Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories -- Music Soothes the Savage Beast.

The Grand Theft Auto series' use of music has been one its strongest selling points. I looked forward to the music of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. I was disappointed to find that they only used licensed tracks for a couple of the radio stations. None of the ones I would be listening to featured any tracks I could pick out. They used a lot of bands that have been signed on lower level record labels that most people have never heard of. After a few hours of play I turned off the radio stations altogether and expected to keep them off. Rockstar had advertised custom soundtracks in the game and people have been killing themselves trying to figure out how to access them. Rumors had it that it was a feature that could be unlocked. People believed it was after a certain story mission involving the radio station Head Radio. That proved to be false. People were speculating that it was the reward for finding the one-hundred hidden packages. That also proved false. Rockstar announced that they messed up and didn't have time to include the feature before the US launch and that it was the reason for the delay in the European launch. Rockstar has released a PC download to solve the problem.  The download was supposed to be contained on the UMD disc and was to be transferred over to your PC. The intended use is identical. I've downloaded the program, which is called Rockstar Custom Tracks. It's based on the Exact Audio Copy audio ripper software. The procedure for using this software is a little different. You can only rip from store bought CDs you own. You need to insert the CD into your PC's CD-ROM drive for one part of the program to be enabled. You must also have your PSP connected to the PC via a mini-USB connection. Once everything is connected and a CD is in the drive, the program will access the disc and list the tracks. It will offer you the chance to access the Internet and get the CD information. Doing so automatically enters all the disc info including artist, CD title, and track names. You must have a GTA: LCS save file on your memory stick within the PSP. Once the track information is in place, you select the tracks you want to rip and select the option to start. It scans the memory card in the PSP and asks you to select which game you want to place the files in. Being a Rockstar product, only GTA: LCS will show up provided you have the game save on the memory stick. After that it begins to rip the track directly to the memory stick. It places the tracks in the game folder with a proprietary file extension of .GTA. You can then place more CDs to rip tracks from into the drive and it will repeat the process for each one. When you're done you load the game, and you'll have to select custom soundtracks from the audio menu and enable them. Doing so turns off the radio in the game. You lose the DJs, but gain your custom music. Hitting right or left on the D-pad while in a vehicle now changes the tracks as if it were CD player control. The custom soundtracks greatly increases the fun of the game in my opinion. The Xbox versions of the GTA console games allow for custom soundtracks and retain the DJs. I think it's rather impressive that you can have custom soundtracks within a portable game and I'm not going to be complaining about the loss of the DJs.