I was always impressed with the sound design of SA. I think you can hear echos from larger guns, and on helicopters you can actually hear different sounds from the large blades and the rear balance prop when you zoom in on each part. Tires sound different on different surfaces if I remember correctly. Explosion sounds were great as well, with a good sound system it has plenty of bass to give it a great effect.
San Andreas was a formula which was perfected and never beaten when it came to GTA. That rags to riches progression which took you a full circle around the map and the way it did it and how it all unfolded was pure magic.
I fucking loved it. It was a proper adventure story! Making new friends, business ventures and becoming increasingly powerful and wealthy, buying new clothes and shit. The scene when you're back in LS and go get Sweet from jail, I had a suit, fancy sunglasses and a gold watch on CJ. Made the scene work so well when CJ is all "lets go get you some new clothes with my mountains of money I've made" and Sweet just goes "Clothes? What the fuck you on about, I wanna check on the hood."
Fun Fact: CJ's voice actor "Young Maylay" and GTA5 Franklin's voice actor Shawn Fonteno are real life cousins. Shawn Fonteno even voices one of the random grove street gang members.
I have to disagree about the soundtrack part, San Andreas was clearly catered to lovers of old school hip hop that had that hardcore grit gang banging tone, while also having some great country and alternative rock stations to fill in, IMO this created a much more diverse lineup of music I feel everyone could get behind and find a station they loved. I feel like Vice City kind of just played the safe route and went for the classic 80's and more retro disco styled music that pretty much everyone and their brother have heard before. All in all, it's really subjective and based on preference but for some reason I remember discovering a lot more diverse and different types of music as a child in San Andreas. This ultimately encouraged me to dive into different genres of music and become a bit more knowledgeable on the different types of music I could enjoy that I never really experienced before. Great Video!!
The music choices better reflect the tone of each era, too. The 80s was all about glamour and being over-the-top, a crescendo of increasing excess building up since the 60s; the 90s saw a counter-culture of "grunge" form in reaction to that - embracing the weird, gritty, and eclectic. It also reflects each eras attitude towards crime: 80s glam covered up or toned down the ugliness of it all, while the 90s embraced the unpleasant muddiness of it all.
It defo catered to old school hip hop, but tbh every station in that game was a gem. Like SF-UR captured the 90s house scene perfectly and the fact it was the default station in San Fierro when you entered vehicles set the tone. Same with K Rose and K-DST in Las Ventures desert
We're just gonna have to agree that Vice City's soundtrack just sounds like a Bad Spotify catered 80s mainstream Playlist. Vice City stories definitely did it better as the soundtrack actually sounds like the radio broadcasts you can actually listen to rn on UA-cam archived from decades ago.
The gang wars, dates, dancing and burgling were activities you could repeat to simulate life in los santos and be part of "the hood" - even when the game is complete you can go back to role playing that. Thats why these mechanics existed. Not for progression, but for role play purposes. They were sorely missed by lots of players in later iterations. And since the gtao RP mod has blown up, rockstar should be taking note and including all these things again in gta 6
I never even finished San Andreas. I just eat fucking chicken and pump iron at the gym. Then I ride my bike around the hood committing crimes. But eating chicken and getting huge are my favorite things. It’s a 100% accurate nigga simulator.
I never even finished San Andreas. I just eat fucking chicken and pump iron at the gym. Then I ride my bike around the hood committing crimes. But eating chicken and getting huge ate my favorite things. It’s a 100% accurate nagger simulator.
I was at my cousins house playing midnight club, when my cousins uncle from his mothers side barges in and whips out the GTA San Andres disk out of his pocket. He explained how he took it from Walmart lol. We were grateful as hell. The PlayStation 2 stayed on for like 2 weeks straight, neither of us had a memory card.
When I was a kid I literally had no idea gta san andreas had a storyline I didn't even care about that, when I got a bit older I went to the CJ icon on the map out of curiosity and realized there's missions in the game.... before that I was shooting folks on the street and just using cheats... that was on the ps2
up, down, left, right, L1, L2, R1, R2. That Jetpack cheat has been ingrained into my brain from all the times I would boot up a new save and play. Always a new one for some reason.
I think that's something not well known in the English speaking countries. When I first got this game I didn't even speak English and thought the Vagos were from Spain (I'm European) and I obviously didn't understand the context of the game, not even the city name references. I just wanted to goof around in this gigantic map that had so much interactivity. Even years later I would end up discovering smaller, untold mechanics the game had like the impound garage or the ghost car in the countryside (yeah this myth is real).
GTAIII was one of the most mind-blowing games for its time (probably hadn’t experienced anything like that aside from the leap to 3D with Mario 64). Realizing you could steal a cop car or an ambulance or a fire truck or a taxi and do MISSIONS specific to those vehicles, along with the story missions, the radio stations, the hidden packages, the rampage time trials, and the unique stunt jumps; it FELT like the closest a game had come to EVER simulating full-on “real-life” (kinda like Shenmue but LESS BORING).
Btw, the final mission ( 34:47 ) actually has a checkpoint, you don't have to complete it all at once - once you leave the crack fortress ( the running from explosions cutscene ), and then fail, you can restart the mission and it starts at that point. You only have to do it all over again if you do the usual thing - reload previous save and start again ( which would explain why many people don't know this )
It actually has two checkpoints, one after you escape and one after you kill Big Smoke, the mission is technically 3 seperate missions all played in sequence which is how they managed to add such a feature, pretty clever in my opinion.
There's also the feature that when you fail a mission that requires you to drive somewhere else if you re do it you can skip the initial driving section.
@@missionofsin3360 Cool, didn't know about that other one. Just a testament to how the game doesn't communicate the existence of the checkpoints AT ALL.
@@aerofool I'm assuming that's due to the nature of how they work, Given End of the Line is 1 mission split into 3 parts with each individual part being a separate mission as far as the script goes, If you ever seen someone play with the Rainbowmizer mod and do the random mission option, it's why they can get for instance Part 3 (Firetruck chase) first before ever getting Part 1(killing Smoke) and Part 2(The Escape). At most I could see Rockstar having added a text message at the top left mentioning the checkpoint, kinda like how Vice City Stories does for Side Mission checkpoints.
Did you also do the "save car in your garage (then fail mission on purpose) glitch" to have multiple copies of that one-off, this-mission-only water cannon riot control APC vehicle thingy?
I felt so stupid when I captured every gang territory in my first playthrough only to have it all wiped out from the Mulholland Intersection mission, where you were exiled to the middle of nowhere. First time in a game I had irl feelings of betrayal and was legit disoriented by the experience. There were so many game mechanics I just stumbled into as well, like the BMX drug delivery mission which I found on accident when my car exploded in front of the store and needed a ride back home. The game was unbelievably deep for a PS2 title and I judged GTA4 in a much harsher light for years because of the sheer number of things you could do in GTA San Andreas, which weren't immediately obvious in GTA4's Liberty City.
10:52 Couldn't disagree more,mostly because SA's soundtrack feels like a part of the game and not just a package of famous and easily likeable 80's songs packaged in. You have country, you have 90's and 70's rock, rap, both from the 90s and the 80's, funk, electronic and raggae. So many iconic songs that instantly remind you of the game. Comparing this games radio's to the previous ones is like comparing the maps, the ones in SA are far more grander and the song choices are also way more clever and masterfully picked because they all fit and enhance the games atmosphere. But you know, nothing Rockstar's sound unit can do about a person lacking taste or the sense to tell which soundtrack is more well crafted.
My first GTA was GTA2. I was like six years old and luckily my parents didnt know what they just bought me. Then I got the very first GTA some days later because I asked for it and it happend to be on sale due to the GTA2 release. Since then I played all GTA games in the order they got released. I liked all of them but San Andreas is by far my most liked GTA. It just was such a massive thing back then. I dont think even GTA 5 could come up with the hype, the attention by media and politics and I will never forget my father saying "Is this game the one we got you? ... Dont tell your mom but lets play together!" and this is how my dad and me started to play together a new campaign. He was very impressed about the deep storyline so we got multiple safegames to not to interfere with each other. Good times :)
i still both make this joke in a drive through fast food queue when ive got a car load of mates with me, and also get excited and then laugh when on a re play through and get to that mission 😂
we were all wrong, he is ordering for everyone in the car not just for himself. cj and rider for exanpled said both want a number nine, they told smoke what they want and he told it to the clerk compined with his, admitably still large, order.
I wrote out a 2 page essay on why i thought i was mature enough to get san an for Christmas when i was like 6-8 and i ended up getting the whole trilogy without trying
@CallMeMimi27 Obviously because inflation makes things more and more expensive over time. If a game that came out 5 years ago is still out selling a game that came out 5 years after it, either the old game is really good or the new game is garbage.
