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The colloquial term they were misremembering is “yellow car” effect.

Funny, I always called it “the GTA effect” as in either Grand Theft Auto 1 or 2, one of the top-down ones, once you got a particular kind of car you would see more of that same car on the road. I don’t know if it was an optimization strategy or just me falling victim to the effect I ascribed to the game.

In GTA III for example, which I have played a lot, it is definitely the case that it spawns a lot more of the players car, whatever model of car the player happens to be in.

Various sources online say that it’s because only a certain number of cars fit in memory at the same time so they use the car of the player along with some others. It makes sense, but it would be cool to get that confirmed from someone who actually worked on the GTA games/engine.

Later GTAs do this too, and at least for San Andreas I'm fairly sure its been confirmed by reverse engineering that that's how the engine works. Speedrunners use tricks to manipulate that cache so they have a better chance of getting something good.

Thank you, TI(2)L!

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