Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is Rockstar North’s 2004 open-world crime game, set across a fictional version of early-1990s California and Nevada, and it remains the best-selling PlayStation 2 title ever made. You play Carl “CJ” Johnson, who comes home to Los Santos after his mother’s murder and rebuilds a street gang into a statewide empire. This is the archive entry: story, map, cast, mechanics, every version, and where you can still play it.
The story
The year is 1992. CJ has spent five years in Liberty City, far from the Grove Street Families and the trouble that drove him away. A phone call from his brother Sweet pulls him back: their mother, Beverly, has been killed in a drive-by at the family home on Grove Street.
He lands at Los Santos International, and within minutes the local corrupt cops of C.R.A.S.H. pick him up. Officer Frank Tenpenny and his partner Eddie Pulaski frame CJ for the murder of a fellow officer, then dump him in Ballas territory. That is the setup: a man who left his old life behind, now stuck in it again with a crooked police unit holding a leash.
From there the game sends you across three cities and a lot of open desert. It takes roughly 30 to 40 hours to finish the story if you play it straight, and well past 60 if you chase 100 percent.
Heads up
The full arc below spoils the entire game, including the ending. Skip to the next section if you have never finished it.
The full arc
Act one is Los Santos. CJ rebuilds Grove Street with Sweet, Big Smoke and Ryder, takes back blocks from the Ballas, and meets his sister Kendl’s boyfriend, Cesar Vialpando. Cesar shows CJ something that changes everything: the green Sabre used in the drive-by, parked next to Big Smoke, Ryder and C.R.A.S.H. The gang’s own senior members sold out the family and are running drugs for Tenpenny.
Before CJ can act, Sweet walks into an ambush under the Mulholland Intersection. The mission “The Green Sabre” ends with Sweet shot, arrested and jailed. Tenpenny ships CJ out to the countryside and starts using him as a disposable errand boy.
Act two covers the rural counties and San Fierro. CJ meets The Truth, a paranoid hippie with a farm full of weed, and wins a run-down garage in Doherty from Catalina, the volatile Liberty City-bound gangster from GTA III. In San Fierro he builds a crew with Cesar, Kendl and the blind Triad boss Wu Zi Mu, then takes apart the Loco Syndicate piece by piece. Jizzy B. dies at his club. T-Bone Mendez and Ryder die at the Pier 69 shootout. Mike Toreno vanishes.
Toreno turns out to be a government agent. He offers a deal: fly dangerous jobs for him and he will get Sweet released. Act three is the desert and Las Venturas. CJ steals a jetpack from the Area 69 base with The Truth, goes into business with Woozie at the Four Dragons Casino, and gets tangled with the Leone family at Caligula’s Palace. “Breaking the Bank at Caligula’s” is the heist that pays for everything.
Act four returns to Los Santos. Tenpenny’s corruption trial collapses when the key witness Pulaski is killed, the city erupts in riots, and Sweet comes home. The brothers retake Grove Street. In “End of the Line,” CJ fights through Big Smoke’s fortified crack palace and shoots him. Tenpenny arrives, snatches the money, and dies when his hijacked fire truck crashes off the bridge onto Grove Street. CJ and Sweet walk away, and the Johnson house is quiet for the first time since the opening.
The city and map
San Andreas is a state, not a city. That was the pitch, and it is still the thing people remember first. Three fictional cities sit on one landmass of roughly 36 square kilometres, several times larger than Vice City, with countryside, mountains, desert and a working highway network tying it all together.
| Region | Based on | Unlocks |
|---|---|---|
| Los Santos | Los Angeles | Available from the start |
| Red County, Flint County, Whetstone | Rural inland California | After “The Green Sabre” |
| San Fierro | San Francisco | After the countryside missions |
| Bone County, Tierra Robada | Nevada and Mojave desert | After San Fierro |
| Las Venturas | Las Vegas | After the desert missions |
Los Santos is the gang city. Ganton, Idlewood, East Los Santos and Jefferson are Grove Street, Ballas and Vagos turf. Vinewood holds the film studios and the hillside mansions, including the one Madd Dogg loses and CJ later takes.
San Fierro is built around hills, trams and the Gant Bridge, a red suspension bridge that even has a gift shop sign bragging about its size. The Doherty garage you win from Catalina becomes your base there.
Las Venturas is a casino strip surrounded by desert. The Four Dragons and Caligula’s Palace anchor the story, but you can also lose money at blackjack, roulette, wheel of fortune and video poker across the Strip.