@@Sleepy_Apocalypse yeah. I guess im being unfair. they were different times. back in ps2 days you had to get physical copies or nothing. and Im not counting the pirated copies the game sold. probably brazil alone sold more copies of pirated gta san andreas than GTA V sold digital copies.
Still my favorite game of all time. It has everything i love. The world is unique with 3 big cities 1 big desert and 1 big countryside, atmosphere feels surreal, iconic characters, memorable radio, many great and memorable missions, amazing story, bunch or easter eggs, lot or memeable quote, all other little details and so many iconic moments. Timeless masterpiece in my heart
not only all that, but just FUN! i have never seen a negative comment about this game in the 100s of videos about it i have read, with millions of views. that is amazing. no matter how big/good a game, inevitably some edgelord would say "meh, sh*ts whack", but San Andreas looms large
@@chillhour6155If you're talking about what Jason Schrier said, the dialogue via the 2022 leaks and the first trailer completely debunks this. Hell even RDR2 and current GTAO dialogue completely dismisses this.
Born in 1994, if you was born around my age this game was your childhood. My dad bought me Vice city, and I had to hide it in a 007 nightfire case because my mum would flip. This was every parents nightmare and every child’s dream game, for me it remains the best ever game (for the time)
Fun thing, you'd be suprised. That someone like me who was born at 2006, this game was my childhood and played it constantly when I was 10-13 years old. Currently 18 now and I really have the urge to replay this game
San Andreas was a game changer and as a black kid I appreciated how all the charecters felt realistic instead of some basic deep voiced dudes speaking slang every 2 seconds. Its definitely the best game as far as content and GTA 4 is the best as far as story and shooting Mechanics
I remember when San Andreas wasn't out yet there was a loud assortment of people on the Internets who were upset at the idea of playing a "ghetto" character. Then the game came out and those voices were smothered to death by a memorable cast of characters in a good story surrounding a great game.
I was with you right up till _"GTA 4 is the best for story and shooting mechanics."_ GTA4 story is definitely a step up in from San Andreas, no debate there, but the shooting mechanics are absolute trash, even at the time. Most players just didn't notice it because the consoles had a very helpful automatic aim assist that locked onto targets, so all you had to do was cycle between enemies with a button press while holding down fire. But if you ever tried playing GTA4 on PC without the help of auto-aim, you'd remember the shooting mechanics to be extremely painful. In fact they were so bad, the game becomes effectively unplayable in the finale missions with mouse/free aim. I never could finish GTA4 using mouse and keyboard on PC, I got so frustrated I purchased a X360 controller for PC just to finish the game, and it was a peice of cake after that.
Yo gman. The breaking into houses thing actually does have something that makes that mechanic worth it. If you steal a total of 10 grand over the course of several missions doing it you get unlimited stamina. Dont know if you knew it, but still figured id put it out there for those who didnt know.
Honestly liked that feature. Also hoping it comes back in gta 6 even if its cut down to 15 houses "most houses aren't worth your time so here are a few rich ones that are."
This game was THE masterpiece to early to mid High School year me. The most impactful experience to me was being ejected from Los Santos. I'm sure there are other games that do that pivot, but to me, after having done courier work for money, memorizing pick-ups (DE by the Los Santos Port, right beside the highway), and capturing the 'hood for Grove, all of a sudden to be cut off, uprooted, and forced into unfamiliar territory was amazing. CJ had to pick up the pieces, burn certain bridges while gaining new allies (shoutout Woozie and Toreno), building up fortune, and securing his future. This then snaps back harder when Sweet was released - who had his heart and mind rooted to Grove Street, undermining your efforts and achievements because to Sweet, it was all about the 'hood. Never had the game made me feel not one, but two backlashes after dedicated efforts and progress. Played it again recently and it still does hold up well, a definite masterpiece of its time.
33:19 there's a trip skip for long missions like "Photo Opportunity." Once you reach a certain point and fail, you'll get the option for a trip skip when you restart the mission. A lot of players don’t know about this because they immediately load the save after failing
Fun Fact: San Andreas is the ONLY mainline (excluding 1, 2, ChinaTown Wars and Advance) GTA game that start you off in the free roam after the intro cutscene. Meaning that the player is able to explore the entire map of San Andreas without failing mission. Unlike other titles that forces you to drive to a waypoint. Edit: It has come to attention that San Andreas isn't the only one allow you explore the map and do activities probably the same as (3, Los and VCS as well).
@@marcelosoares7148 No, Vice City tells you to go to a waypoint before you can progress. For instance you can't do any of the rampages or side missions (Ambulance or Vigilante) because your stuck in a mission that is you need to complete in order to do that. San Andreas on the otherhand allows the player to collect the oysters, complete Firefighter etc.
@@checkmate5336 Is that a behavior specific to a version of the game or something? Because i just tested the mobile version on my phone (not DE) and the waypoint is just a waypoint. You can do rampages, buy properties and do side missions like the paramedic one before going to it.
@@checkmate5336 Actually, you can do everything that is possible to do at the start of the game right off the bat. You can do vigilante, get enough money and buy a safehouse and save. I have a save file at 44% before going into the Ocean View hotel where you talk to Sonny over the cellphone. There is something about the code of the intro mission that behaves differently from the rest because you can do side content and save.
35:46 Okay, this might sound weird, but the "NPCs sometimes drive into you" behavior is actually scripted in the game, for some god forsaken reason. It's not a glitch or unintended side effect of pathfinding, there's literally a bit of code that tells the game "if certain checks pass and randomly generated number is correct, turn AI car into player's vehicle".
@@GggmanlivesI can't find a specific first hand mention of it, but there are a lot of accounts of people experiencing this behavior from NPCs while playing the game even on PS2. Whether or not it's deliberately programmed, it happens a lot to people so it might be intentional 🤷🏻
The fact that a game this massive and feature complete was originally a PS2 game is crazy. Rockstar doesn't get enough credit for their technical wizardy of getting this game made and it being as good as it is on that hardware.
Cesar was not only a member, but the leader of Varrios Los Aztecas; in the story at the same time as the Ballas crushing the Families, the Vagos (the other Hispanic gang, and the only other gang you can take territory from). So he has complementary goals with CJ even if he wasn't with Kendyl.
I was wondering if Cesar was the leader or just a member. I only questioned it because the first time you met him he had to beg one of the guys not to confront Cj. His actions weren't giving leader.
He’s not a leader, at least not at the beginning of the game. That’s why he has to beg one of the other Aztecas to not interfere between him and CJ. But after the Aztecas get wiped out and Cesar is on the run he says all the Azteca OGs were arrested or in hiding. Later in the game when Cesar takes back his territory from the Vagos it could be argued he became the leader of the Aztecas but IMO I think he was more focused on his future with Kendl and only did that to help out his homies
I think SA still has my fav music and is the best, ima big hip hop enjoyer and I also grew up on Rnb oldies from my mom, and the rap was what made me as a young kid delve more into hip hop off the game, it also showed me my first taste of good country and rock music and more (Im 23 and black if the context helps on why its a big thing how this soundtrack opened up my music taste long before i realized) truly love the soundtrack and how accurate and lively it makes the setting of the game to me
Wait ... Rockstar in 2004 stole the weed-burning mission from Farcry 3 ... 8 years before Farcry 3 came out? You learn something new and utterly crazy every day from the Gman.
Glad you pointed out the oddly flat sounds they used for the guns. It always bugged me a bit too. It's a stretch but I can only guess maybe they were going for that lo-fi kind of sound you get in a lot of 90's hiphop
Something about San Andreas is perfect to me, I loved wandering around and felt immersed in the world, finding weird places, and oh my god I loved the weather! The raining/storms was my favorite! Also I loved the chaotic NPC drivers LOL! I loved going to the highway and watch an insane pile up happen, fights break out and them ramping off each others cars, their speed was SO FAST! I still remember my fav specific spot on the highway to watch and cause all the craziness lol! Oh also I played on xbox but still had a blast! (I played some on Playstation but it was at my friend's place c: )
35:14 A bit of an oversight, but last time I checked, there IS a checkpoint on the final mission that starts at the final chase. There's only a few missions if failed, you have the option to skip the entire ride from one location to another. Also, hot take: If someone is using the "Definitive" Edition footage for their GTA-centric videos (or unrelated) should have their video editing licenses revoked.
I remember when I was young, one of my old childhood friends invited me over his house to play San Andreas. I remember being confused why there was no sound coming from the game. Turned out his parents were strict and he had to play it with the volume down..........I immediately left and went home to play it myself.
