GTA

The abbreviation G.T.A. may stand for:

Arts and entertainment

Grand Theft Auto (video game)

Grand Theft Auto is an open world action-adventure video game developed by DMA Design and published by BMG Interactive. It was first released in Europe and North America in October 1997 for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. It was later re-released on 14 December 1997 in Europe and 30 June 1998 in North America for the PlayStation. It is the first instalment of the Grand Theft Auto series, a series that has sold more than 150 million units as of September 2013. The story follows a group of criminals in three fictionalised versions of US cities as they perform bank robberies, assassinations, and other crimes for their respective syndicates.

The game was originally intended to be named Race'n'Chase and to be developed for the Commodore Amiga, starting in 1996. and was nearly cancelled due to production issues.

Its successor, Grand Theft Auto 2, was released in October 1999.

Gameplay

Grand Theft Auto is made up of six levels split between the three main cities. In each level, the player's ultimate objective is to reach a target number of points, which is typically achieved by performing tasks for the city's local crime syndicate. Each level is initiated at a telephone box and has its own unique set of tasks. Successful completion of a mission rewards the player with points and opens the opportunity to attempt harder missions for higher rewards, while failure awards fewer points and may permanently seal off opportunities for more tasks. Completing missions also increases the player's "multiplier", which increases the points the player gets for doing other tasks. When the player amasses a total of $1,000,000, the next city is unlocked.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Grand Theft Auto IV is an open world action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It was released on 29 April 2008 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles, and on 2 December 2008 on Microsoft Windows. It is the eleventh title in the Grand Theft Auto series, and the first main entry since 2004's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Set within the fictional Liberty City (based on New York City), the single-player story follows a war veteran, Niko Bellic and his attempts to escape his past while under pressure from loan sharks and mob bosses. The open world design lets players freely roam Liberty City, consisting of three main islands.

The game is played from a third-person perspective and its world is navigated on-foot or by vehicle. Throughout the single-player mode, players play as Niko Bellic. An online multiplayer mode is included with the game, allowing up to 32 players to engage in both co-operative and competitive gameplay in a recreation of the single-player setting. Two expansion packs were later released for the game, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, which both feature new plots that are interconnected with the main Grand Theft Auto IV storyline, and follow new protagonists.

Mammoth

A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus, proboscideans commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived from the Pliocene epoch (from around 5 million years ago) into the Holocene at about 4,500 years ago in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. They were members of the family Elephantidae, which also contains the two genera of modern elephants and their ancestors. Mammoths stem from an ancestral species called M. africanavus, the African mammoth. These mammoths lived in northern Africa and disappeared about 3 or 4 million years ago. Descendants of these mammoths moved north and eventually covered most of Eurasia. These were M. meridionalis, the 'southern mammoths'.

Evolution

The earliest known proboscideans, the clade that contains the elephants, existed about 55 million years ago around the Tethys Sea area. The closest relatives of the Proboscidea are the sirenians and the hyraxes. The family Elephantidae is known to have existed six million years ago in Africa, and includes the living elephants and the mammoths. Among many now extinct clades, the mastodon is only a distant relative of the mammoths, and part of the separate Mammutidae family, which diverged 25 million years before the mammoths evolved.

Mammoth (ride)

Mammoth is a water coaster at Holiday World & Splashin' Safari in Santa Claus, Indiana, USA. It was designed and built beginning in 2011 by ProSlide Technology; it opened on May 11, 2012. Mammoth is named after the Mammoth, a now-extinct prehistoric mammal, keeping with the water park's safari theme. When it was completed in 2012, Mammoth became the world's longest water coaster at 1,763 feet (537 m) long. It claimed that title from Holiday World's first water coaster, Wildebeest, which is 1,710 feet (520 m) long.

History

On August 3, 2011, Holiday World & Splashin' Safari announced Mammoth, a ProSlide HydroMagnetic Mammoth that was to be built to the east of Wildebeest. Unlike Wildebeest, which uses 4-passenger, toboggan-style boats, Mammoth was to use round, 6-passenger boats. Another unique feature of Mammoth is its length. When completed, the water coaster was 1,763 feet (537 m) long, making it the longest water coaster in the world.

Mammoth opened on May 11, 2012. When the HydroMagnetic water coaster opened, it operated with ten 6-passenger boats. The riders in the 6-passenger "round spinner" boats are seated in a circle facing each other; when it opened, Mammoth was the only water coaster to utilize this type of boat.

Mammoth (John Varley)

Mammoth is a 2005 novel by author John Varley. The book centers around the concept of time travel, and gives quite a bit of discussion to the concept that there may be limits to science.

Synopsis