Dreamcast GTA III and Vice City Mods Receive Xbox-Quality Texture Upgrades

Dreamcast Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City Mods Receive Major Xbox Asset Upgrades In recent years, the Dreamcast homebrew community has seen a surge in ambitious projects, thanks to the dedication of fan developers.

Notably, a talented group led by SKMP has successfully delivered unofficial ports of Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to Sega’s Dreamcast, a console never officially graced by these genre-defining Rockstar Games titles.

Now, these fan-driven ports are entering a new phase as modders begin to import textures and 3D models from the later Xbox versions of the games, significantly enhancing visuals and game fidelity on the vintage hardware. A prominent contributor to the project, Falco Girgis, recently highlighted major modding advancements via social media.

Girgis, who is actively involved in improving the Dreamcast port of GTA III, shared an update introducing a substantial new mod created by Esppiral.

This mod integrates higher-resolution textures and improved model assets from the Grand Theft Auto III Xbox release, elevating key elements such as environmental foliage, character models, and vehicles.

Notably, the update also implements advanced visual features like specular maps for vehicles and enriched particle effects, pushing the Dreamcast hardware to its limits. Girgis acknowledged Esppiral’s technical prowess and ingenuity, remarking on social channels that the improvements being developed for the Dreamcast seem ambitious enough to "make the console explode or, at the very least, be considered a form of console abuse." Reflecting on these visual upgrades, Girgis noted that the Dreamcast environments now appear considerably less flat and less pixelated in comparison to the original PlayStation 2 versions, emphasizing the striking impact of the higher-fidelity Xbox assets. The project’s enhancements are not limited to Grand Theft Auto III.

Girgis revealed that Esppiral is also augmenting the Dreamcast port of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City with similar Xbox-based graphical upgrades.

One notable fix includes replacing the blocky, paw-like hands of the original character models—an artifact of the PS2's limitations—with the more refined hand models featured in the Xbox release.

This ongoing work promises to deliver a more immersive and visually pleasing experience for Dreamcast enthusiasts and longtime fans of the series alike. The modification of these iconic Rockstar Games titles for the Sega Dreamcast continues to demonstrate the creativity and tenacity within the fan development community.

Through projects that combine modern assets with classic hardware, developers like SKMP, Falco Girgis, and Esppiral are preserving these games’ legacies while showcasing what’s possible in the world of game modding.

Gamers interested in these enhancements can follow updates on platforms such as Twitter/X and community modding forums, where footage and guides are frequently shared.

Xbox Dreamcast GTA III Grand Theft Auto