It's crazy how big SA feels compared to V despite a smaller map, just because it has so much more detail going on. Also, I'd love a compilation of all of Gman's "yer mum" jokes.
V is really just one mediocre city with a bunch of nothing north of it. It's like if you spent the entirety of San Andreas in Los Santos with a midgame 6-8 hour detour to a lifeless and empty countryside
@@fackayugoolgol2792 Exactly. You've got Los Santos, what else? Mountains, mountains, more mountains... a tree here or there... it's just kind of boring. The draw distance really helped sell it, too. I'm using a mod to increase it a bit, but not enough to ruin the illusion. Then you've got Definitive Edition where it had no draw distance period. Before the update that added in the fog, there was a mod that did that. Honestly, the fog patch looked like crap compared to the mod version that came before it. Reminded me a lot of V actually, it was really cool, and what GSG should've implemented instead of the weird cloud cover they went with.
The game itself was so much fun to play, but i think what made it even better was the modding community. Flying cars, no damage, anything you could think of. Maybe im too young but i feel like thats where modding really started to blow up.
The thought that Rockstar stole the weed burning mission from Far Cry 3 is silly lol. GTA:SA came out wayyyy before FC3 did, an entire console generation
That mission has some interesting backstory. If you owned the original PS2 release, that mission was much harder. The fuel meter was just a timing meter that Rockstar decided to use so you had to play almost perfectly to win. The Greatest Hits version, Xbox and PC patched this mission where if you don't accelerate, you don't lose fuel either so you can end the mission with half of your fuel still there easily.
Its literally so easy ive done it multiple times on ps2 and like 3 times on my phone even sounds like a skill issue just practice with slowing down to drop the bombs besides the later one where you use the rc heli with the magnet although its a cool mission its a pain
So that RC mission is really hard for people and a while back I tried my best to explain how it works if you or anyone is interested nobody else put the effort into it the way I did promise
@@weclock Nah. Hardest game was GTA 3. That game was full of booby traps in the main missions that forced you to re-do them. I remember one specifically where you have to inspect a couple of garages and some have guys inside that can almost one shot you.
Vice City has possibly one of the worst mission designs only rivaled by GTA 1 & London. Many missions were hard for the sake of being hard (Aim botting enemies, Bullet sponge ass missions. The boat missions with terrible controls. And the racing missions again with terrible controls etc.)
Just a heads up about Zero's missions; they're easier because they got patched for the Xbox & PC versions to massively reduce the difficulty vs the PS2 original press of the game. They also patched over to PS2 when they re-released it for Greatest Hits. Tried the plane one killing the mail men a load of times with my brothers and gave up as our original copy was stupidly hard. One time when we misbehaved, our Mum ended up doing us a favour breaking the disc as when Dad bought us a new copy later, it was post-patch.
I think my only critique story wise was that Wuzi Wu was not in the final mission. He was an integral character in the story and it's kind of a shame that he wasn't part of the last cutscene. Heck, even Catalina had the final word (moans) after the main story.
Gta san andreas and 4 was peak rockstar and we will never get close to that quality ever again. Also im gonna say it, follow that train is not a hard mission
@@UmiZoomR idk, I remember doing it in a few tries as a kid and never thinking much about it. Only years later with all the memes I found out people think this mission is hard/terrible.
@@Dufffaaa93 ah yes, boring ass game with bad gunplay and controls and heavily scripted repetitive missions where you can't do shit in them, truly a masterpiece
every single sound effect in this game is perfect! from tire screeches, to bystanders screaming "ahhhh!" and running away, close your eyes and you'd remember what its from!
One thing I also like in san Andreas is that, for now your doing a mission about gangwar and next your gonna be stealing a military jet, and infiltrating the area 51.
I think San Andreas is the best written GTA game. It’s full of genuinely incredible dialogue, the scenes with tenpenny and co were the highlights. Funny and tense and uncomfortable in the best possible way.
Cj was actually a rapper Young Maylay... and Ryder was Mc Eight whos music was in the playlist. Side Note: Catalina was played by Genesis Rodriguez who played In the Movie Identity Theft.
I dont think it can be understated how monumental the hype, release and reception of this game was. I still remember the commercials on MTV, I still remember every kid in school talking about it, everyone was playing it. Whenever I have friends over for a beer, I sneak in a song from the soundtrack and watch them just go "Aaaah, San Andreas..." 20 years later, it has that effect on people who played it back then.
This games is the reason I play videogames right now. I didn't like videogames when I was a child, in fact I remember being gifted a PSP and I freaking rejected it as I didn't like games. But a friend of mine in school who happened to live on my same building talked to me about San Andreas and then invited me to play it. We spent hundreds of hours playing coop on his PS2. And that game introduced me into gaming. Thing is, as a child I didn't like linear games, I wanted to do my own thing, but ignoring the objectives in other games was not fun, but in San Andreas I could just ignore everything and play as I wished. The cheat codes helped, as I did not play through the story, I used cheat codes to get to San Fierro and Las Venturas, and that coupled with the sheer amount of things you could do, made it so I spent a lot of my childhood just roleplaying on San Andreas and trying things out (like going across the map with an Hydra on coop, while one drove and the other tried to remaing on the wings). I've now completed the game a few times and even got the 100% twice and I still love it.
I feel like the music point is a bit unfair. It's set in the LA hood in the 90s mainly and you travel out to new places. It makes sense that the main music focus is what people like cj, black people, would have listened to. Ilsley brothers, boys II men, Bob Marley, Snoop, they're all legends in the black community
Coming back to SA after a while and it's hard to get used to how the autoaim target is based on where your character is looking instead of where the camera is pointed
10:44 The ghost car in the forest is definitely one of the real ones. Either that, or my copy was just bugged. I know it was real because I remember I was really into investigating all of these things with my brother. We didn't find bigfoot, we didn't find mothman, but we definitely found the ghost car in the forest that will agro you when you're near it. It spawn near a lake as fas as I remember.
I still think San Andreas is the best GTA game of all time. The map is huge and I like that the game evolves as you play it. The story is long and takes many hours to complete, but even as a sandbox game not focused on the story its so much fun. I like how the game takes its time to establish its characters. It has its flaws and compared to todays games, the graphics are pretty rough. But the game is just so much fun to replay and just have so much fun with.
Vice City is my favourite too. They really crammed all the 80's culture and fiction into a single game with that one. San Andreas was good too, but it didn't feel like quite the time capsule that Vice City did.
@@venicec3310 I grew up in the 90's as well. But with San Andreas I felt it was focused solely on hip hop music and gang life, whereas Vice City was more of "everything".
Thing is San andreas was set in 92 the stereotypical 90s looks really started in the mid to late 90s like NSYNC the 3d videogames the internet and a lot of the commercials.
Although some things are inaccurate for the early 90s, the cop cars are those round 94-96 Chevy Caprices, when they should've been those boxy late 80s Caprices, the 2005 Ford GT is in the game for some reason, also lack of squared out high top fades on the black male characters which was a super common hairstyle of the time. @@venicec3310
Nothing, I mean nothing GTA related has been able to make me feel the same way San Andreas made me feel. I'd go to the settings, switch to radio and let it play through out the house. It spoke to my race and culture so well.
As awesome as the high definition (not definitive) gameplay is, there's something liminal and magical and overall nostalgic about seeing gameplay on an early game capture, or playing off a CRT TV in the early-mid 2000s in its pixely, low quality graphics, and then you hear Hellraiser or Them Bones and it's enough to throw me into a trance
The thing that impressed me with GTA:SA is that from the start you can explore the entire first island, but you never leave the boundary of the city because it seems so barren up north and all your activities are in the city. But then you get exiled from the city and are forced to stay in the countryside and you're like, "This was here the whole time?!" The game just keeps shifting in tone and setting as each section opens up, and it feels like the devs had so much time to work on the game that they just kept adding in more and more activities and missions to do.
Vice city gave me nostalgia for a decade I wasn’t even born in. I fell in love with the setting, so much so it even made me look for shows/movies that had something similar, like Dexter and Burn Notice. It exposed me to songs I most likely wouldn’t have ever heard. Hell, it probably even shaped my love for mob movies. I sure can’t say any of those things about San Andreas. Haha
@@gowankommando I’ve always wanted to give that show a try but every time I get the urge to start it, it’s never on any streaming services. Haha That show definitely looks like it would scratch the Vice City itch, though.
Just MAGICAL man I mean GTAIV was truly peak but the others I played before it was so much more intimate... Whenever I'm feeling edgy or hate life I just pop GTA4 on and go berserk... The online lobbies were really nice.
