Hidden packages

From Grand Theft Auto - Wiki on Neoseeker

Hidden Packages are the collectibles in GTA3 and Vice City. In GTA3 they resembled an oval white package that hovered above ground and had a white glow to them. In Vice City they resembled a Statue and also hovered above ground and had a white glow.

Hidden Packages were never required to advance the story. Instead their purpose served to aid the player by rewarding them a weapon spawning at their safehouse with every 10 packages found. They were also a requirement for the ever elusive 100%.

In both games 100 Packages were hidden throughout the city. Unless you were a devoted and long term player it was very unlikely that you would locate them all without some sort of guide.

In San Andreas the packages were replaced with Tags, Photo Ops, Horseshoes and Oysters. In Vice City Stories we had to shoot 99 Red Balloons which added a new challenge as we were now forced to look up while searching for the balloons as the majority were high up under a buildings awning or something. Vice City Stories added a new handy feature which enabled us to check our map and view all the balloons that we had discovered. So far Vice City Stories is the only GTA game to incorporate such a handy feature.

GTA4 had us looking for 200 Pigeons to shoot.