San Andreas: the state-sized GTA that Leonida echoes, twenty-two years on
Three cities, RPG stats, gang wars, planes and a jetpack on 2004 hardware. San Andreas is still the best-selling PlayStation 2 game ever and the first GTA built as a whole state. Here is what it did, and what GTA 6 takes from it.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas arrived on October 26, 2004, two years after Vice City, and it was the first time the series tried to be a state rather than a city: Los Santos, San Fierro and Las Venturas, with countryside, desert, a mountain and twelve villages between them, roughly four times the size of Vice City on PlayStation 2 hardware. Leonida is the first mainline GTA since to build a whole state around one city. The full page is on the Classics section.
Grove Street, home
Five years after leaving Los Santos, Carl "CJ" Johnson comes back for his mother's funeral and gets pulled straight into the life he ran from: a set falling apart, his brother Sweet holding the block together on stubbornness, and Officer Tenpenny, voiced by Samuel L. Jackson, owning him from the opening cutscene. The story sweeps from the streets of Los Santos through the countryside, into San Fierro's garage scene and up to a Las Venturas casino heist. James Woods, Peter Fonda, Ice-T and Chris Penn fill out the cast alongside Young Maylay's career-defining CJ.
The systems
No GTA before or since went as deep. RPG stats: muscle, fat, stamina, driving skill, weapon proficiency, respect; eat enough Cluckin' Bell and CJ visibly gains weight, which the Extended Look suggests GTA 6's gym brings back. Customisation: clothes, haircuts, tattoos, chains and car mods, the playbook GTA V and GTA 6 still follow, and previews of GTA 6 suggest a haircut is also a way to shed a police description. Gang territory wars, taken and held block by block. Planes and the jetpack, with flight school and parachutes. Swimming and climbing, the first time water was not lethal. Girlfriends, gym workouts, burglary jobs, casino gambling, lowrider hydraulics: a sandbox no rival matched in 2004.
The numbers
About 17.3 million copies on PS2 alone, the best-selling game on the best-selling console generation in history, and more than 27.5 million across platforms. The highest-rated PS2 game of 2004, and a fixture on greatest-of-all-time lists two decades later.
The afterlife
SA-MP and MTA turned it into a multiplayer platform years before GTA Online existed; roleplay servers built on a 2004 game still run communities. The internet still speaks fluent San Andreas, from "Ah shit, here we go again" to the train. And the ambition of a whole state, with a city that is only part of it, is the ambition GTA 6 picks up with Vice City, the Keys, the Grassrivers and Mount Kalaga; see the map. Previous in the line: Vice City.
Quick answers
When did GTA: San Andreas come out?
October 26, 2004, on PlayStation 2. It sold about 17.3 million copies on PS2 alone, a record for the platform, and more than 27.5 million across all platforms.
Who voices Officer Tenpenny in San Andreas?
Samuel L. Jackson, playing the corrupt C.R.A.S.H. officer who owns CJ from the opening cutscene.
Sources: SixStarsWanted: San Andreas · Rockstar Games
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