Rockstar Games as a company in general is an amazing entity in itself. They always get the right amount of talent to capture a true-to-life feel in their games, and they never fail in that department. They are most definitely the most consistent company out there. The GTA series alone had some great games. The GTA games got better and better with every title release. GTA V is the game (especially on PC) that made me not really want to go back and play the other titles. Although they were all great, but you get what I'm trying to say here. The detail in GTA V was astonishing in every aspect, from customizing vehicles to buying homes and the endless mods and so on (PC), which is insane. GTA 6 should and will carry the torch and harp on from this and should be even better.
There were definitely some great GTA clones 6th gen. Mercenaries, Destroy All Humans, Spider-Man 2, The Getaway, The Simpsons Hit and Run to name a few. Mercenaries on PS2 was my jam, amazing game!
I hope this is sarcasm because only like 2 of the games you listed are gta clones. The Getaway and Simpsons H&R but honestly the Getaway is more inspired by gta than a clone
@@coryhamilton936we used to call all open world game GTA clones haha and, at the time of those game releases, we called them GTA clones because we didn’t have the term “open world game” because GTA was about it really. Mercenaries was GTA but with air strikes and call ins (even though it was way more than that and holy crap I love the first Mercenaries: it’s such a deceptively enormous game but you’d only know that if you got more than a couple hours into it) Destroy all Humans was GTA but you’re an alien with a spaceship, Spiderman 2 was GTA but you’re a super hero , Simpsons Hit and Run was GTA but simpsons (that was an obvious enough comparison haha) so yeah I’d agree they’re not clones of GTA (besides simpsons making a genuine effort to be like GTA but for simpons) but they were all inspired by and made around the time of / in the wake of GTA being such a huge phenomena… ramble ramble…
@@TheMrBigJeff open world games have been around since MS DOS with Elder Scrolls. There was actual GTA clones like True Crime, Hit and Run, Scarface, etc.
GTA: SA was the game that took Eastern Europe by storm. Everyone had a copy even if some of us got said copies from that friend of a friend that "sells" games behind the block on blank CD's. An achievement comparable to CS 1.6 and Heroes of Might and Magic 3. Besides the gameplay being peak GTA at that time you played as a young lad from a poor neighbourhood fighting his way to the top. A story many of us could relate to back in those days (hell some can still relate to it today). I started with GTA: VC but SA became my favorite. IV is amazing in it's own rights tho especially if you want a more serious GTA.
9:26 reverb fart
Thank you! ❤
Sniff
Ok but where's the part when he mentions my mom?
15:05 DSP reference
Thank you, I almost unsubscribed...
ALL WE HAD TO DO, WAS UPSCALE THE DAMN GAME, CJ
All they had to do 😢😭😭😭
hahahahahah
From your lips to God's ears.
Ah sh*t here we go again😞
You mean Rockstar.
The fact you went from not being able to swim in the two previous games to being able to compete in triathlons in SA sums up the leap really.
Not really
@@trapez77 Yea, really.
@@hanayaseth you can swim in Chinatown wars too.
@@trapez77 chinatown wars released after san andreas...
@@Senor_Gago is Chinatown wars a leap up from vice city because you can swim?
This is a Busta free zone
No Bustas allowed
Buster straight Buster
Ryda
What about Busta Rhymes?
@@Reigndolphhe aint no busta
Little busta can't even swing a gat
Buster Nut
I actually think GTA SA's gun sounds are extremely iconic. They're the kinda sounds you instantly recognize the game their from.
Vice city ones actually make the game feel older
I was always impressed with the sound design of SA. I think you can hear echos from larger guns, and on helicopters you can actually hear different sounds from the large blades and the rear balance prop when you zoom in on each part. Tires sound different on different surfaces if I remember correctly. Explosion sounds were great as well, with a good sound system it has plenty of bass to give it a great effect.
What is the game at 8:35? I can't understand what the guy is saying and the subtitles are wrong due to him speaking so fast.
@@Dark.Syndicate That's Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater. Great game. They're coming out with a remake of it soon.
Vice City had the best soundscape for guns.
Don't forget that San Andreas also had a 2-player splitscreen mode!
Well it wasn't really split screen. Both players had to stay close to each other because they shared the screen.
True.
Wooo...
Unfortunately the Definitive Edition doesn't have 2 player mode
Nor on PC
San Andreas was a formula which was perfected and never beaten when it came to GTA. That rags to riches progression which took you a full circle around the map and the way it did it and how it all unfolded was pure magic.
true
Love that genuine sense of accomplishment in all factors. and it's all thanks to you, the player.
And how you could progress your stats too
It was a good example for kids to say no to weed as well. CJ was always adamant that he “ain’t down with that sh*t”
I fucking loved it. It was a proper adventure story! Making new friends, business ventures and becoming increasingly powerful and wealthy, buying new clothes and shit.
The scene when you're back in LS and go get Sweet from jail, I had a suit, fancy sunglasses and a gold watch on CJ. Made the scene work so well when CJ is all "lets go get you some new clothes with my mountains of money I've made" and Sweet just goes "Clothes? What the fuck you on about, I wanna check on the hood."
Fun Fact: CJ's voice actor "Young Maylay" and GTA5 Franklin's voice actor Shawn Fonteno are real life cousins. Shawn Fonteno even voices one of the random grove street gang members.
"Hey Franklin, let's go bowling."
"Man, fuk u CJ, I'll see you at work."
Everyone knows this you smartass
That's not a fun fact it's common knowledge at this point😮
You a hoe but nice to know for anyone new the franchise@@mrmr-qx4jq
also Maylay said that rockstar were AWFUL to work with, which is why if they ever remake SA, he refuses to participate
I have to disagree about the soundtrack part, San Andreas was clearly catered to lovers of old school hip hop that had that hardcore grit gang banging tone, while also having some great country and alternative rock stations to fill in, IMO this created a much more diverse lineup of music I feel everyone could get behind and find a station they loved. I feel like Vice City kind of just played the safe route and went for the classic 80's and more retro disco styled music that pretty much everyone and their brother have heard before. All in all, it's really subjective and based on preference but for some reason I remember discovering a lot more diverse and different types of music as a child in San Andreas. This ultimately encouraged me to dive into different genres of music and become a bit more knowledgeable on the different types of music I could enjoy that I never really experienced before. Great Video!!
The music choices better reflect the tone of each era, too. The 80s was all about glamour and being over-the-top, a crescendo of increasing excess building up since the 60s; the 90s saw a counter-culture of "grunge" form in reaction to that - embracing the weird, gritty, and eclectic. It also reflects each eras attitude towards crime: 80s glam covered up or toned down the ugliness of it all, while the 90s embraced the unpleasant muddiness of it all.
It defo catered to old school hip hop, but tbh every station in that game was a gem. Like SF-UR captured the 90s house scene perfectly and the fact it was the default station in San Fierro when you entered vehicles set the tone. Same with K Rose and K-DST in Las Ventures desert
@@ScottThePisces SF UR was insane and WCTR? Holly shit i love THAT!!!
We're just gonna have to agree that Vice City's soundtrack just sounds like a Bad Spotify catered 80s mainstream Playlist.
Vice City stories definitely did it better as the soundtrack actually sounds like the radio broadcasts you can actually listen to rn on UA-cam archived from decades ago.
San Andreas might've actually shaped my taste in music
The gang wars, dates, dancing and burgling were activities you could repeat to simulate life in los santos and be part of "the hood" - even when the game is complete you can go back to role playing that. Thats why these mechanics existed. Not for progression, but for role play purposes. They were sorely missed by lots of players in later iterations. And since the gtao RP mod has blown up, rockstar should be taking note and including all these things again in gta 6
Its interesting because most of gta protaginists feel like fixers. Cj feels like a natural gangster.
this is so right i enjoyed it all even though it meant nothing
They bought the FiveM team so gta 6 is gonna have a crazy leap from gta 5
I never even finished San Andreas. I just eat fucking chicken and pump iron at the gym. Then I ride my bike around the hood committing crimes. But eating chicken and getting huge are my favorite things. It’s a 100% accurate nigga simulator.
I never even finished San Andreas. I just eat fucking chicken and pump iron at the gym. Then I ride my bike around the hood committing crimes. But eating chicken and getting huge ate my favorite things. It’s a 100% accurate nagger simulator.
I was at my cousins house playing midnight club, when my cousins uncle from his mothers side barges in and whips out the GTA San Andres disk out of his pocket. He explained how he took it from Walmart lol. We were grateful as hell. The PlayStation 2 stayed on for like 2 weeks straight, neither of us had a memory card.
