---
title: 'GTA Chinatown Wars is the Unsung Hero of GTA Games'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=m6JyPmHBxAo'
video_id: 'm6JyPmHBxAo'
date: 2026-06-27
duration_sec: 618
---

# GTA Chinatown Wars is the Unsung Hero of GTA Games

> Source: [GTA Chinatown Wars is the Unsung Hero of GTA Games](https://youtube.com/watch?v=m6JyPmHBxAo)

## Summary

This video explores why Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, launched as a Nintendo DS exclusive in 2009, is a hidden gem and one of the most innovative GTA games. It highlights how the game adapted the franchise's open-world chaos to a handheld platform with touchscreen mechanics, unique gameplay systems like cop car destruction and drug dealing, and a compelling triad story.

### Key Points

- **Unexpected Launch** [00:00] — Released in March 2009 as a Nintendo DS exclusive, surprising fans because it was a mature GTA game on a console known for family-friendly titles.
- **Top-Down, Cel-Shaded Style** [01:16] — The game returned to a top-down, cel-shaded style with touchscreen controls for carjacking and sniping, which felt like a step backward from GTA 4's realism.
- **Cop Car Destruction for Wanted Level** [04:00] — Introduced a new mechanic: destroying cop cars lowers your wanted level, requiring aggressive driving instead of just escaping an area.
- **Drug Dealing and Territory Systems** [05:17] — Drug dealing involves buying, selling, and smuggling across territories; each gang has preferred drugs and territory, affecting prices and police attention.
- **Protagonist Huang Lee** [06:41] — Huang Lee is a triad member on a revenge path, less earnest than Nico Bellic, but his attitude makes the violence feel justified.
- **Touchscreen Barrier to Ports** [08:16] — The game is hard to port to modern consoles due to its touchscreen-based mechanics, which would need reworking for non-touch platforms.
- **Nostalgia for Creative Risks** [08:47] — The era of GTA spin-offs and story DLCs is gone, replaced by a focus on GTA Online. Chinatown Wars represents a time when Rockstar took creative risks.

