The Grand Theft Auto 3 demake for the Sega Dreamcast is coming along nicely, with a new video showing its physics engine glitching out in typical old-school-style and sending a police car flying.
One of the developers posts a video to Twitter with the caption: "On today's exciting episode of physics engine optimization f**k-ups, featuring the Sega Dreamcast port of Grand Theft Auto 3, we have achieved... liftoff!" It's not quite the flying cars cheat, but it'll do.
The video shows (what I assume is the player) in a police car being chased by other cops. They're all slamming into each other in what appears to be a test of the vehicle collision physics. Suddenly, for reasons known only to the code itself, the player's car is sent spinning into orbit before crashing back down to Earth and catching fire.
On today's exciting episode of physics engine optimization fuck-ups, featuring the Sega Dreamcast port of Grand Theft Auto 3, we have achieved... LIFTOFF!!! pic.twitter.com/8p69VZkzTeMarch 14, 2025
Obviously, this is a physics bug and not the intended way it should work, but identifying these issues is an important part of any development process. And most of the video makes everything look fantastic. The cars take damage as you'd expect, they have no trouble stopping and starting on hills or by walls – it's good progress. Maybe the devs can turn it into a feature so we basically have the Oppressors from GTA Online in the game.
This project to demake GTA 3 for the Dreamcast has been ongoing since July, so in not even a year the team has got a lot of the game working. They shared another update video earlier this month that shows off more of the work they've done. There's a playable build you can install right here.
There's another modder trying to resurrect the console, Meesedev, who's rebuilding Minecraft on the Dreamcast with a view to being able to make a new Minecraft-like game that runs on old hardware.
While you wait for the finished GTA 3 port and GTA 6, check out some of the best retro games you can play right now to transport yourself back to your childhood.