These are like core memories for us guys
Sounds like an experience I could have had lol
Playing PS2 without memory card? 😂
@@syntax2004 it builds character
@@syntax2004 it changes a man but honestly playing PS2 without a memory card is crazy
When I was a kid I literally had no idea gta san andreas had a storyline I didn't even care about that, when I got a bit older I went to the CJ icon on the map out of curiosity and realized there's missions in the game.... before that I was shooting folks on the street and just using cheats... that was on the ps2
up, down, left, right, L1, L2, R1, R2. That Jetpack cheat has been ingrained into my brain from all the times I would boot up a new save and play. Always a new one for some reason.
I think that's something not well known in the English speaking countries. When I first got this game I didn't even speak English and thought the Vagos were from Spain (I'm European) and I obviously didn't understand the context of the game, not even the city name references.
I just wanted to goof around in this gigantic map that had so much interactivity. Even years later I would end up discovering smaller, untold mechanics the game had like the impound garage or the ghost car in the countryside (yeah this myth is real).
That was me when I first played GTA3 as a kid 😅
GTAIII was one of the most mind-blowing games for its time (probably hadn’t experienced anything like that aside from the leap to 3D with Mario 64).
Realizing you could steal a cop car or an ambulance or a fire truck or a taxi and do MISSIONS specific to those vehicles, along with the story missions, the radio stations, the hidden packages, the rampage time trials, and the unique stunt jumps; it FELT like the closest a game had come to EVER simulating full-on “real-life” (kinda like Shenmue but LESS BORING).
For me, it was not knowing how to save the game. lol
Btw, the final mission ( 34:47 ) actually has a checkpoint, you don't have to complete it all at once - once you leave the crack fortress ( the running from explosions cutscene ), and then fail, you can restart the mission and it starts at that point.
You only have to do it all over again if you do the usual thing - reload previous save and start again ( which would explain why many people don't know this )
It actually has two checkpoints, one after you escape and one after you kill Big Smoke, the mission is technically 3 seperate missions all played in sequence which is how they managed to add such a feature, pretty clever in my opinion.
There's also the feature that when you fail a mission that requires you to drive somewhere else if you re do it you can skip the initial driving section.
@@missionofsin3360 Cool, didn't know about that other one. Just a testament to how the game doesn't communicate the existence of the checkpoints AT ALL.
@@aerofool I'm assuming that's due to the nature of how they work, Given End of the Line is 1 mission split into 3 parts with each individual part being a separate mission as far as the script goes, If you ever seen someone play with the Rainbowmizer mod and do the random mission option, it's why they can get for instance Part 3 (Firetruck chase) first before ever getting Part 1(killing Smoke) and Part 2(The Escape).
At most I could see Rockstar having added a text message at the top left mentioning the checkpoint, kinda like how Vice City Stories does for Side Mission checkpoints.
Did you also do the "save car in your garage (then fail mission on purpose) glitch" to have multiple copies of that one-off, this-mission-only water cannon riot control APC vehicle thingy?
I felt so stupid when I captured every gang territory in my first playthrough only to have it all wiped out from the Mulholland Intersection mission, where you were exiled to the middle of nowhere. First time in a game I had irl feelings of betrayal and was legit disoriented by the experience.
There were so many game mechanics I just stumbled into as well, like the BMX drug delivery mission which I found on accident when my car exploded in front of the store and needed a ride back home. The game was unbelievably deep for a PS2 title and I judged GTA4 in a much harsher light for years because of the sheer number of things you could do in GTA San Andreas, which weren't immediately obvious in GTA4's Liberty City.
quick question...did u take it all back after words???
The BMX drug mission?! What?!
@@nfaisnfgay yeah I never heard about this
@nfaisnfgay @alvaro701 Roboi's Food Mart Courier Mission, there is one courier mission in each city...
i still remember my mate telling me not to do the same, i guess i waited for a PC release and he had it on PS2, so he knew way before i did haha
10:52 Couldn't disagree more,mostly because SA's soundtrack feels like a part of the game and not just a package of famous and easily likeable 80's songs packaged in. You have country, you have 90's and 70's rock, rap, both from the 90s and the 80's, funk, electronic and raggae. So many iconic songs that instantly remind you of the game. Comparing this games radio's to the previous ones is like comparing the maps, the ones in SA are far more grander and the song choices are also way more clever and masterfully picked because they all fit and enhance the games atmosphere. But you know, nothing Rockstar's sound unit can do about a person lacking taste or the sense to tell which soundtrack is more well crafted.
Agreed. I only listened to VCPR while playing VC anyway 🤣. Pressing issues with Maurice Chavez 🤣
My first GTA was GTA2. I was like six years old and luckily my parents didnt know what they just bought me.
Then I got the very first GTA some days later because I asked for it and it happend to be on sale due to the GTA2 release.
Since then I played all GTA games in the order they got released. I liked all of them but San Andreas is by far my most liked GTA. It just was such a massive thing back then. I dont think even GTA 5 could come up with the hype, the attention by media and politics and I will never forget my father saying "Is this game the one we got you? ... Dont tell your mom but lets play together!" and this is how my dad and me started to play together a new campaign. He was very impressed about the deep storyline so we got multiple safegames to not to interfere with each other.
Good times :)
_"I'll have two number 9s, number 9 large, number 6 with extra dip, number 7, two number 45s, one with cheese and a large soda."_
..so what are you guy's having ?
i still both make this joke in a drive through fast food queue when ive got a car load of mates with me, and also get excited and then laugh when on a re play through and get to that mission 😂
EVERY homie reads this line in Smokes voice 😎
we were all wrong, he is ordering for everyone in the car not just for himself. cj and rider for exanpled said both want a number nine, they told smoke what they want and he told it to the clerk compined with his, admitably still large, order.
This order was deliberately long to give the Ballas chance to pass around without the Grove Street boys getting bounced
Man the Thrill of playing GTA SA behind your parents back. Now thats gaming dude.
I wrote out a 2 page essay on why i thought i was mature enough to get san an for Christmas when i was like 6-8 and i ended up getting the whole trilogy without trying
Had to play it with the volume all the way down to 1 😂😂
My big sister snitched on me for playing it even though i really didn’t understand any of the adult stuff. I just liked driving around lol.
@@zangl2955 bruh if you like driving stuff then theres NFS UNDERGROUND and Most WANTED BACK THEN. We all know you going to Pig Pen
My mom was totally fine letting me play the entire series. Yet I wasn’t allowed to watch ‘The Simpsons’ or ‘Power Rangers’ for some reason…
Pizza Cashier: Ryder not again
Ryder: It ain't me, fool.
SA has the most iconic theme, while IV has the most chilling tone to it. SA is a vibe but IV is dark and haunting.
San Andreas is easily my favorite in the franchise.
Same
Highest selling PS2 game of all time. CJ was the best salesman Sony could ask for.
still can't beat the 8 billon dollars rockstar made with gta V and the 8 billion dollars made with gta online in micro transactions.
@CallMeMimi27 Obviously because inflation makes things more and more expensive over time. If a game that came out 5 years ago is still out selling a game that came out 5 years after it, either the old game is really good or the new game is garbage.
@@Sleepy_Apocalypse yeah. I guess im being unfair. they were different times. back in ps2 days you had to get physical copies or nothing. and Im not counting the pirated copies the game sold. probably brazil alone sold more copies of pirated gta san andreas than GTA V sold digital copies.
Still my favorite game of all time. It has everything i love. The world is unique with 3 big cities 1 big desert and 1 big countryside, atmosphere feels surreal, iconic characters, memorable radio, many great and memorable missions, amazing story, bunch or easter eggs, lot or memeable quote, all other little details and so many iconic moments. Timeless masterpiece in my heart
not only all that, but just FUN! i have never seen a negative comment about this game in the 100s of videos about it i have read, with millions of views. that is amazing. no matter how big/good a game, inevitably some edgelord would say "meh, sh*ts whack", but San Andreas looms large
“Grove street fo life homie, fo life.”
Best game ever made imo. Red Dead 2 came close to dethroning it but never did it when all said and done for me.
GTA VC = Setting and OSTs
GTA SA = Content and Map
GTA IV = Physics, Atmosphere and Gameplay Mechanics.
GTA V = Micro-transaction, Live Service BS, betrayed its fanbase to cater to online and where Take Two / 2K greediness began rearing its ugly head.
GTA V = shark card's
GTA VI = not punching down
GTA SA had a way more diverse soundtrack I mean every station no matter the genre was a gem
If I'm correct, It's also crazy that GTA4 RAGE engine was still yet during its infancy.
@@chillhour6155If you're talking about what Jason Schrier said, the dialogue via the 2022 leaks and the first trailer completely debunks this. Hell even RDR2 and current GTAO dialogue completely dismisses this.
