Actually no, it wouldn't. The walking animations haven't been synced in yet, so all you would get are a bunch of floating people or corpes firing at each other, and also the lag would affect the fight. It would look terrible.
Check config.cfg in your Vice City folder for the following lines:
bind F11 showscores
bind F10 showplayers
bind t say
bind F9 showchat
bind F12 screenshot
Then, right click the config.cfg and go to Properties. Select "Read Only" so the file does not get erased again.
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Btw, this problem should be added to the FAQ. I've noticed quite a few people complain about it.
For that someone would need to set up an authing server. As great an idea as it is, it might be too much trouble. The person running the authing server would receive millions of connections a day, from all over the world.
I think this is what caused my config.cfg to be cleared. I have now set it to read only, but why would you want to ruin the game for everyone else just so you could put in some stupid color.