The first time I heard Grand Theft Auto mentioned was when some friends managed to network GTA, the first one, in our school’s computer room. Too many lunchtimes were then lost to our “maths homework”.

The blood was excessive, the top-down people barely recognisable as such. The game was already a few years old: in game years that’s practically an antique. But even then, you weren’t forced to trudge through the exposition, and set-piece fluff. I didn’t have to do the drug-running mission, save my “buddy”. I could just hoon around on a motorbike, crash and then die. Life lessons were learnt.

A few years later, playing GTA IIIon my own, I again ignored the plot. I cruised across Liberty City, causing trouble, jumping ramps, barely touching the story, which is a shame: when you got around to it, it wasn’t half bad.

Oh, and the radio. It proved that in-game music didn’t have to be immediately muted and replaced by your own music collection. It suited the game: the radio channels pumped parody hit after parody hit, and a few genuine ones, if you could spot them. But the chat radio has always been my favourite, including characters from the games, and the various other freaks that talk radio often draws.

GTA III changed every other game. Skateboarding games were now “sand-box” games; there weren’t levels, it was all just . . . there.

I think I may have spent more time working in a taxi or ambulance than as a crim in GTA games, but maybe that says more about me than the game. All the controversy that became associated with the series mostly flew over my head. Plainly put, it’s not a kid’s game. When GTA III’s inevitable sequels came, the similarities, and pointless window dressing (literally, dressing your character) put me off. But GTA IV, being able to chase my mates down a road in a fire engine again, online, I’m sold. (Or it’s an offer I can’t refuse.)

Mat Smith is an assistant language teacher in Japan

Times recommends

• Sony Reader could kill off the book
• Make 3D images with your own camera
• Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games