Hip-hop station Game Radio played tracks by Royce da 5'9' and Black Rob. The songs on reggae station K-JAH were all taken from a 1981 album by famed dub producer Scientist. Throwback station Flashback 95.6 famously featured music taken from the Scarface soundtrack, a film that heavily influenced the early 3D games. Grand Theft Auto 3, the first 3D game, featured a mix of licensed music and bespoke songs. Related: The GTA Remastered Trilogy Is Your Chance To Fly The Dodo, The Worst Vehicle In Video Game History

Even before it made enough money to afford 'real' songs, music was still a vital part of GTA. The bass-playing in Pootang Shebang is just ridiculous. It's an incredibly fun, diverse selection of properly great music, from Grand Theft Auto by Da Shootaz (the game's memorable main theme, also known as Joyride), to low-key bangers like the ridiculously catchy Complications, or the deliciously funky Pootang Shebang, both composed by Conner under the names Ohjaamo and Stylus Exodus. Developer DMA Design wanted to include contemporary licensed music in the game, but getting the rights proved to be prohibitively expensive-so the audio team just made their own. In the original GTA the tunes on the radio were created specifically for the game by Craig Conner, Colin Anderson, and Grant Middleton under various aliases. Of course, the series hasn't always licenced its music. Music and Grand Theft Auto are intimately, inseparably linked. Those are some of mine: you probably have a fair few of your own. Getting into a vehicle for the first time in Vice City and hearing the strains of Michael Jackson's Billie Jean. Driving around GTA 3's Liberty City in the rain with the haunting operatic aria O Mio Babbino Caro playing on Double Clef FM. Crossing the desert in San Andreas to the tune of America's Horse With No Name. Ask someone about their fondest GTA memory and it probably won't be a mission they remember-it'll be a moment tied to a piece of music. The radio stations in the Grand Theft Auto games are not just random selections of songs: they're tastefully curated journeys through many different genres, designed to evoke a very particular sense of mood, time, and place.

When it comes to putting licensed music in video games, no one can touch Rockstar.

Gta 3 o mio babbino caro