As we reported last week, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is now available for download on the PlayStation Store, completing the GTA trilogy's availability on the platform. Released yesterday in North America and today across the rest of the globe, the game will set you back £7.99 (.99 / €9,99) with the download weighing in at around 3.5GB.
 
Like Rockstar's other PS2 Classics releases, Vice City doesn't feature remastered HD graphics, trophies, or any other enhancements, but PS3 players who don't own a model supporting backwards compatibility with PS1 and PS2 titles will be grateful for this release.
 
Rockstar have promised more of their classic titles will be released "very soon".

After a few months delay, Rockstar are finally bringing GTA: Vice City to PSN next week, in a move that will complete the availability of the trilogy for PS3 owners. Rockstar already released GTA III in September last year, and San Andreas more recently in December.

Like the other two titles, Vice City is being released as a PS2 Classic, meaning it won't feature any remastered HD graphics, trophies, or any other enhancements. PS3 gamers looking to complete their GTA trilogy collection with Vice City can do so on Tuesday, January 29th in North America and Wednesday, January 30th in Europe, for .99 / €9.99 / £7.99.

According to Rockstar, we'll also be seeing more classic Rockstar games being released on PSN in the coming months.

Rockstar have today uploaded more previously unreleased desktops and character artwork from Vice City, including the Crime Tree desktop (seen above) originally seen on the official Vice City website.

we've dug into the crates a bit and created nice hi-res desktops of all the other character art that was never officially released in the Vice City collection. That's Avery Carrington, Cam Jones, Candy Suxx, Colonel Cortez, Gonzales, Hilary King, Old Man Earnest Kelly, Kent Paul, Steve Scott, Tommy Vercetti, Umberto Robina - AND, all of the radio DJ character art: Adam First, Pepe, Fernando Martinez, Oliver 'Ladykiller' Biscuit, Mr. Magic, Toni, and Lazlow.

Head on over to Rockstar's downloads page and grab these and more over at the Vice City collection of Wallpapers, Icons, and Avatars.

Also, in case you missed it yesterday, Rockstar have made available official GTA V t-shirts which you can order from the Rockstar Warehouse, they are the GTAV Logo Tee or if you prefer, the V Logo Tee.

Rockstar have just posted up the final part of their 3-part behind the scenes look at Vice City. Today's part looks at the design of the fantastic city that we all spent so many hours in, some of us spending more time in this game city than we did in our own ones in real life!
 

Sun-kissed beaches, glamorous night spots, sprawling mansions, squalid ghettos and the various vehicles you use to traverse them...
Creating the world of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City called for tireless and meticulous City Design in making its ambitious level of architecture, locations and modes of transport possible. Today's concluding Part 3 of "The Lab" - a rare behind the scenes look at the design of Vice City through interactive displays originally produced nearly a decade ago for an exhibit at London's Design Museum - has some very special glimpses of the modeling, interior design, and 3D rendering that brought Vice City to life.

• “Buildings”- Rare rendering videos that show the Cherry Poppers ice cream factory, the Malibu Club, and the Diaz Mansion from wireframes through to 3D models and fully rendered locations in the game world.
• “Interiors” - 360-degree video tours of the inside of the Ocean Apartments lobby and dining room, the Malibu Club's dance floor, and Ken Rosenberg's stately office.
• "City Wireframe”- Focused around the city's Downtown area with its hi-rises and landmark Hyman Stadium, see the city come alive from wireframes to final city render with a view to the south.
• "City Renders" - Render images of various parts about the city both interior and exterior - living spaces, work spaces, playtime and outside vistas.
• "Vehicle Design" - 3D models, wireframes, final renders and damage models for a variety of vehicle types in the game - the Box Ville truck, the Faggio scooter, Squalo speedboat, Sandking rover, Hermes vintage sedan, and the Maverick chopper.

Here's part two of Rockstar's look behind the scenes at the making of Vice City, as we celebrate the game's 10th anniversary this year. This part focuses on sound design.

From the attention paid to the Vice City radio dial which hosted an unprecedented soundtrack of licensed music from the 80s plus original 'talk radio' stations, to the intensive sound design that helped make the game's open world come alive, today's edition of The Lab has some glimpses behind the scenes that have never been published online til today:

• “Radio Stations”- Tune in to audio from all 9 original radio stations from the Vice City radio dial: Fever 105 (soul hosted by Oliver "Ladykiller" Biscuit), Radio Espantoso (latin hosted by Pepe), Emotion 98.3 (ballads hosted by Fernando Martinez), Wave 103 (new wave hosted by Adam First), Wildstyle Pirate Radio (rap hosted by Super Rockin' Mr. Magic), V-Rock (rock hosted by Lazlow), Flash FM (pop hosted by Toni) and talk stations K-Chat and VCPR. For the 7 music stations, you can hear snippet mixes of selected excerpts whilst for the 2 talk radio stations, "The Lab" contains the station audio in its entirety for a full streaming listen.
• “SoundFX” - A special breakdown of just one small element of Vice City's sound design - helicopter sound effects. As the section explains, the total amount of space available at the time for sound effects would hold less than 12 seconds of music from a CD, therefore all of the sounds created for the city needed to be very short. Each sound has to be produced in isolation so that it can be controlled independently depending on how the player interacts with the game. Listen to the various individual sounds used and then check out a video demo of the final product in action as Tommy Vercetti lifts off in the chopper.
• "Pedestrians”- Wherever you go in the streets of Vice City - from the beach to the shopping mall to the airport - you're sure to overhear tons of colorful dialogue from the city's resident peds. Strutting playboys, lecherous pervs, blue collar slobs, glamorous fly girls, and more - have a look and listen to a sampling of the vast audio recorded in populating Vice City's ambient world.

In somewhat related news, Rockstar North finally launched their brand new website yesterday. Anyone who might be interested in working there, or who has interest in game development may like to check it out. For ordinary fans there's not really much to talk about but it's nice to see the company get a beautiful website to show itself off.