Grand Theft Auto 3 : Vice City

The series Grand Theft Auto may be notorious for its violence, but there is one feature about the game that I think is just excellent: the music.

The point of the game is to become the baddest drug dealer in town, and along the way you steal (and crash) cars constantly. That’s the predominant game mechanic: walk up to a car, push a button, you get in it. You spend most of your time while playing the game driving around in cars of one sort or another.

Every time you get in a car, the radio turns on.

The game has… six? Maybe seven radio stations. Each radio station has around an hour of unique tracks it will play, plus wacky little segue spots by DJs. And almost all of it’s from the 80′s. And it rocks.

Queueing up those seven “radio stations” in iTunes makes for a good couple of hours of background for programming to. I mean, as long as you’re going to spend your entire week—and weekend—hacking code, you might as well have some fun music occasionally.