My whole music taste revolved around years of playing San Andreas constantly at the age of 7! “Freeeee biiirrrdddd yeahhhhh” 😂
Followed by one of the best guitar solos of all time :)
Born in 1994, if you was born around my age this game was your childhood. My dad bought me Vice city, and I had to hide it in a 007 nightfire case because my mum would flip. This was every parents nightmare and every child’s dream game, for me it remains the best ever game (for the time)
Fun thing, you'd be suprised. That someone like me who was born at 2006, this game was my childhood and played it constantly when I was 10-13 years old. Currently 18 now and I really have the urge to replay this game
San Andreas was a game changer and as a black kid I appreciated how all the charecters felt realistic instead of some basic deep voiced dudes speaking slang every 2 seconds. Its definitely the best game as far as content and GTA 4 is the best as far as story and shooting Mechanics
As a white guy I agree
As a white supremacist I agree
I remember when San Andreas wasn't out yet there was a loud assortment of people on the Internets who were upset at the idea of playing a "ghetto" character. Then the game came out and those voices were smothered to death by a memorable cast of characters in a good story surrounding a great game.
@@STOPTHECLOWNS581😂clown
I was with you right up till _"GTA 4 is the best for story and shooting mechanics."_
GTA4 story is definitely a step up in from San Andreas, no debate there, but the shooting mechanics are absolute trash, even at the time. Most players just didn't notice it because the consoles had a very helpful automatic aim assist that locked onto targets, so all you had to do was cycle between enemies with a button press while holding down fire.
But if you ever tried playing GTA4 on PC without the help of auto-aim, you'd remember the shooting mechanics to be extremely painful. In fact they were so bad, the game becomes effectively unplayable in the finale missions with mouse/free aim. I never could finish GTA4 using mouse and keyboard on PC, I got so frustrated I purchased a X360 controller for PC just to finish the game, and it was a peice of cake after that.
Yo gman. The breaking into houses thing actually does have something that makes that mechanic worth it. If you steal a total of 10 grand over the course of several missions doing it you get unlimited stamina. Dont know if you knew it, but still figured id put it out there for those who didnt know.
Honestly liked that feature. Also hoping it comes back in gta 6 even if its cut down to 15 houses "most houses aren't worth your time so here are a few rich ones that are."
I 100% ted gta san andreas for funzies :P loved that game
No effing way?! Is that true?
It doesn’t give you infinite stamina it gives you infinite sprint if you get 10,000 doing the burglar missions
dude, with all due respect, San Andreas's radio SMOKES Vice City's radio. SA truly had something for everybody
100%
Best lazlow and kdst
Kinda hard to top vice city
you could even add your own tracks and make ur own radio station on pc too
Its trash compared to vice city, and your opinion is shit
This game was THE masterpiece to early to mid High School year me.
The most impactful experience to me was being ejected from Los Santos. I'm sure there are other games that do that pivot, but to me, after having done courier work for money, memorizing pick-ups (DE by the Los Santos Port, right beside the highway), and capturing the 'hood for Grove, all of a sudden to be cut off, uprooted, and forced into unfamiliar territory was amazing.
CJ had to pick up the pieces, burn certain bridges while gaining new allies (shoutout Woozie and Toreno), building up fortune, and securing his future.
This then snaps back harder when Sweet was released - who had his heart and mind rooted to Grove Street, undermining your efforts and achievements because to Sweet, it was all about the 'hood.
Never had the game made me feel not one, but two backlashes after dedicated efforts and progress. Played it again recently and it still does hold up well, a definite masterpiece of its time.
"Officers Tempeny and Kowalski" My man turned him to a mf penguin
Your comment got me 😂
To me, San Andreas will always be my favorite in the GTA series
33:19 there's a trip skip for long missions like "Photo Opportunity." Once you reach a certain point and fail, you'll get the option for a trip skip when you restart the mission. A lot of players don’t know about this because they immediately load the save after failing
To be fair, it's quicker reloading a save file than driving ALL the way back to San Fierro to pick up the mission again.
@@Gggmanlives21:56 you're being sarcastic right? Far cry 3 came out 8 years later..
@@nathan420drake Yes. Obviously.
@@Gggmanlives Well your delivery sucks. You're like the Critical drinker of gaming. That's not a compliment.
@@Gggmanlives aww he deletes comments
12:20 one thing i like about the radio on this game is that when you have high wanted level and put it on radio los santos it will play only og music
3:31 this mf really said Tenpenny and KOWALSKI???
Smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave.
Fun Fact: San Andreas is the ONLY mainline (excluding 1, 2, ChinaTown Wars and Advance) GTA game that start you off in the free roam after the intro cutscene.
Meaning that the player is able to explore the entire map of San Andreas without failing mission. Unlike other titles that forces you to drive to a waypoint.
Edit: It has come to attention that San Andreas isn't the only one allow you explore the map and do activities probably the same as (3, Los and VCS as well).
You can do the same thing in Vice City.
@@marcelosoares7148 No, Vice City tells you to go to a waypoint before you can progress. For instance you can't do any of the rampages or side missions (Ambulance or Vigilante) because your stuck in a mission that is you need to complete in order to do that. San Andreas on the otherhand allows the player to collect the oysters, complete Firefighter etc.
@@checkmate5336 Is that a behavior specific to a version of the game or something? Because i just tested the mobile version on my phone (not DE) and the waypoint is just a waypoint. You can do rampages, buy properties and do side missions like the paramedic one before going to it.
@@marcelosoares7148 While the mobile version is different from the PC and PS2. But then again I could be wrong.
@@checkmate5336 Actually, you can do everything that is possible to do at the start of the game right off the bat. You can do vigilante, get enough money and buy a safehouse and save. I have a save file at 44% before going into the Ocean View hotel where you talk to Sonny over the cellphone. There is something about the code of the intro mission that behaves differently from the rest because you can do side content and save.
35:46 Okay, this might sound weird, but the "NPCs sometimes drive into you" behavior is actually scripted in the game, for some god forsaken reason.
It's not a glitch or unintended side effect of pathfinding, there's literally a bit of code that tells the game "if certain checks pass and randomly generated number is correct, turn AI car into player's vehicle".
So they coded in real drivers.
Citation needed.
@@IgnoringSilver95"trust me"
@@GggmanlivesI can't find a specific first hand mention of it, but there are a lot of accounts of people experiencing this behavior from NPCs while playing the game even on PS2. Whether or not it's deliberately programmed, it happens a lot to people so it might be intentional 🤷🏻
@@DropsOfMars I genuinely find that fascinating haha. It would explain a lot.
The fact that a game this massive and feature complete was originally a PS2 game is crazy. Rockstar doesn't get enough credit for their technical wizardy of getting this game made and it being as good as it is on that hardware.
And it came out 3 years after Vice City. Some companies were knocking it out of the park back then.
R* knew how horribly it'll be (seeing other openworld in the console) and R* did their magic.
Yeah those rockstar devs were magical sadly they are not the rockstar devs of today
And what about getting GTA V to run as well as it did on a 360?? That would never seize to amaze me.
@@TKIvanov true
22:00 how does a game that came out in 2004 steal something from a game that came out in 2012?
He even shows a clip of Far Cry 3 where it’s extremely obvious that game is newer. Is he trolling? lol
Dammit, now I'm gonna have to replay San Andreas again. I hope you're happy, Gman!
22:45
Bottom left corner.
MAX PANE
Bullet proof glass.
Nice 😂
Cesar was not only a member, but the leader of Varrios Los Aztecas; in the story at the same time as the Ballas crushing the Families, the Vagos (the other Hispanic gang, and the only other gang you can take territory from). So he has complementary goals with CJ even if he wasn't with Kendyl.
I was wondering if Cesar was the leader or just a member. I only questioned it because the first time you met him he had to beg one of the guys not to confront Cj. His actions weren't giving leader.
He’s not a leader, at least not at the beginning of the game. That’s why he has to beg one of the other Aztecas to not interfere between him and CJ. But after the Aztecas get wiped out and Cesar is on the run he says all the Azteca OGs were arrested or in hiding. Later in the game when Cesar takes back his territory from the Vagos it could be argued he became the leader of the Aztecas but IMO I think he was more focused on his future with Kendl and only did that to help out his homies
Raygun got me
Haven't seen any of it yet, but I did see her crying on bbc this am because the world is talking so much shit 😂
Like the terrible aussie breakdancer?