## Transcript

It's a miracle that Grand Theft Auto
Chinatown Wars even exists. Originally
launched as a Nintendo handheld
exclusive, complete with touchscreen
carjacking, bloody gunfights, and
highstakes drug dealing missions, it's
exactly the kind of game you'd never
expect to see first launch on the
Nintendo DS. But more than that, it's
secretly one of the greatest and most
innovative GTA games ever made.
When Chinatown Wars first launched in
March of 2009, the GTA franchise was in
a pretty incredible spot. The
revolutionary and massively successful
Grand Theft Auto 4 had arrived the year
prior, fully establishing itself as the
king of criminal openw world games in
the eyes of both critics and players.
Both of its episodic story expansions,
The Lost and the Damned and The Ballot
of Gay Tony, were also on track to come
out in 2009. But all that was happening
on home consoles. While the late 2000s
had seen a duo of games based on 2001's
GTA 3 and 2002's GTA Vice City come to
PlayStation Portable, GTA 4's successful
dive into the HT era seemed to suggest
Rockstar was fully committed to the much
more powerful consoles and PCs of the
time rather than shrink down the vision
and ambition for the then dueling
handhelds, Nintendo DS and Sony's PSP.
The franchise was striving for gritty
realism and cutting edge graphics, and
it seemed like the portable systems were
going to have to sit this round out.
Suffice to say that when GTA Chinatown
Wars was announced as a top-down
cell-shaded game made for a handheld,
starring a brand new triad protagonist
who used a touchcreen to fire off sniper
rifles and steel cars in the same city
that GTA 4's Nico Bellic had stomped
around in a year earlier, people were uh
pretty surprised. At first glance, it
not only felt like a step backwards for
the series, but it also felt downright
shocking to see what was initially a
Nintendo exclusive GTA game where you
could sell drugs and shoot police
officers.
These days, modern Nintendo handhelds
like the Switch One and Switch 2
frequently get ports of maturated games,
but during the Nintendo DS era, this was
rarely the case. In 2009, it was
practically unfathomable for Rockstar to
put a brand new exclusive GTA game on
the Nintendo DS. a modestly powerful
handheld system that was already 5 years
into its lifespan and mostly associated
with things like Mario Kart, Nintendo
Dogs, and Brain Training. The DS is home
to one of the greatest and most diverse
game libraries in the history of
handhelds. But its tiny lowresolution
screens, largely casual player base, and
lack of analog stick meant that AAA
developers approached the system
cautiously when bringing their
successful franchises over to it.
especially when those franchises were
known for being big budget console games
aiming for older audiences. Rockstar
Games hadn't brought any of their titles
to a Nintendo handheld since 2003 when
they launched a cleverly scaledown
version of Max Pain on the Game Boy
Advance and then Grand Theft Auto
Advance in 2004, a top-own pixel art
prequel to GTA 3. That's why Chinatown
Wars felt special. It was clear that the
DS had become so massive that even the
almighty Rockstar Games couldn't ignore
it. And while fans had some
apprehensions about the game's looks
once they realized that Chinatown Wars
bridged the gap between GTA's top-own
origins and its modern fully 3D openw
world chaos and unlike the original
games doesn't have a locked camera. They
knew Rockstar had successfully managed
to shrink down their biggest franchise
and make it feel at home in the least
likely of places without really skipping
a beat.
Enhanced ports of Chinatown Wars
eventually came to PSP and mobile
phones. And while they never came close
to the total sales of the mainline
console and PC games, hardcore GTA fans
were happy to have this unique new entry
that they could bring with them
everywhere. Chinatown Wars not only has
all the things you love and expect from
a GTA game, like sharp writing,
memorable characters, and tons of
weapons, vehicles, and explosive toys to
terrorize a big sprawling metropolis
with, while flipping through bespoke
radio stations, it also introduced a
bunch of brand new features to the
franchise. Police chases that ratchet up
your wanted level have always been a
serious staple, but Chinatown Wars
incorporated a brilliant new mechanic to
get revenge. Destroying cop cars to
lower your wanted level. This is an
absolute blast, especially when you've
got multiple cops tailing you at once,
and you're blasting down the road at top
speed, bobbing and weaving through
traffic. Prior to Chinatown Wars, GTA
games required you to drive out of a
specific area to lower your wanted
level. But this new approach requires a
lot more aggression on your part,
forcing you to lure cops alongside your
car, so you can smash them in the
buildings and other cars or leading them
on, jamming on the brakes and watching
them dictate their own destruction while
you fire guns out the window. It's
awesome. It's an explosive way to watch
your wanted level plummet, and this adds
tension and thrill to every encounter.
And outside of also just looking cool,
it's genuinely an absolute blast and
frequently hilarious. When these
aggressive chases overlap with the
game's drugdealing subplot, though,
that's when things get significantly
more high stakes. You see, since all
this cop car smashing and bashing also
takes its toll on your vehicle, you'll
need to be more calculated with your
reckless driving, especially when you're
smuggling a trunk full of thousands of
