Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories Cheats

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories is the 1984-set prequel to Vice City, built by Rockstar Leeds as a handheld-first game and later brought to PlayStation 2. You play Victor Vance, a soldier who is pushed out of the army and into the criminal side of the city, and the story fills in years before Tommy Vercetti arrives. Because the map, radio and pastel style overlap so much with the earlier game, a lot of players come back to it out of nostalgia, and many of them want the same thing they wanted as teenagers: a quick list of button cheats that work without a second disc, an online account or a modded console. That is exactly what this page is for. We keep the list short, put each sequence in its own copy box, and only include entries we could match in two separate published references.

The cheat system works the way most Rockstar games of that era did. There is no menu and no password screen. You simply press a fixed sequence on the controller while you are in normal play, not paused, and the game shows a short message on screen if it accepted the input. If nothing appears, the usual cause is a missed or doubled button rather than a broken code, so slow down and try again. The PlayStation 2 and PSP versions use different sequences, which is why we list them on separate pages and never mix the two.

Every cheat on this page started from a published cheat list and was then compared, button by button, against a second independent reference for the same console. If the order of buttons differed, we left the cheat out. If the buttons matched but the two sources described the effect in different words, we also held it back, because a code that works but does something unexpected is still a bad answer for a reader. Two entries were removed for that reason during our 11 November 2026 review. The source link under each code points to the first reference, and the note above the code names the second one, so you can check our work yourself.

It is worth being clear about what that process does not prove. We did not run every sequence on original hardware for this update. Matching sources are strong evidence, because these lists have been used by players for many years, but regional releases, later reprints and emulator setups can behave differently. If you find a code that does not work on your copy, tell us through the forum and include your console, region and whether you are using a disc, a digital copy or an emulator.

The most important habit with any GTA cheat is to keep a clean save you never use while cheating. Some codes are harmless and wear off when you reload, such as weather changes. Others change things that can follow you into a save, and a few can make missions awkward to finish. Pedestrian chaos codes are the classic example: a riot or armed crowd can turn a simple drive across the bridge into a mess, and if you save in that state you may not enjoy loading back in.

A practical routine is simple. Save your real progress to one slot. Load it, enter whatever cheats you want to play with, and never save over the main slot during that session. If you want to keep a cheat-heavy sandbox file, give it a different slot and treat it as a toy rather than your story save. Older guides also mention that cheat use may be tracked in the stats screen; whether or not that matters to you, keeping a clean slot avoids the question entirely.

The health and armour codes are the most useful ones for ordinary play. They refill the bar rather than making you invincible, so they are best used as a quick reset after a messy shootout or before a hard mission rather than something you lean on all the time. Because they share the same opening directional inputs and only change the face buttons near the end, they are also the easiest to mix up. Look at the copy box carefully and check the last four inputs before you start.

The money code adds a fixed cash amount each time. In Vice City Stories cash matters for empire businesses and for buying ammo, so a single use can save a lot of grinding. Entering it repeatedly is possible, but it removes most of the tension from the business side of the game. If you are replaying for the story, one or two uses is usually enough to skip the slowest part of the early economy without flattening everything that follows.

The game offers three weapon set cheats. Each gives a different group of guns and throwables, and entering a new set replaces what is in the same slots. Players often enter the set they want last, after trying the others, because the final set entered decides what you are carrying. Weapons gained this way behave like normal pickups: you can still lose them when you are busted or wasted, so do not rely on them surviving a failed mission.

If you are not sure which set you prefer, try them in a quiet area away from police. Enter one, cycle through the weapons, then enter the next. You will quickly see which mix suits the way you play, whether that is close-range shotguns for building interiors or longer guns for chases on the causeway.

The never wanted code is popular because it removes police pressure, but published notes say it can switch off after rampages, so do not treat it as permanent. If stars appear again, simply enter it once more. Weather codes change the sky and visibility and are mostly cosmetic, though fog genuinely changes how far you can see on the road, which makes some driving missions harder rather than easier. The green lights code turns traffic lights green, which looks funny but tends to cause crashes at junctions, so it is better for messing around than for timed deliveries.

Chaos codes such as pedestrian riot, armed pedestrians and pedestrians attacking you change how the crowd reacts. They can be entertaining for a few minutes and are a good way to see how the game handles lots of characters at once, but they are not helpful for missions. Destroying nearby cars is in the same family: fun to watch, rarely useful. Enter these in a sandbox save only.

Most sequences are eight inputs long, and the game is less forgiving than you might expect. Use the directional buttons, not the analogue stick, because a stick can register an extra diagonal press. Enter the code at a steady rhythm rather than as fast as you can. If you are in a car, it is safer to pull over first so that a stray press does not change camera or radio. On PSP, make sure the hold switch is off and that you are not pressing the shoulder buttons too lightly, since they need a definite click.

If a code still refuses to work, try it while standing still on foot, check you are on the right console page, and compare the last three buttons again. Over many years of reader reports on similar games, the vast majority of failures come down to one missing input.

Vice City Stories is a good game to play straight, even if you came for codes. The empire system lets you take over rackets around the city and build them up, which gives the middle of the game a clear goal beyond story missions. Rampages, vehicle side jobs and hidden collectibles add plenty more. A sensible approach for a returning player is to play the story clean, then load a separate file with cheats afterwards for pure sandbox fun. That way you see how the missions were meant to feel and still get the chaos later.

If you get stuck on a specific mission, a health or armour refill right before the hard part is a far smaller change than turning on chaos codes, and it keeps the challenge mostly intact. Combined with the clean-save routine above, it is the lowest-risk way to use cheats in this game.

If you enjoy this era of Rockstar games, the Liberty City Stories pages use the same approach, with source-backed codes for both PS2 and PSP. You can also browse other consoles in the Retro Vault, or suggest a game for us to research next on the forum. We only publish a game once it has codes we can source and a guide that actually helps, which is why some titles appear in search but are not yet available.

This page covers the original PSP release. The PSP has only two shoulder buttons, so its sequences use L and R where the PS2 version would use L1 and R1, and the order of inputs differs from the PS2 list. Do not copy PS2 codes onto a PSP; they will not work. Our PSP list is shorter than the full set of cheats the game contains, because we only published the entries we could match in two references. More may be added after further checks, and we will update the date on this page when that happens.