topics only made the station loops intolerable after several plays. But very rarely do you see video games where broadcast radio, even as a sub-factor is any part of the storyline.
 
What a huge part of my childhood III, Vice City, and San Andreas were, including the radio stations. To this day I'll hear 80's era songs and think of them as "Vice City" songs ([Keep Feeling] Fascination, Four Little Diamonds, Automatic). I couldn't confirm due to lack of internet access but during a weekend in the mountains in central PA a year or so ago, I swore I heard a song from the GTA III soundtrack on WQSU (those songs all being specifically created for that game, before Rockstar started licensing songs). Just this past weekend during a getaway to the mountains outside Temecula, while eating dinner my better half asked me to play "that song you use as your alarm sometimes", that song being Maracaibo Oriental. That along with La Vida Es una Lenteja were my two top favorites from Radio Espantosa in Vice City (my station of choice for riding around and attempting Insane Stunt Bonuses). I actually bought the official soundtrack boxset for Vice City when I was younger!

I played San Adreas into oblivion (I still believe it's the most playable game and best GTA) and eventually started listening to my iPod and the actual radio and muting the television. I played through GTA V last year while staying with my brother and didn't pay much attention to the in-game radio, but the three I mentioned occupy a lot of space in my brain. Also worth noting that like SomeRadioGuy mentioned, real life radio personalities contributed to radio stations in the games (and some voiced NPCs), including Lazlow, Couzin Ed, Ron & Fez and Opie & Anthony.
 
I am so glad someone brought this up! Sometimes I used to zone out and just listen & drive while playing the game. I'd actually stop at the traffic lights! There is a Spotify playlist, and most of the audio is floating around on Youtube as well. Loved the 80's station, and there was a news station that was an absolute riot with imaging such as "confirming your prejudices". I'd keep driving after a mission just to listen to the news report.

I need to get the mp3's of all of those stations and get them on my phone for listening on walks/runs. I think each station was about 2-3 hours of continuous play. Quite a bit of effort went into them.
 
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