Between the cities you get Mount Chiliad, the tallest point in the state and the site of a downhill bike race, plus small towns like Angel Pine, Dillimore, Palomino Creek and Fort Carson. Area 69 sits in Bone County, and the Sherman Dam straddles the river in the north.
Agent's note
The map’s biggest trick is that the whole state is loaded from the start. Bridges are blocked by “earthquake” barriers until the story opens them, but a quick flight or a swim gets you anywhere, at the cost of a four-star wanted level. Several speedrun routes rely on exactly that.
Characters
San Andreas has the largest and most recognisable cast of the 3D-era games. Rockstar leaned hard on film actors, and several of the performances became permanent parts of the series’ identity.
| Character | Role | Voice |
|---|---|---|
| Carl “CJ” Johnson | Protagonist, Grove Street Families | Young Maylay |
| Sean “Sweet” Johnson | CJ’s older brother, gang leader | Faizon Love |
| Melvin “Big Smoke” Harris | Grove Street lieutenant turned traitor | Clifton Powell |
| Lance “Ryder” Wilson | Grove Street lieutenant turned traitor | MC Eiht |
| Kendl Johnson | CJ’s sister | Yolanda “Yo-Yo” Whitaker |
| Cesar Vialpando | Varrios Los Aztecas leader, Kendl’s partner | Clifton Collins Jr. |
| Officer Frank Tenpenny | Corrupt C.R.A.S.H. leader, main antagonist | Samuel L. Jackson |
| Officer Eddie Pulaski | Tenpenny’s partner | Chris Penn |
| Mike Toreno | Loco Syndicate figure, government agent | James Woods |
| The Truth | Hippie conspiracy theorist | Peter Fonda |
| Wu Zi Mu (“Woozie”) | Blind Triad boss, Four Dragons co-owner | James Yaegashi |
| Catalina | Volatile criminal, CJ’s countryside partner | Cynthia Farrell |
| Madd Dogg | Washed-up rapper CJ rescues | Ice-T |
| Jeffrey “OG Loc” Cross | Wannabe rapper from Grove Street | Jonathan Anderson |
| Ken Rosenberg | Lawyer returning from Vice City | Bill Fichtner |
| Kent Paul | Manager returning from Vice City | Danny Dyer |
| Salvatore Leone | Liberty City mob boss | Frank Vincent |
CJ himself is the quiet revolution here. He is the first GTA protagonist with a family, a hometown and a real sense of loss. Tommy Vercetti wanted an empire. CJ mostly wants his brother out of prison and his mother’s killers dead, and the empire happens along the way.
Big Smoke and Ryder’s betrayal lands because both are likeable for the first ten hours. Smoke’s “You picked the wrong house, fool” and Ryder’s lawnmower stunt have been meme material for two decades for a reason.
Tenpenny is the rare GTA villain who never needs a shootout to be threatening. Samuel L. Jackson plays him as a man who genuinely believes he is keeping order, and the game keeps him alive until the very last minute.
The cast also ties the trilogy together. Catalina drives off to Liberty City with a silent Claude, setting up GTA III. Ken Rosenberg and Kent Paul arrive from Vice City. Salvatore Leone runs Caligula’s before his Liberty City fall. Only Tommy Vercetti stays off-screen, mentioned but never seen.
What it changed for the series
San Andreas is the point where Grand Theft Auto stopped being a crime sandbox and started being a life simulator with crime in it. Almost every system below was a first for the series.
Character stats. Eat and you gain fat. Hit the gym and you build muscle and stamina. Swim and your lung capacity grows. Weapons level up with use, and at Hitman rank you can dual-wield pistols, micro SMGs and sawn-off shotguns. Driving, flying, bike and cycling skills all improve the more you use them.
Customisation. Clothing shops from Binco to Didier Sachs, barbers, tattoo parlours and three car-mod chains (TransFender, Loco Low Co., Wheel Arch Angels). Lowrider hydraulics got their own dancing mini-game.
Swimming. For the first time water was not an instant death. You can dive, hold your breath and swim between islands.
Gang warfare. Grove Street territory is a live system. Kill three enemy gang members on their turf to trigger a war, survive three waves, and the block turns green. Lose it and you fight to take it back. You can also recruit gang members to follow you, with the squad size tied to your Respect stat.
Aircraft and the jetpack. Vice City had helicopters and a couple of planes. San Andreas gave you a full flight school, airliners, a Harrier-style Hydra jet, crop dusters, a parachute, and the jetpack from Area 69.
