Degenatron

An advertisement for Degenatron in GTA Vice City, commonly seen on billboards in the game.

The Degenatron is a fictional video game console first mentioned in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and again in its sequel Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It is encountered again in The Ballad of Gay Tony with a machine owned by property developer Yusuf Amir.

Description

The Degenatron was introduced to the arcade in 1981. In GTA Vice City, a Degenatron arcade cabinet can be found inside the Kaufman Cabs taxicab company building, and another one in the Little Haiti The Well Stacked Pizza Co. restaurant. However, the Degenatron game console, introduced in 1985, is never seen.

The Degenatron was considered a low end games console, and as a result struggled with much better competition from the home computer market. A "GEN 2" was launched in 1991 by the same company which produced the Degenatron, but the company vanished a year later. It is worth noting that an unnamed game console can be found in (and stolen from) most houses of GTA San Andreas during burglary side missions.

Features

The Degenatron is mentioned often on GTA Vice City's radio stations. Several facts can be gathered from the numerous advertisements heard on the radio.

• The graphics seem to be limited to green dots and red squares. However, the emulated "Defender of the Faith" (see below) in a Degenatron "fansite" also display blue squares.
• It is praised for bringing arcade realism to the living room, notably by taking quarters and having "a strange, sweaty man come by to empty the machine on Fridays."
• It plays three "amazing" games:

	Defender of the Faith, where "you save the green dots with your fantastic flying red square!" It is suggested to be a parody of Defender.
	Monkey's Paradise, where "you swing from green dot to green dot with your red square monkey!" The game has a Pitfall!-like gameplay.
	Penetrator, where "you smash the green dots deep inside the mysterious red square!" A game in the style of Tempest.

Parody

GTA Vice City is set in the 1980s, loosely around the time of the golden age of video arcade games. The Degenatron is a parody of early 1980s games consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision, and the games it plays are inspired by real games of that era. The Degenatron is also used to mock people who accuse video games of "corrupting children". The advertisements target disaffected children who resent their parents' suggestions to take up wholesome activities like reading or playing outside, and at the end of the commercial kids shout proudly "I'll never go to school again!"

The name "Degenatron" itself parodies those who believe that video games are damaging to children's physical fitness, social skills, and morality. Jan Brown, a guest on GTA Vice City's VCPR, lashes out at the console for being a bad influence on her children – she was oblivious to her own lack of parenting skills, which included rewarding one of her kids for killing a mailman and getting them to beat up their father when he cheats on her.

In GTA San Andreas, Marvin Trill, a conspiracy theorist on WCTR, accuses the console of implanting subliminal messages in the minds of people as part of a communist plot, parodying the controversy surrounding the Grand Theft Auto series.

Gallery

• 

  The Degenatron arcade console (on the right) in GTA Vice City.

• 

  An advertisement for the Degenatron in GTA Vice City.

See also

• eXsorbeo, a handheld gaming console in GTA San Andreas.

External links

• Degenatron.com at Rockstargames.com (masquerading as an unofficial fansite), complete with Degenatron "emulators".