10 Iconic Video Game Features That Were Invented By Accident

Grand Theft Auto’s very name tells you all you need to know about the game. You steal cars. The gameplay focuses on motor vehicle theft, and presents players with a series of missions to progress the story, but this was not always the series’ purpose.

Originally, GTA was going to be Race‘n’Chase — a game where you could play as a criminal or a police officer, partaking in street racing and police chases. Yet in this version of the game, the programmers came across an issue with the police element of the game.

While police cars were supposed to gently pull the criminals to the side of the road for traffic violations, they would instead smash their vehicles into the player, sending them flying from the road and totalling their cars. Talk about playing bad cop! This mistake was actually a welcome one, however, as it eventually inspired the gameplay for Grand Theft Auto and its more... violent tendencies.

Now, Race’n’Chase can be found as an arcade game in the GTA universe — a heartwarming callback to its simpler origins.