Bicycles. The BMX, Mountain Bike and Bike arrived here, along with bunny hops and the downhill Chiliad challenge.
Two-player co-op. The PS2 and Xbox versions hid two-player free roam and rampage markers in the world. It was the first on-couch multiplayer in a 3D GTA. The PC and later ports dropped it.
Side activities. Burglary missions at night, pool, basketball, arcade cabinets, casino gambling, dating with six girlfriends, dancing mini-games, and the usual taxi, ambulance, firefighter and vigilante jobs. Pimping was a side job on the PS2 original and stayed in.
Radio. Eleven stations (Playback FM, K-DST, Bounce FM, Radio Los Santos, SF-UR, Radio X, K-Rose, CSR 103.9, Master Sounds 98.3, K-JAH West and the talk station West Coast Talk Radio, or WCTR) with well over 100 licensed tracks. Licensing expiry later removed a chunk of them from the PC and mobile versions, which matters when picking a version.
Most of these systems came back in GTA V. The stats survived in trimmed form, the car modding became Los Santos Customs, and the three-protagonist structure owes a debt to the way San Andreas moved CJ between separate crews in separate cities.
Versions and re-releases
San Andreas has shipped on more platforms than any other Rockstar game. Not all of them are equal, and two of them are a long way below the rest.
| Version | Release | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| PS2 original | October 2004 | Full soundtrack, two-player co-op, Hot Coffee data present on early discs |
| Xbox and PC | June 2005 | Higher resolution, PC got mod support; Xbox kept co-op |
| Mac | November 2010 | Straight port of the PC build |
| iOS, Android, Windows Phone | December 2013 to January 2014 | War Drum Studios port, remastered lighting, touch controls, controller support |
| Xbox 360 | October 2014 | Mobile build upscaled for the 10th anniversary, achievements added |
| PS3 and PS4 | December 2015 | PS3 got the mobile build; PS4 got PS2 emulation with trophies |
| The Definitive Edition | November 11, 2021 | Grove Street Games rebuild in Unreal Engine 4 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Series X |
| Definitive Edition mobile | December 14, 2023 | Video Games Deluxe build on iOS and Android, through Netflix Games |
The original PC version
For years the Steam copy was the go-to version because of the modding scene. Then a November 2014 update removed 17 songs whose licences had expired, broke save compatibility with older patches, and quietly made the modded “downgrade to 1.0” the enthusiast standard. Rockstar pulled the original trilogy from digital stores in October 2021 to clear space for the Definitive Edition.
The Definitive Edition
Rockstar announced the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition in October 2021 and shipped it on November 11, 2021 at $59.99 for all three games. Grove Street Games, the same studio that did the 2013 mobile port under its old War Drum name, rebuilt all three in Unreal Engine 4 with new lighting, GTA V-style controls, weapon wheels and a mission restart checkpoint system.
The launch was a mess. Rain rendered as opaque white sheets. The San Andreas fog was gone, so the whole map was visible at once, and the game’s draw distance tricks fell apart. Character models were upscaled with AI and looked wrong. Dozens of signs had typos because the textures had been machine-upscaled without proofreading. Rockstar pulled the PC version offline for three days, posted a public apology, and offered the original games to PC buyers as a bundle on the Rockstar Store.
Patches through 2022 fixed the worst of it. The bigger turnaround came later. The December 2023 Netflix mobile version by Video Games Deluxe restored a “classic lighting” look and redrew the faces properly. In November 2024 Rockstar brought that work back to consoles and PC in a large update, adding a Classic Lighting toggle and the improved character models. The current Definitive Edition is a decent way to play, and the one most people will actually find on a store.
Which version to play
- Best preserved experience: an original PS2 or Xbox disc on real hardware, or the PS4 PS2 Classics build if you already own it. Full soundtrack, co-op intact.
- Best modern convenience: the Definitive Edition after the November 2024 update, with Classic Lighting turned on. Checkpoints and modern aiming remove most of the 2004 friction.
- Best for mods: the original PC version patched down to 1.0. You will need a disc or a Rockstar Store classic bundle copy, and a working knowledge of the downgrade tools.
- Best on a phone: the Netflix Definitive Edition. The 2013 mobile port has been delisted.
Heads up
In the Definitive Edition, entering any cheat disables trophies and achievements until you reload a save without one active. In the original, the pedestrian riot cheat is saved to your file and can make missions like “Madd Dogg” far harder. Never save with it on.
