Los Santos · San Fierro · Las Venturas — 1992
GTA: San Andreas
“Grove Street. Home.” · October 26, 2004
San Andreas at a glance
Copies Sold27.5M+
PS2 RecordBest Seller
Cities in One State3
Years of Mods20+
1992, west coast
The Story
Five years after leaving the chaos of Los Santos, Carl “CJ” Johnson comes home for his mother's funeral — and gets pulled straight back into the life he ran from.
Grove Street Families
CJ's old set is falling apart: territory lost, loyalties shifting, and his brother Sweet holding the block together on stubbornness alone. Rebuilding the family is where it all starts.
Officer Tenpenny
Samuel L. Jackson voices the corrupt C.R.A.S.H. cop who owns CJ from the opening cutscene — one of the great villains in the series, loosely echoing the real Rampart scandal.
A Whole State
The story sweeps CJ from the streets of Los Santos through the countryside, into San Fierro's garage scene, and up to a Las Venturas casino heist before the homecoming finale.
ahead of its time
Features That Changed GTA
RPG Stats
Muscle, fat, stamina, driving skill, weapon proficiency, respect — eat too many Cluckin' Bell meals and CJ visibly gains weight. No GTA before or since went this deep.
Total Customization
Clothes, haircuts, tattoos, chains and car mods at Loco Low Co. and TransFender — the customization playbook GTA V and GTA 6 still follow started here.
Gang Territory Wars
Take and hold turf block by block in dynamic three-wave battles — and defend it, because the map fights back.
Planes & the Jetpack
Full pilotable aircraft for the first time in the series, flight school, parachutes — and the jetpack from Area 69 that became an icon of its own.
Swimming & Climbing
It sounds basic now, but San Andreas was the first GTA where water wasn't lethal and walls could be climbed — the map design changed forever.
Life Systems
Girlfriends, gym workouts, burglary side jobs, casino gambling, dancing minigames, lowrider hydraulics — a sandbox of systems no rival matched in 2004.
the numbers
Records & Firsts
Best-Selling PS2 Game Ever
About 17.3 million copies on PlayStation 2 alone — a record for the best-selling console generation in history that was never beaten — and 27.5 million+ across all platforms.
The Biggest Map of Its Era
Three full cities, forests, deserts, a mountain and twelve villages — roughly four times the size of Vice City, on 2004 hardware.
A Hollywood Cast
Samuel L. Jackson, James Woods, Peter Fonda, Ice-T and Chris Penn on the voice sheet — alongside Young Maylay's career-defining turn as CJ.
Critical Sweep
The highest-rated PS2 game of 2004, sweeping year-end awards and routinely appearing on greatest-games-of-all-time lists two decades later.
the game itself
San Andreas Screenshots
Official shots first, then what the community is still making 20 years on.
Official
No official screenshots uploaded yet. Drop image files into
/screens/san-andreas/ on the server and they appear here automatically —
or browse Rockstar's own game pages ↗.
From the Community
Every piece links back to its creator. Browse more on
DeviantArt ↗.
still in the conversation
San Andreas News
Latest headlines
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twenty years on
Legacy
The Mod Scene That Never Died
SA-MP and MTA turned San Andreas into a multiplayer platform years before GTA Online existed — roleplay servers built on this 2004 game still run communities today.
Meme Immortality
“Ah shit, here we go again.” Big Smoke's food order. “All you had to do was follow the damn train, CJ!” — twenty years later the internet still speaks fluent San Andreas.
Ports & the Definitive Edition
Mobile ports in 2013, and the 2021 Definitive Edition remaster — a famously rough launch that later patches, and a Netflix mobile release, gradually redeemed.
The DNA in GTA 6
Deep customization, a whole state instead of one city, culture-first storytelling — the San Andreas blueprint is all over Leonida. See what's confirmed on our GTA 6 map breakdown.