The GTA series of games is among those highly acclaimed titles that came out on the Sony PSP. Those who are just beginning to discover the fun of this franchise can have GTA: Liberty City Stories and GTA: Vice City Stories for a low price at Amazon.com. More on this after the jump!

If you've been keeping up with the Take-Two buyout malarkey from Electronic Arts, then you'd know that EA is now targeting the shareholders after Take-Two gave them the cold shoulder. Now, we get the look at just what's driving this offer, with the word straight from EA Chief Executive John Riccitiello himself. All the details after the jump.

The contract between Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar North expires in 14 months. Because of this, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter is saying that the developers of the Grand Theft Auto series might actually consider following Bungie's footsteps and set up their own camp.

More information on why Rockstar North might decide to go independent can be found in the full article.

Homebrew developer emcp dropped by QJ.NET PSP Development Forum and released Sunshine Customs v2. This particular application allows users to modify the cars in Rockstar Game's PlayStation Portable title Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. It was coded using Edison Carter's GTA CheatDevice.

If you've been using the old version, this might be a good time to upgrade as emcp has done a lot of modifications as well as additions to Sunshine Customs v2. Check the full article (via the read more link) for more details, changelog, and the download link.

There's this cheat device known as Pimp My Garage for the video game Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. It was the original work of coder ADePSP and just like the name implies, it generates a code to make custom in-game cars. Now, another coder just came up with a similar application this time for GTA: Vice City Stories.

Created by PSP homebrew developer emcp, this application's called Sunshine Customs. It allows users to customize almost every part of a vehicle like wheels, engine, suspension, handling and even effects. Here are the other features provided by the coder:

• Functions
• Bar (% / number on top of bar)
• CheckBoxes
• Text Slider
• Color Palette
• Picture Slider
• Make Your Own Page In Seconds
• Cheat Related
• Pretty Much Everything in pmg for lcs
• General
• Theme Customizer

There's no documentation attached in the download below for Sunshine Customs. Some of our readers noted that the application doesn't work with custom firmware 3.71 M33.

Download: Sunshine Customs
Visit: QJ PSP Development Forum

While all of us are dying to see the new Grand Theft Auto IV trailer which is slated for a June 28 release, we'd like to show you a little video we dug up in GameTrailers. It's the history of GTA and we must say, it's pulled off nicely. See what we mean by watching this:

Nice touch with the contrast using classical music to drape this bad boy, eh? Those of you who missed some details on this famous, or should we say infamous, series will appreciate what the video has to show.

Speaking of history, it's interesting to know that the developers whom we know and love as Rockstar North today were once known as DMA Design. Incidentally, GTA wasn't always called that name. Prior to its release on the first PlayStation, it was called Race N Chase. Good thing they scrapped that one.

Buy: [Grand Theft Auto 4 (Xbox 360)]

For those who haven't picked up a copy of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories for the PSP, you're in luck. Circuit City has announced a US$ 10.00 price cut on the game, bringing it down to on US$ 19.99.

A part of the GTA series, this game was released last year and was generally well received by the PSP community. Vice City Stories has also won the "Best Licensed Soundtrack" award from IGN despite the average ratings from most gaming sites and magazines. With similar gameplay to the rest of the games in the series, improved graphics, and a combat system overhaul, it is a worthy addition to any PSP gaming collection.

If you've been planning on picking up this game, this may be the perfect time to do so. You can purchase the game by simply heading over to the Circuit City website through our Via link.

Thanks to many homebrew developers, there are many ways to have fun in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. The most recent ones that come to mind include Cheat Device Tools that includes a two-sided portal and .IMG Extractor Beta that allows players to change the video game's textures and models.

Anyway, another application has been added to that list courtesy of homebrew coder emcp. The application is called Vcs Cheater Beta and as the name implies, it is still in beta stage. emcp mentioned the same and added that the main menu exit button isn't working because he had to quickly change the Lua player.

Regardless, Vcs Cheater Beta is quite nifty even at this stage as it provides five different tools for GTA: VCS. They include:

• Weapon Pack
• Particle Changer
• Pimp My Neon
• Paint job
• Hud Pimper

Take note that in the program's Weapon Pack tool, the maximum ammo allowed is actually 1,250 but the program lists it as 999. emcp recognized this and said that it will be fixed and other improvements will be Incorporated in the next release.

Download: Vcs Cheater Beta
View: QJ PSP Development Forum

The news is saying that someone took their video game fantasies into the real world, and is now paying for it with a hefty prison sentence. While we don't necessarily agree with that connection, SF Gate's article about it does bear some mention. The founder of the Nut Cases street gang was recently sentenced to a minimum of 75 years in prison for killing an acquaintance of his.

Gregory Colbert, 27, was convicted in Alameda County Superior Court in December for the June 7, 2004 killing of 20-year-old Glen Phaso. Deputy District Attorney Michael Nieto said Colbert, already a convicted felon, killed Phaso either because he raped Colbert's good friend the day before the murder, or because Phaso refused to commit a murder that Colbert ordered.

According to the rest of the SF Gate report, the Nut Cases were a gang who were known for getting high while playing Rockstar's supposed "murder simulator" and then resorted to acting out what they played in the game. While the coverage manages to be fair with most of it, we certainly don't agree with how games are portrayed here.

For one thing, there seems to be a history of violence within the family. The report also notes that his half-brother, Demarcus Ralls, was also found guilty of a set of murders of his own. That would seem to indicate more of a predilection towards violence than a love of acting out game violence.

Still, to paraphrase the old adage, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.

Even though Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories has been released for some time now, the video game still hasn't lost its charm, and we guess it never will. After all, there are many ways to improve the title by modifying some features here and there. The latest one we covered was .IMG Extractor Beta v1.0.1 from Dustcrazy.

We have a new one for you today, courtesy of homebrew developer Durka Durka Mahn. There are three new cheat modifications for GTA: VCS and take note that all of these are coded in PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Durka Durka Mahn also mentioned that these cheat codes were created with the help of another coder named Waterbottle.

Ready or not, here we come! Clicking on the title of the cheat will take to the PHP page for each.

• Button Cheat Maker: This will allow you to make a cheat that is executed on the press of a button. Type the cheat name, choose the type, button to be pressed, and the code you are executing and hit submit. You're done!
• VCS Car Spawner: Using this tool, you can easily spawn as many cars as you'd like using the forms on the page. Using cheatdevice, copy down some coordinates of where you'd like to spawn your vehicles, choose the vehicle, then hit submit!
• The Portal Maker: Ever wanted to make a portal that allows you to go from one place to  another but didn't know how to? Use this by copying down the coordinates of the two places you'd like to set the portals, hit submit, and you've got yourself a fully-working, two-sided portal!

Durka Durka Mahn is one of our staples over at QJ Forums. Some of his works include applications DevHook theme pack Orange Haven and PSP Toolbar v2.0.

View: QJ PSP Development Forum