Here's part two of Rockstar's look behind the scenes at the making of Vice City, as we celebrate the game's 10th anniversary this year. This part focuses on sound design.

From the attention paid to the Vice City radio dial which hosted an unprecedented soundtrack of licensed music from the 80s plus original 'talk radio' stations, to the intensive sound design that helped make the game's open world come alive, today's edition of The Lab has some glimpses behind the scenes that have never been published online til today:

• “Radio Stations”- Tune in to audio from all 9 original radio stations from the Vice City radio dial: Fever 105 (soul hosted by Oliver "Ladykiller" Biscuit), Radio Espantoso (latin hosted by Pepe), Emotion 98.3 (ballads hosted by Fernando Martinez), Wave 103 (new wave hosted by Adam First), Wildstyle Pirate Radio (rap hosted by Super Rockin' Mr. Magic), V-Rock (rock hosted by Lazlow), Flash FM (pop hosted by Toni) and talk stations K-Chat and VCPR. For the 7 music stations, you can hear snippet mixes of selected excerpts whilst for the 2 talk radio stations, "The Lab" contains the station audio in its entirety for a full streaming listen.
• “SoundFX” - A special breakdown of just one small element of Vice City's sound design - helicopter sound effects. As the section explains, the total amount of space available at the time for sound effects would hold less than 12 seconds of music from a CD, therefore all of the sounds created for the city needed to be very short. Each sound has to be produced in isolation so that it can be controlled independently depending on how the player interacts with the game. Listen to the various individual sounds used and then check out a video demo of the final product in action as Tommy Vercetti lifts off in the chopper.
• "Pedestrians”- Wherever you go in the streets of Vice City - from the beach to the shopping mall to the airport - you're sure to overhear tons of colorful dialogue from the city's resident peds. Strutting playboys, lecherous pervs, blue collar slobs, glamorous fly girls, and more - have a look and listen to a sampling of the vast audio recorded in populating Vice City's ambient world.

In somewhat related news, Rockstar North finally launched their brand new website yesterday. Anyone who might be interested in working there, or who has interest in game development may like to check it out. For ordinary fans there's not really much to talk about but it's nice to see the company get a beautiful website to show itself off.