GTA Vice City Stories Cheat Codes: PSP and PS2

Yes, GTA Vice City Stories has cheat codes: 8-button combos that hand you a Rhino tank, the minigun or $250,000 in seconds, on PSP and PS2 alike. Here’s every cheat listed by the go-to guides, plus tricks to remember them, the spots where sources disagree and the pitfalls to avoid.

How to enter a cheat in Vice City Stories

No keyboard here: Vice City Stories only came out on PSP and PS2, never on PC, so there are no typed cheats like ASPIRINE. Everything runs through 8-button combos that you enter during gameplay, without pausing and without dawdling between presses.

The combos are the same on PSP and PS2, with three exceptions flagged in the tables (black traffic, all-green lights and the upside-down screen, listed on PSP only). The PSP has just two shoulder buttons, L and R; the March 2007 PS2 port mapped them to L1 and R1. So in the tables below, read L = L1 and R = R1 if you’re playing on PS2. Two classic mistakes on PSP: using the analog nub instead of the D-pad, or entering a cheat during a mission transition or a cutscene. If the game doesn’t respond, wait for the sequence to finish and try again, faster.

Weapon, money and health cheats

Good news for your memory: health, armor and money share the same skeleton, Up, Down, Left, Right, a doubled button, then L, R. Square gives you armor, Circle health, X money. The three weapon sets also follow a single pattern: Left, Right, a button, Up, Down, the next button, Left, Right.

What’s in each set, according to Vandal: set 1 gives you brass knuckles, a knife, Molotov cocktails, a pistol, a shotgun, the Scorpion, an AK, a flamethrower and a sniper rifle; set 2 moves up to a katana, remote grenades, the Equalizer, a sawed-off shotgun, a silenced SMG, an assault rifle, a rocket launcher and a laser-scope sniper; set 3 breaks out the chainsaw, grenades, the Equalizer, the SPAS-12, an SMG, an assault rifle, the laser-scope sniper and, best of all, the minigun. No cheat gives you every weapon at once.

The money cheat pays out $250,000 and can be repeated as often as you like (to compare with the other PSP entry, check out our Liberty City Stories cheat codes). That’s enough to snap up businesses in the Empire Building system, the racket-management mechanic unique to this game. The health cheat comes with a bonus: if Vic is behind the wheel, it repairs the vehicle too.

Police and weather cheats

The two police cheats are twins: same skeleton, only the doubled buttons change. “Never Wanted” wipes your stars and, according to Vandal, blocks any new wanted level until a Rampage (the series’ timed killing sprees) ends the effect. Cheat Happens describes it more modestly as simply lowering your wanted level, so test it before you count on it in a mission.

For the weather cheats, the trap is the shoulder-button order: R then L for clear and sunny weather, L then R for overcast and rain. Fog is the odd one out, using Triangle and X.

Vehicle and traffic cheats

The Rhino is still the star of the show; spawn it somewhere with plenty of room. Perfect traction is the most fun cheat of the bunch: it glues your car to the road and lets it jump, with a platform difference that guides often skip, Down on PSP but L3 on PS2. Be careful with the destroy cheat: it blows up every loaded vehicle around you, including Vic’s. According to Vandal, black traffic spares police cars, while chrome hits them too.

Pedestrian cheats and wacky cheats

Three cheats call for caution. The riot and pedestrians attack you cheats can’t be turned off by re-entering the combo: Vandal recommends reloading the clean save you made before cheating. The pedestrians follow you cheat has a side effect flagged by gta.wiki: if every seat in your vehicle is taken, every pedestrian starts following it. The passenger cheat, for its part, requires you to already be driving with a free seat.

There are three points where sources disagree, and they’re worth knowing. The all-green lights cheat only shows up on Vandal: gta.wiki, Grand Theft Wiki and Cheat Happens don’t list it. The upside-down screen, which also flips the controls, is only listed by Vandal and Cheat Happens, on PSP: remember the directions are reversed when you enter the cheat to undo it. And gta.wiki marks traffic avoids you, pedestrians follow you and the passenger cheat as missing from the PSP, while Cheat Happens and Vandal do list them for PSP. If one of them doesn’t work on your console, don’t bother pushing it.

PSP multiplayer-only cheats

Like Liberty City Stories before it, Vice City Stories offered local Wi-Fi multiplayer on PSP for up to six players, with ten modes built around cars, planes and boats. Four cheats unlock its content, including playable character models:

gta.wiki only lists the 50% and 100% tiers, but Grand Theft Wiki, Vandal and Cheat Happens give all four. These cheats don’t affect the story or your single-player completion percentage. On PS2, they activate but do nothing: that port never had multiplayer.

What the cheats can’t do

Better to know before you go hunting in vain: there’s no invincibility, no infinite health, no unlimited money (the money cheat adds a fixed amount) and no cheat that finishes the story or gives you 100%. On the vehicle side, only the Rhino and the Trashmaster can be spawned: according to Vandal, the Hunter helicopter combos floating around come from cheat devices, mods or a different GTA. Vice City (1986, Tommy Vercetti) and Vice City Stories (1984, Vic Vance) are two separate games: cheats from one don’t work in the other.

If you want to play today, the easiest option is still the original hardware or the PPSSPP emulator with your PSP copy: Vandal says the cheats work normally there, since the game itself reads the combos. The PS3 re-release (the PS2 version, on PSN since April 2013) was pulled from the store on July 24, 2017.

Why Vice City Stories is still worth a look

Developed by Rockstar Leeds with Rockstar North, Vice City Stories is set in 1984 and tells the fall and rise of Victor “Vic” Vance, a corporal kicked out of the army who builds a criminal empire with his brother Lance. Series fans know how his story ends: Rockstar confirmed on its Newswire in 2009 that it really is Vic who dies in the opening ambush of GTA Vice City, two years later. The game also hides 99 red balloons in place of hidden packages, a nod to Nena’s hit 99 Luftballons, already heard in Vice City. It sold more than 7 million copies and earned an 86 on Metacritic on PSP (75 on PS2). To see how it stacks up against its handheld big brother, read our Liberty City Stories vs Vice City Stories showdown.

Looking for cheats for the other games? Check out our guides for GTA Vice City, GTA 3, GTA San Andreas, GTA 4 and GTA 5. To find out whether GTA VI will have its own, we break it all down in our GTA 6 cheat codes article. And to place each entry on the timeline, follow our guide to all GTA games in order.