The Southside Hoods, made up of two subdivisions: the Purple Nines and the Red Jacks, are a set of prominent African-American gangs in Shoreside Vale, Liberty City.
History
Events of GTA Liberty City Stories
In Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, set in 1998, they are assisted by the Leone Family in taking Wichita Gardens as their turf and driving out the Forelli Family. At this point in time, both gangs were allied and acted as a single gang.
Events of GTA III
By the time Grand Theft Auto III takes place in 2001, the Nines begin selling SPANK on local streets. The Redjacks, particularly their leader D-Ice, are against the drug and narcotic business and start a war with the Nines. After performing a drive-by on the Nines, using RC Bombs to destroy their armored vans, stopping D-Ice's Infernus from being destroyed and collecting some platinum from a crashed airplane Claude and D-Ice's Brother defeat them in a mêlée battle.
Curiously, the Red Jacks and Purple Nines do not attack each other on the streets, and will even assist each other if one is wounded or in battle, pertaining to all gang member characters being modeled after Southside Hoods. To cover up the error in the plot, D-Ice warns Claude that if he shoots at Nines, some Red Jacks would assume they were under fire and shoot at him as well.
The favorite radio stations of the Southside Hoods are Game Radio, MSX FM, K-Jah, Rise FM and The Liberty Jam.
No Purple Nines Glitch
- In Grand Theft Auto III, there is a glitch involving the Purple Nines, usually on the PS2 and the PS3. When the player finishes Rumble and makes a new profile and goes to Wichita Gardens, the player will notice the Purple Nines have vanished. If the player starts the game all over again with the same memory card inserted, the player will then realize the Purple Nines are still gone, like because that you already finished Rumble and Rockstar forgot to make sure they appear in another file. Thus if the player tries to make more profiles, The Nines will still not spawn and the player will always fail the mission, and this can prevent the player from getting 100%. To fix this, try starting the game on a new memory card, or have backup saves, or try to do 100% and never re-start the game otherwise the glitch comes into effect. Another method is to start a new game without the memory card inserted, then re-insert the memory card and save your game. For the PS3, delete every file and once the player revisits the area, the Nines start spawning again.
- There is a fix for this glitch made by Demarest of GTA Forums for the PC version, which helps you pass Uzi Money by killing Red Jacks instead of Purple Nines. The fix can be found here.
- To check if you have this glitch in the beginning of the game, you can go to Shoreside Vale using these methods.
Mission Appearances
GTA III
GTA Liberty City Stories
Trivia
- In Manhunt, there is a gang called the Hoods too, although it does not bear any resemblance to the Southside Hoods.
- The Southside Hoods, along with the Yakuza, are the only gangs in GTA III that do not act hostile towards Claude upon completion of the storyline.
- In another Rockstar game, Manhunt 2, there is a gang called Red Kings. Since both games took place in the same universe, it could be the same gang as Red Jacks, which went bigger and took the new name after defeating their rivals. This seems unlikely however, as the Red Kings are of mixed races and the Red Jacks are strictly Afro-American.
- The Purple Nines faction shares its gang color with the Ballas.
- The rival colors of the Red Jacks and the Purple Nines might be a reference to the Bloods and the Crips, street gangs from Los Angeles, which are also in New York (what Liberty City is based on), although only the color of the Bloods is represented in the game by the Red Jacks.
- Like the Cubans in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, they also are not hostile to the player.
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