Vice City’s joystick detection is primitive. If your USB gamepad is jittery, the game might ignore the keyboard entirely. The keys.dat stores deadzone and axis inversion settings. Deleting or resetting keys.dat (and the .set file) often resolves phantom inputs.
, "keys.dat" is frequently referenced in the modding community—particularly in relation to Ultimate Trainers keys.dat gta vc
To manually edit your controls: