The new issue of Nintendo Power allegedly contains some of the first concrete information about the upcoming Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS.  The game appears to be an actual big 3D sandbox adventure similar in nature to its Sony PlayStation Portable cousins and not a top-down affair in the style of the original Grand Theft Auto.  Intriguing, yes?  Kombo has the news via another source who learned about it from yet another source.  Layers upon layers here, people.  We're through the looking glass on this one.

Now, however, and courtesy of the latest issue of Nintendo Power, we've finally got some news about the pint-sized GTA game, which was featured on the November cover of the Nintendo magazine. NeoGAF member botticus was nice enough to provide a nice recap of said information.

• True GTA game - sandbox gameplay, open-world environment, gritty crime narrative.
• M-rating
• Isometric camera angle
• Cel-shaded polygons w/ black borders
• good touch-screen implementation - "tasteful" minigames, streamlining interface
• UI based on a PDA - hub for email, contacts, map, music player, GPS, stat-tracking
• stats uploaded to Rockstar Social Club website via Wi-Fi
• finger-sized icons
• missions designed for shorter periods of play, arcade quality
• aiming with control pad, auto targeting with R button
• subtle autosteer
• if you fail a mission, you can jump back to the action sequence
• chain gun, flamethrower
• good portion of Liberty City is modeled in the game (different routes than console games)
• no problems with load times, draw-in or frame rate
• lots of pedestrians, cars, etc on screen
• Wanted system - objective is to disable police cars any way possible
• real-time weather effects, 24-hour day/night cycle
• lots of radio stations to listen to (more instrumentals than vocals)
• 800,000 lines of hand-optimized source code (hey, the people like the info, right?)
• no details yet on multiplayer/Wi-Fi features

I'm interested in playing the game, but I'm even more interested in learning how people react to it.  Will the GTA devotees buy a Nintendo DS just to play this game?  Will the curious casual crowd decide to see what the fuss over the infamous GTA is all about?  Will underinformed parents blindly buy the game for their children because it's on a "safe" Nintendo system?  The answers will start to roll in later this year.