@@charlesswenson259 Hey! It's the best dancer Australia has! Have some respect! xD
😂😂@@stalinmceizn
Raygun is a can of worms, like her dance
I think SA still has my fav music and is the best, ima big hip hop enjoyer and I also grew up on Rnb oldies from my mom, and the rap was what made me as a young kid delve more into hip hop off the game, it also showed me my first taste of good country and rock music and more (Im 23 and black if the context helps on why its a big thing how this soundtrack opened up my music taste long before i realized) truly love the soundtrack and how accurate and lively it makes the setting of the game to me
Wait ... Rockstar in 2004 stole the weed-burning mission from Farcry 3 ... 8 years before Farcry 3 came out? You learn something new and utterly crazy every day from the Gman.
quantum brain cells
6:38 Mom Joke One
32:35 Mom Joke Two
don't forget mom joke 3
Where did I miss 🙆🏾♂️@@liquiddiflin
@@akiba2x0 3 inches in ya mum
@@akiba2x0 3 inches deep in your mom
@@akiba2x0youtube keeps taking down my comments i think you might've won
3:30 who is kowalski dawg 😭😭😭
Didn't know that penguin from Madagascar was in GTA SA 💀
Could be misspell or he just messing in all senses with polish second names, lol
I thought he said it making a joke lol cuz he knew, maybe not idk.
Tenpenny: "Pulaski, analysis!"
Pete Kowalski is femboy from Bully 💀💀💀💀💀💀
Glad you pointed out the oddly flat sounds they used for the guns. It always bugged me a bit too. It's a stretch but I can only guess maybe they were going for that lo-fi kind of sound you get in a lot of 90's hiphop
Something about San Andreas is perfect to me, I loved wandering around and felt immersed in the world, finding weird places, and oh my god I loved the weather! The raining/storms was my favorite!
Also I loved the chaotic NPC drivers LOL! I loved going to the highway and watch an insane pile up happen, fights break out and them ramping off each others cars, their speed was SO FAST! I still remember my fav specific spot on the highway to watch and cause all the craziness lol!
Oh also I played on xbox but still had a blast! (I played some on Playstation but it was at my friend's place c: )
Yes. All that.
22:00 Far Cry 3 came out 8 years after San Andreas, so it’s the other way around.
35:14 A bit of an oversight, but last time I checked, there IS a checkpoint on the final mission that starts at the final chase. There's only a few missions if failed, you have the option to skip the entire ride from one location to another.
Also, hot take: If someone is using the "Definitive" Edition footage for their GTA-centric videos (or unrelated) should have their video editing licenses revoked.
I remember when I was young, one of my old childhood friends invited me over his house to play San Andreas. I remember being confused why there was no sound coming from the game. Turned out his parents were strict and he had to play it with the volume down..........I immediately left and went home to play it myself.
Same i played the whole game without sound because my parents would nag me if they heard i was playing a game instead of studying
@@leaveme3559 Is that not what school was for? 😅
@@Drizzlla no my parents wanted me to study all the time 🤣....sucks for them even during study time I was day dreaming about games
It's crazy how big SA feels compared to V despite a smaller map, just because it has so much more detail going on.
Also, I'd love a compilation of all of Gman's "yer mum" jokes.
V is really just one mediocre city with a bunch of nothing north of it. It's like if you spent the entirety of San Andreas in Los Santos with a midgame 6-8 hour detour to a lifeless and empty countryside
@@fackayugoolgol2792 Exactly. You've got Los Santos, what else? Mountains, mountains, more mountains... a tree here or there... it's just kind of boring. The draw distance really helped sell it, too. I'm using a mod to increase it a bit, but not enough to ruin the illusion. Then you've got Definitive Edition where it had no draw distance period. Before the update that added in the fog, there was a mod that did that. Honestly, the fog patch looked like crap compared to the mod version that came before it. Reminded me a lot of V actually, it was really cool, and what GSG should've implemented instead of the weird cloud cover they went with.
Imagine if Rockstar kept the same idea in there GTA games but with more details like more interiors like going into house malls and more.....
The game itself was so much fun to play, but i think what made it even better was the modding community. Flying cars, no damage, anything you could think of. Maybe im too young but i feel like thats where modding really started to blow up.
The thought that Rockstar stole the weed burning mission from Far Cry 3 is silly lol. GTA:SA came out wayyyy before FC3 did, an entire console generation
Congratulations. You got the joke.
Thank you for using a properly modded/fixed version of the game, instead of broken and stretched OG one or god forbid the Definitive Edition.
Stretched? Do you mean the widescreen option enabled?
@@sandertu8366 yeah wtf, how is the og version broken?
Never could muster the patience to beat the remote controlled plane mission. My loss, I'm sure
Can't really blame you there. They were a gigantic pain in the ass.
@@CharlieFoxtrot06 No kidding. Super frustrating
That mission has some interesting backstory.
If you owned the original PS2 release, that mission was much harder. The fuel meter was just a timing meter that Rockstar decided to use so you had to play almost perfectly to win.
The Greatest Hits version, Xbox and PC patched this mission where if you don't accelerate, you don't lose fuel either so you can end the mission with half of your fuel still there easily.
Its literally so easy ive done it multiple times on ps2 and like 3 times on my phone even sounds like a skill issue just practice with slowing down to drop the bombs besides the later one where you use the rc heli with the magnet although its a cool mission its a pain
So that RC mission is really hard for people and a while back I tried my best to explain how it works if you or anyone is interested nobody else put the effort into it the way I did promise
to this DAY, there are still whole communities of people dedicated to this game and people still make new mods for it
Ive tried in real life, i just cant find a human who dislikes this game. It has to be top 5 all time.
San Andreas and Vice City are soo good. I miss the simpler games.
Lmao San Andreas is the most complicated game
@@weclock I mean compared to GTA4(with having to deal with friendships and your phone), and GTA5(with having to deal with… well… everything)
@@weclockare you 12?
@@weclock Nah. Hardest game was GTA 3. That game was full of booby traps in the main missions that forced you to re-do them. I remember one specifically where you have to inspect a couple of garages and some have guys inside that can almost one shot you.
Vice City has possibly one of the worst mission designs only rivaled by GTA 1 & London. Many missions were hard for the sake of being hard (Aim botting enemies, Bullet sponge ass missions. The boat missions with terrible controls. And the racing missions again with terrible controls etc.)
21:56 I genuinely can’t believe there are people in this comment section who didn’t understand that Gman was being sarcastic here
It’s shocking haha
Kowalsky Really ? It's Pulaski played by the late Chris Penn from reservoir dogs.
God forbid someone made a mistake right.
Just a heads up about Zero's missions; they're easier because they got patched for the Xbox & PC versions to massively reduce the difficulty vs the PS2 original press of the game. They also patched over to PS2 when they re-released it for Greatest Hits.
Tried the plane one killing the mail men a load of times with my brothers and gave up as our original copy was stupidly hard. One time when we misbehaved, our Mum ended up doing us a favour breaking the disc as when Dad bought us a new copy later, it was post-patch.
I think my only critique story wise was that Wuzi Wu was not in the final mission. He was an integral character in the story and it's kind of a shame that he wasn't part of the last cutscene. Heck, even Catalina had the final word (moans) after the main story.
Gta san andreas and 4 was peak rockstar and we will never get close to that quality ever again.
Also im gonna say it, follow that train is not a hard mission
Its wonky at first but you really should pick it up quickly
Red dead redemption 2 is peak Rockstar
Not hard just terrible
@@UmiZoomR idk, I remember doing it in a few tries as a kid and never thinking much about it. Only years later with all the memes I found out people think this mission is hard/terrible.
@@Dufffaaa93 ah yes, boring ass game with bad gunplay and controls and heavily scripted repetitive missions where you can't do shit in them, truly a masterpiece
I played it for almost 1200hours back then in my teenage room
I don't know how many hours, but as much as possible for a little over 2 years.
2:09 you thought we would go over this voicecrack?
every single sound effect in this game is perfect! from tire screeches, to bystanders screaming "ahhhh!" and running away, close your eyes and you'd remember what its from!
The fact that. You could import music from CDs into the radio from the disc drive was genuinely incredible.
Another Fun Fact: Micheal Hunter the writer and composer for the Theme for GTA San Andreas also composed GTA IV Theme song.
glad to see you did a 20 year anniversary retrospective, i also replayed it a few weeks ago, still a legendary game
One thing I also like in san Andreas is that, for now your doing a mission about gangwar and next your gonna be stealing a military jet, and infiltrating the area 51.
I think San Andreas is the best written GTA game. It’s full of genuinely incredible dialogue, the scenes with tenpenny and co were the highlights. Funny and tense and uncomfortable in the best possible way.
Cj was actually a rapper Young Maylay... and Ryder was Mc Eight whos music was in the playlist.
