Two Vice Cities, four decades apart
Vice City has appeared as a fully playable setting once before. In 2002's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Rockstar dropped players into a neon-soaked, cocaine-fuelled 1986 — a loving, exaggerated tribute to the Miami of Scarface and Miami Vice, starring the mob enforcer Tommy Vercetti. It became one of the most beloved games of its era, and for two decades "Vice City" has been shorthand for that specific 1980s fantasy.
GTA 6 brings the city back, but it moves the clock forward. Rockstar has built a modern-day, present-day reimagining of the region — now part of a wider fictional state called Leonida — anchored by the new Vice City and its two protagonists, Lucia and Jason. So the interesting comparison isn't really "old game versus new game" — that's covered in our Vice City then-vs-now breakdown. The richer question is what 40 years does to a single fictional city: what changes when you take the same place and jump it from 1986 to the 2020s.
The era: from Reagan-era excess to the smartphone age
The 1986 of the original game was a period piece even when it launched. It leaned into the specific texture of mid-80s Miami — the pastel suits, the cigarette boats, the open cocaine economy, the sense that the whole city was running on money nobody asked too many questions about. The humour and the danger both came from that moment in American history.
The new Vice City is contemporary. Based on everything Rockstar has shown, the satire has moved with the times: this is a Florida of smartphones, social media clout-chasing, livestreamers, influencers and viral crime. Where 1986 mocked the era of Miami Vice, the modern game's targets are the things that define Florida and the internet right now. That shift is the single biggest difference between the two versions — not the streets, but the culture filling them. The social-media influencer as a character type simply could not have existed in the 1986 game.
The map: a city becomes a state
The 2002 Vice City was, by modern standards, small — a dense pair of islands you could cross in a couple of minutes, which was remarkable for its time but tiny next to what came later. The GTA 6 world is enormously larger. Rockstar's footage shows Vice City as just one part of Leonida, a whole fictional state that also includes the Grassrivers wetland, the Leonida Keys island chain, rural interior counties and more.
That's the conceptual leap: in 1986 Vice City was the world. In GTA 6 it's the crown jewel of a much bigger one. The exact size hasn't been published by Rockstar — anyone quoting square-mileage figures is guessing — but the trailers make the scale obvious. A player in 2002 knew every alley of Vice City; a player in GTA 6 will treat the city as one destination among many.
What carries over
Despite the time jump, this is unmistakably the same fictional geography. The art-deco beachfront, the causeways, the marina culture, the Cuban and Haitian neighbourhood influences, the strip of nightlife along the sand — these are the bones of Vice City, and they persist because they're the bones of the real Miami the city is based on. Areas evoking the spirit of the original turn up throughout the new map, from the Ocean Beach strip to Little Havana and Little Haiti.
A caution worth stating plainly: Rockstar has confirmed the modern setting and a set of named areas, but it has not published a definitive "returning landmarks" list, and it has not confirmed direct story connections to Tommy Vercetti's era. Fans love spotting echoes of 1986, and many are surely intentional — but until Rockstar says so, an "echo" is a resemblance, not a confirmed callback. We don't claim returning characters or canonical links that haven't been announced.
The soundtrack: the one thing time can't touch
If anything defined 1986 Vice City, it was the radio — Flash FM's pop, Wave 103's synth and new wave, Fever 105's disco and funk. The soundtrack was the decade. The modern game can't simply replay that, because a present-day Vice City needs present-day music. But the structure endures: a city defined by its stations, each one a different slice of Florida's sound.
What's actually confirmed about GTA 6's music is still narrow — Trailer 2 used a batch of identifiable songs and V-Rock is the only station name to surface in footage so far. The returning Vice City brands and the new-station concepts that would fit modern Leonida are laid out, clearly labelled by certainty, in our complete radio lineup. The throughline is simple: in 1986 or 2026, you'll judge this city partly by what's on the dial.
The crime: from kingpin fantasy to two people in over their heads
The original cast Tommy Vercetti as a classic rise-to-power story — one man building a criminal empire, the 1980s coke-baron fantasy made playable. GTA 6 frames its crime differently. Lucia and Jason are positioned in the Bonnie-and-Clyde mould: a couple pulled deeper into trouble together, the series' first time leading with a female protagonist alongside her partner. It's a more intimate, two-handed story than the lone-kingpin arc of 1986.
That mirrors a broader change in how Rockstar tells these stories. The 1986 game was a power fantasy; the modern one looks more interested in characters and relationships. Same city, same business — but a different kind of story being told inside it.
The bottom line
Vice City in GTA 6 is the same place wearing 40 extra years. The deco shoreline, the marina life, the neighbourhood textures and the radio-defined identity all carry over from 1986 because they were always rooted in the real Miami underneath. What changes is everything time changes: the technology, the satire, the scale, and the kind of people you play. For anyone who loved the 2002 game, the appeal is exactly that tension — getting to walk a city you remember, set in a present you've never seen it in. Just keep the honesty filter on as the hype builds: the modern setting is confirmed, but the specific 1986 callbacks fans are hoping for remain hopes until Rockstar says otherwise.
Updated June 3, 2026. The modern Vice City setting and named areas reflect official GTA 6 media; connections to the 1986 game are noted as resemblances, not confirmed canon. See also our history of Vice City and then-vs-now breakdown.