Sometimes, despite my ever growing list of current games I need to play (and finish), I like to revisit games from my past. Despite my cold and distant persona, I’m quite the sentimental person. The past week or so, I decided to play through GTA III (I purchased the trilogy for PS4 and figured, let’s burn through them, then GTA IV, and finally start to work on GTA V … and GTA Online doesn’t count).

Starting the game hit me with a rush of memories. The first time I played the game, I was in eighth grade, so I was maybe 13. My cousin Stacy (not by blood, but we called each other cousin nonetheless) owed the game, and one time during one of my sleepovers at his house, he let me start a game. It’s interesting how my taste in videos games was influenced by him. Before him, my taste was more or less, fighting and racing games, maybe an action-adventure game every now and again.

He introduced me to FF VII, which changed my life. I played it right before FF X came out, and somehow didn’t discover Aerith dies until she actually died in my game.

When I started GTA III, I hadn’t played anything like it. It was strange and exciting to have this open world and to be able to cause mass destruction within it. I borrowed it from him and I remember my sisters and I spending a good bit of the summer taking turns ruining the city. It was great.

Though I enjoyed causing chaos and mayhem, my favorite part of the game was the radio. I would listen to Lips 106, Flashback Radio, Head Radio and Chatterbox. Sometimes, more so with Vice City than III, I would just drive around listening to the music on the radio. I still knew the words to my favorite songs, and I could remember when X song played that meant to change to Y station to listen to Z song. It made me feel like a kid again. And it made me a diehard fan of the series and open world games.