Mayors: Why New York City?
- Scribbled on April 1st, 2007 by Jonah Falcon
- Filed in Action, Humor, Industry News, Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3, WTF
While New York City Mayor Bloomberg and other officials expressed anger and dismay at Grand Theft Auto IV using New York City (in the guise of Liberty City) as its setting, other, more clear-headed leaders of other municipalities were annoyed that their cities were not considered. Governor of Tokyo Shintaro Ishihara said in an official statement, “We are disappointed that the makers of such a popular video game would not select a major city in Japan”, hinting that the lack of Western games in Japan was partially due to American arrogance.
London mayor Ken Livingstone was more forthright, angrily accusing Rockstar of ignoring its roots, saying, “The Grand Theft Auto London mission packs were what made the series! Without those packs, GTA would just be a curiosity for retrogamers and Rockstar would be another Psygnosis!” Austin Mayor Will Wynn bragged, “We’ve got the best developers in the whole U-S-of-A right here in Texas, and you’re not going to have a game full of guns set here? Hubris.”
Roy D. Buol, Mayor of Dubuque, was reported in local papers as stating the city needed more violent crime to allow pay raises for local law enforcement, and was hoping to attract it by being represented in one of Rockstar’s video games. Finally, Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa expressed the harshest words of all to Rockstar, “What a slap in the face. New York and Miami don’t have to share their games with two other cities like we do in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and when Los Angeles is featured alone in a game, what do we get? True Crime: Streets of L.A. and American McGee’s Bad Day L.A.!”
April 12th, 2007 at 7:58 am
[...] we did an April Fool’s Joke about other city mayors being upset over Grand Theft Auto IV’s snubbing of their city, but this is real. Staten Island’s [...]