dollars worth of heroin that will get
seized by the authorities or blown up to
smitherines if your car goes up in
flames.
It's the kind of experience that has you
grinning from ear to ear and cackling
maniacally while juggling several crimes
at once. A feeling that is so distinctly
GTA and thus incredibly impressive to
see replicated with cartoony graphics on
a little tiny handheld. Chinatown Wars
has you dealing coke, weed, and downers
to various gangs around Liberty City,
leading to tons of double crossings,
shootouts, and some huge payouts. By
taking out the cameras that are hidden
everywhere across a city, you'll reduce
the visibility of your drug smuggling
antics and have fewer cops tailing you
after a deal. It's another great example
of Chinatown War's awesome and unique
systems overlapping and complenting each
other in brilliant and satisfying ways.
Unique gangs across Liberty City also
have specific territories as well as a
preferred drug of choice. So, dealing
different drugs regularly has you
driving all over the map and visiting
various crews. These largely optional
missions are reminiscent of the ancient
calculator drug dealing game Drug Wars.
And while some elements of these
missions eventually made their way into
GTA 5's online mode, it's a shame that
these ideas weren't worked directly into
the campaign. Here's hoping GTA 6 lets
you keep an eye out on market conditions
so you can sell ecstasy pills to the
Spanish lords just like in Chinatown
Wars. Maybe while hulking Los Santos
alligators nipped your heels. But while
many of Chinatown Wars victories are in
systems and gameplay, it was clearly a
game made by the same rockstar that was
penning deeper, more interesting crime
stories. Like GTA 4, Chinatown Wars
tells an excellent tale of an immigrant
plunging deeper and deeper into Liberty
City's CD underbelly, juggling personal
and family relationships with the harsh
realities of living life on the run and
under the gun. In terms of protagonist,
Huang Lei isn't nearly as earnest as
Nico Bellic and spends significantly
less time bowling with his cousins or
taking women on dates. But his no
[ __ ] attitude makes his war path and
lust for vengeance believable, which
makes you feel slightly less remorseful
about tearing through Liberty City.
Like many GTA fans, back in 2009, I had
finished GTA 4 and was hungry for more.
So, Chinatown Wars launched at the
perfect time for me. I've been a
Nintendo fan my whole life and I bought
the Nintendo DS the day it launched. So,
tearing the plastic off of my Chinatown
Wars game box and shoving a tiny
original GTA game cartridge into my
system for the first time was such an
awesome moment. I'm also a huge fan of
hip-hop, so the game's opening story
cutscenes being laden with heavy drums
and Wuang Clan style Chinese string
samples for a beat that legendary artist
Ghostface Killer and MF Doom wrapped on
to promote the game was also one of
those mind-blowing synergies of so many
things I loved coming together.
It really all was just a dream come true
and it felt right to be back in Liberty
City again, even one that looks so
different to Nico's. And it was totally
surreal using the same stylus I used to
pet Nintendo dogs to hotwire a stolen
vehicle and go on a violent killing
spree on the way to a big ticket cocaine
deal.
Hell yeah, Rockstar. That said, as much
as I love the touchscreen features
across every version of Chinatown Wars,
they're likely what's holding the game
back from being ported to modern
consoles. They'd work just fine in
handheld mode on the Nintendo Switch
consoles, but they'd need a bit of an
overhaul to function properly on the
PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, which is a
shame since I really wish more people
could experience this classic entry in
one of the most successful video game
franchises of all time. Playing
Chinatown Wars in 2026, which I do, uh,
doesn't just make me nostalgic for being
there when the game first released. It
makes me nostalgic for an era when
Rockstar took weird swings like
Chinatown Wars. It was an era when Grand
Theft Auto got spin-offs, story DLCs,
and quirky little handheld ports, and
they all tried to show the franchise in
a new light. These days, it seems like
every single idea for a new GTA story or
gameplay mechanic gets dropped directly
into GTA 5's online mode, where they
will instantly print money for Rockstar,
a strategy they'll definitely continue
to implement in GTA 6 and GTA 6's online
mode. And while it's cool that people
can play one GTA game for 13 years
straight while still regularly seeing
new content, it's hard not to miss a
world before GTA Online where the series
add a bit more flexibility. One where
unique side stories could exist
independently instead of being dripfed
into a massive multiplayer mode.
Regardless, we'll always have Chinatown
Wars, an immensely satisfying and
totally kick-ass GTA game that you can
take with you anywhere. If you missed it
when it first arrived, or you're looking
for something to revisit while waiting
for the next gigantic entry in the Grand
Theft Auto franchise to arrive this
fall, you should definitely go play it.
There's no other GTA game quite like it.
If you'd like even more of me talking
about GTA, check out my lengthy and
extensive video about the rise and fall
of GTA clones, an entire genre of video
games that tried to dethrone GTA and
didn't. It's a long one, so grab your
favorite snack and your Nintendo DS and
throw it on. Until then, thanks for
watching and for all things video games
and of course GTA, stick with IGM.