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Yesterday a feature/detail list for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (the first game in the series on the DS) was announced, courtesy of Nintendo Power. Lots of interesting features, so get to readin'!

- True GTA game - sandbox gameplay, open-world environment, gritty crime narrative.
- M-rating
- Isometric camera angle
- Cel-shaded polygons w/ black borders
- good touch-screen implementation - "tasteful" minigames, streamlining interface
- UI based on a PDA - hub for email, contacts, map, music player, GPS, stat-tracking
- stats uploaded to Rockstar Social Club website via Wi-Fi
- finger-sized icons
- missions designed for shorter periods of play, arcade quality
- aiming with control pad, auto targeting with R button
- subtle autosteer
- if you fail a mission, you can jump back to the action sequence
- chain gun, flamethrower
- good portion of Liberty City is modeled in the game (different routes than console games)
- no probems with load times, draw-in or frame rate
- lots of pedestrians, cars, etc on screen
- Wanted system - objective is to disable police cars any way possible
- real-time weather effects, 24-hour day/night cycle
- lots of radio stations to listen to (more instrumentals than vocals)
- 800,000 lines of hand-optimized source code (hey, the people like the info, right?)
- no details yet on multiplayer/Wi-Fi features

If you're like me and are almost useless without some screenshots, some of those poured their way onto the Internet, and you can see them here (note: more will be on the game's profile page soon):

Some forum posters feel the game looks a bit "drab" - what about you? Will Chinatown Wars live up to the GTA name, or suffer from going portable? Grand Theft Auto Advance got reviews all over the place upon its release - I'm betting this one will fare similarly, though still be an overall better experience due to the more powerful technology, and it being at least semi-3D.

In the same feature, Rockstar man Dan Houser was asked why they picked the DS as opposed to the Wii as the next spot for GTA. Here is his response:

"It didn’t feel natural to us, I guess. It really was that the DS felt like it had a lot of interesting challenges that would be totally different from what we’d done in the past. The stylus and the chance to use minigames in that way was really interesting and exciting to us, and we thought we could integrate seamlessly between those two modes. And it would be the chance to make something really good on a handheld with our handheld-focused team. That was really why we went that way. We haven’t really done any concrete, major thinking about the Wii, one way or another. They’re sort of separate issues."

Sounds very similar as to why designer Tomonobu Itagaki chose the DS for Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword, and hey, that turned out great. In any case, the game will be released sometime between November 1, 2008 and January 31, 2009.