One of the largest video game distributors in Asia has halted sales of the Grand Theft Auto IV in Thailand after a teenager confessed to robbing and murdering a taxi driver while trying to recreate a scene from the game.

New Era Interactive said it had sent a note to all of its Thai stores telling them to pull the game off the shelves after a 19-year old high-school student confessed to killing a taxi driver with a knife he bought at a local branch of Tesco.

Police in Bangkok said that the youth "had wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game."

Polwat Chino, described by his parents as polite and diligent, was arrested late on Saturday after he was found trying to steer a cab backwards out of a Bangkok street with the severely wounded driver in the back seat, according to local newspaper reports.

He had paid to play the game at a local shop in Bangkok, and said he had needed more cash to continue playing it and that the taxi driver looked like an easy target.

Neighbours in the Bang Phlad district in central Bangkok called police after Mr Chino was heard pressing the car's horn while reversing down a dead end street. He had been trying to drive away - apparently in an attempt to recreate a scene from the game in which a criminal steals a car to evade police - but was unable to control a real car, police said.

The victim, a 54-year-old man from the poor northern province of Maha Sarakham, had been stabbed ten times.

"I needed money to play the game every day. My parents give me only 100 baht a day ($2.97), which is not enough. I am also fed up with them fighting. They are civil servants and do not make good money."

"My mother gave me 500 baht ($14.85), so in the evening I went to the Tesco Lotus superstore and bought two knives." Police have charged Mr Chino with robbery, causing death and possessing offensive weapons. If gound guilty, he faces death by lethal injection.