Side Note: Catalina was played by Genesis Rodriguez who played In the Movie Identity Theft.
That's some interesting sh*t, for sure.
I dont think it can be understated how monumental the hype, release and reception of this game was. I still remember the commercials on MTV, I still remember every kid in school talking about it, everyone was playing it.
Whenever I have friends over for a beer, I sneak in a song from the soundtrack and watch them just go "Aaaah, San Andreas..."
20 years later, it has that effect on people who played it back then.
Yes. That.
16:04 this man is out for blood
Ps2 version is still my favorite version of San Andreas to this day, it’s easily the least borked version of the game.
it also has the best dusk / dawn filters
The Switch version isn't terrible. Needs a lot of work, still...but delivers the experience.
This games is the reason I play videogames right now. I didn't like videogames when I was a child, in fact I remember being gifted a PSP and I freaking rejected it as I didn't like games. But a friend of mine in school who happened to live on my same building talked to me about San Andreas and then invited me to play it. We spent hundreds of hours playing coop on his PS2. And that game introduced me into gaming. Thing is, as a child I didn't like linear games, I wanted to do my own thing, but ignoring the objectives in other games was not fun, but in San Andreas I could just ignore everything and play as I wished. The cheat codes helped, as I did not play through the story, I used cheat codes to get to San Fierro and Las Venturas, and that coupled with the sheer amount of things you could do, made it so I spent a lot of my childhood just roleplaying on San Andreas and trying things out (like going across the map with an Hydra on coop, while one drove and the other tried to remaing on the wings). I've now completed the game a few times and even got the 100% twice and I still love it.
I feel like the music point is a bit unfair. It's set in the LA hood in the 90s mainly and you travel out to new places. It makes sense that the main music focus is what people like cj, black people, would have listened to. Ilsley brothers, boys II men, Bob Marley, Snoop, they're all legends in the black community
I had no idea that pinky from next Friday voiced big smoke. That’s awesome.
I remember when the first trailer dropped with guns and roses. Refreshing the QuickTime video over and over. Never been so stoked.
The trailer I watched was the Tupac one. I was so hyped.
Coming back to SA after a while and it's hard to get used to how the autoaim target is based on where your character is looking instead of where the camera is pointed
10:44 The ghost car in the forest is definitely one of the real ones. Either that, or my copy was just bugged. I know it was real because I remember I was really into investigating all of these things with my brother. We didn't find bigfoot, we didn't find mothman, but we definitely found the ghost car in the forest that will agro you when you're near it. It spawn near a lake as fas as I remember.
I still think San Andreas is the best GTA game of all time. The map is huge and I like that the game evolves as you play it. The story is long and takes many hours to complete, but even as a sandbox game not focused on the story its so much fun. I like how the game takes its time to establish its characters. It has its flaws and compared to todays games, the graphics are pretty rough. But the game is just so much fun to replay and just have so much fun with.
nah, 4 is miles better
Vice City is my favourite too. They really crammed all the 80's culture and fiction into a single game with that one.
San Andreas was good too, but it didn't feel like quite the time capsule that Vice City did.
Really it felt super 90’s especially if you grew up in la during the time
@@venicec3310 I grew up in the 90's as well.
But with San Andreas I felt it was focused solely on hip hop music and gang life, whereas Vice City was more of "everything".
Thing is San andreas was set in 92 the stereotypical 90s looks really started in the mid to late 90s like NSYNC the 3d videogames the internet and a lot of the commercials.
@@sevenproxies4255 those things were a big deal in la at the time bro
Although some things are inaccurate for the early 90s, the cop cars are those round 94-96 Chevy Caprices, when they should've been those boxy late 80s Caprices, the 2005 Ford GT is in the game for some reason, also lack of squared out high top fades on the black male characters which was a super common hairstyle of the time. @@venicec3310
21:59 incorrect rockstar did not steal that from far cry 3 because San Andreas came out 2004 years before far cry 3
ummmmmm ackshually
are you not from a western contry
Issa joke
Nothing, I mean nothing GTA related has been able to make me feel the same way San Andreas made me feel. I'd go to the settings, switch to radio and let it play through out the house. It spoke to my race and culture so well.
As awesome as the high definition (not definitive) gameplay is, there's something liminal and magical and overall nostalgic about seeing gameplay on an early game capture, or playing off a CRT TV in the early-mid 2000s in its pixely, low quality graphics, and then you hear Hellraiser or Them Bones and it's enough to throw me into a trance
The thing that impressed me with GTA:SA is that from the start you can explore the entire first island, but you never leave the boundary of the city because it seems so barren up north and all your activities are in the city. But then you get exiled from the city and are forced to stay in the countryside and you're like, "This was here the whole time?!" The game just keeps shifting in tone and setting as each section opens up, and it feels like the devs had so much time to work on the game that they just kept adding in more and more activities and missions to do.
Vice city gave me nostalgia for a decade I wasn’t even born in. I fell in love with the setting, so much so it even made me look for shows/movies that had something similar, like Dexter and Burn Notice. It exposed me to songs I most likely wouldn’t have ever heard. Hell, it probably even shaped my love for mob movies. I sure can’t say any of those things about San Andreas. Haha
Miami Vice?
@@gowankommando I’ve always wanted to give that show a try but every time I get the urge to start it, it’s never on any streaming services. Haha That show definitely looks like it would scratch the Vice City itch, though.
i felt the opposite. GTA SA resonated with me more lol
Just MAGICAL man I mean GTAIV was truly peak but the others I played before it was so much more intimate... Whenever I'm feeling edgy or hate life I just pop GTA4 on and go berserk... The online lobbies were really nice.
The fact he kept putting Raygun in there is hilarious.
Cracked me up
Rockstar Games as a company in general is an amazing entity in itself. They always get the right amount of talent to capture a true-to-life feel in their games, and they never fail in that department. They are most definitely the most consistent company out there. The GTA series alone had some great games. The GTA games got better and better with every title release. GTA V is the game (especially on PC) that made me not really want to go back and play the other titles. Although they were all great, but you get what I'm trying to say here. The detail in GTA V was astonishing in every aspect, from customizing vehicles to buying homes and the endless mods and so on (PC), which is insane. GTA 6 should and will carry the torch and harp on from this and should be even better.
Brooo!
The minigames in the main missions are absolutely hilarious! :D
There were definitely some great GTA clones 6th gen. Mercenaries, Destroy All Humans, Spider-Man 2, The Getaway, The Simpsons Hit and Run to name a few. Mercenaries on PS2 was my jam, amazing game!
I hope this is sarcasm because only like 2 of the games you listed are gta clones. The Getaway and Simpsons H&R but honestly the Getaway is more inspired by gta than a clone
@@coryhamilton936we used to call all open world game GTA clones haha and, at the time of those game releases, we called them GTA clones because we didn’t have the term “open world game” because GTA was about it really. Mercenaries was GTA but with air strikes and call ins (even though it was way more than that and holy crap I love the first Mercenaries: it’s such a deceptively enormous game but you’d only know that if you got more than a couple hours into it) Destroy all Humans was GTA but you’re an alien with a spaceship, Spiderman 2 was GTA but you’re a super hero , Simpsons Hit and Run was GTA but simpsons (that was an obvious enough comparison haha) so yeah I’d agree they’re not clones of GTA (besides simpsons making a genuine effort to be like GTA but for simpons) but they were all inspired by and made around the time of / in the wake of GTA being such a huge phenomena… ramble ramble…
The scarface game is really good. And in some ways a far more advanced vice city.
@@TheMrBigJeff open world games have been around since MS DOS with Elder Scrolls. There was actual GTA clones like True Crime, Hit and Run, Scarface, etc.
I miss stealing cars and shooting guns in Spiderman 2
GTA: SA was the game that took Eastern Europe by storm. Everyone had a copy even if some of us got said copies from that friend of a friend that "sells" games behind the block on blank CD's. An achievement comparable to CS 1.6 and Heroes of Might and Magic 3.
Besides the gameplay being peak GTA at that time you played as a young lad from a poor neighbourhood fighting his way to the top. A story many of us could relate to back in those days (hell some can still relate to it today).
I started with GTA: VC but SA became my favorite. IV is amazing in it's own rights tho especially if you want a more serious GTA.
GTA 4 > 5
God I miss the driving physics so much....
Don't miss it, just play the GTA 4 man
you forgot to add. if you go to the desert or any military vehicles, K-DST always plays around along with Tom Petty's Running Down The Dream.
15:30 THANK YOU! Insulting St. Anger has brought you to my subscriptions list.
Everybody PC Bang kid in the Philippines loved this game, because this was the best game installed in the Rental PC. Shoutout to all the OGs there.