Sleeping Dogs and the Yakuza franchise have long been called as "GTA but in Hong Kong" and "GTA but in Japan", respectively, but what if we told you that Rockstar Games actually thought of a game set outside of the United States long before the franchise became such a global phenomenon?
According to TimeExtension, an unnamed source revealed to them that Rockstar was working on a GTA game set in Tokyo two decades ago, shortly after the release of Grand Theft Auto 3.
Set in Liberty City, GTA 3 is the turning point for the GTA franchise and Rockstar as a whole, which saw it grow from its humble top-down perspective beginnings into a global juggernaut that eventually became responsible for the second-best-selling video game of all time, Grand Theft Auto 5.
Going back to GTA: Tokyo, it apparently wasn't just a passing thought. Inspired by the vibrant and unique atmosphere of the Japanese capital, Sam Houser, co-founder of Rockstar, worked on bringing to life their own version of a GTA game set in this exotic locale. In 2003, Rockstar's parent company, filed trademarks for various potential GTA titles, including "GTA Tokyo."
However, the dream of a Tokyo-based GTA ultimately remained unrealized. One of the biggest challenges was accurately recreating Tokyo's complex urban landscape, and capturing its unique cultural nuances. Rockstar's research team would need to spend extensive time in the city to map it properly, and there were concerns about how well the series' trademark satirical humor would translate to a Japanese setting.