Where to play it today
As of October 2026 the Definitive Edition is the only version Rockstar sells directly on every current platform. Here is the situation platform by platform.
- PS5 and PS4: The Definitive Edition on the PlayStation Store, sold as the trilogy or as San Andreas alone. The old PS2 Classics listing is delisted, but it still downloads if it is already in your library.
- Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One: The Definitive Edition on the Microsoft Store. The 2014 Xbox 360 version still works through backward compatibility if you own it, but it is no longer sold.
- Nintendo Switch and Switch 2: The Definitive Edition, digital or physical. It runs on Switch 2 through backward compatibility.
- PC: The Definitive Edition on Steam, Epic Games Store and the Rockstar Store. Every copy requires the Rockstar Games Launcher. The original 2005 build is not sold on its own; Rockstar bundled it with Definitive Edition purchases on its own store after the 2021 launch.
- iOS and Android: The Definitive Edition through the Netflix app, included with a Netflix subscription. The 2013 standalone mobile port was removed from the App Store and Google Play when the Netflix version arrived.
- GTA+: Rockstar has rotated the Definitive Edition trilogy into the GTA+ subscription catalogue, so check the current list before buying if you already pay for it.
- VR: Rockstar and Meta announced a Quest 2 version in October 2021. Meta confirmed in 2024 that the project was on hold indefinitely. Status: Not announced for release.
Physical PS2 and original Xbox discs are plentiful on the second-hand market and the cheapest route to the unpatched game. Early PS2 prints with the Hot Coffee data left in fetch a small premium from collectors.
Quick steps: enable Classic Lighting in the Definitive Edition
- Install the latest update on PS5, PS4, Xbox, Switch or PC.
- Pause the game and open Settings, then Display.
- Set Lighting to Classic and confirm the reload.
- Load your save; fog, haze and the 2004 colour grade are restored.
Reception and legacy
San Andreas launched to a 95 on Metacritic for both PS2 and Xbox, and the PC version landed at 93. Critics praised the size, the stat systems and the cast, and the biggest complaint at the time was PS2 pop-in and a frame rate that struggled in dense traffic. It took Game of the Year at the 2004 Spike Video Game Awards.
Sales followed. Take-Two reported 17.33 million copies on PS2 alone, a record for the console that nobody has beaten. By 2011 the combined total across platforms passed 27.5 million. Those numbers are what gave Rockstar the budget and the confidence to spend five years and a reported $100 million-plus on GTA IV.
Then came Hot Coffee. In mid-2005 modders found a disabled sex mini-game left in the shipped code. Patrick Wildenborg’s PC mod unlocked it, console cheat devices followed, and the ESRB re-rated the game Adults Only on July 20, 2005. Major US retailers pulled it. Rockstar shipped a cleaned build later that year that returned to Mature, Senator Hillary Clinton pushed for federal game-rating legislation, and Take-Two settled with the FTC in 2006 and later paid out a class-action settlement. The episode is why every Rockstar game since has shipped with its cut content properly removed, and why publishers still cite it when ratings disputes come up.
The longer legacy is the design template. GTA V reused the Los Santos name and much of its geography. Mount Chiliad came back with a mystery mural. The gym stats were trimmed into skill bars. Los Santos Customs is TransFender with better lighting. The Vagos, Ballas and Families all return as factions in GTA V and GTA Online, and Grove Street itself is a place you can stand on in Online.
The game’s cultural reach outlasted its hardware too. “Ah shit, here we go again” became one of the most used reaction clips on the internet. The Big Smoke order speech has its own fast-food merchandise. Young Maylay’s CJ is referenced in dozens of rap tracks. With the release date for gta 6 bringing the series back to a modern Vice City, San Andreas is the game most fans point to when they describe what they want from a state-sized map: distinct cities, real countryside, and a reason to drive between them.
FAQ
What year is GTA San Andreas set in?
- The story runs from CJ’s return to Los Santos through the riots that mirror the real 1992 Los Angeles unrest.
How many cities are in GTA San Andreas?
Three: Los Santos, San Fierro and Las Venturas. They are connected by two rural counties, a desert region and a mountain, all on one map.
Is San Andreas connected to GTA III and Vice City?
Yes. It is a prequel to both. Catalina leaves for Liberty City with Claude, Salvatore Leone runs Caligula’s Palace before his GTA III storyline, and Ken Rosenberg and Kent Paul arrive fresh from Vice City.
Is the Definitive Edition worth playing now?
After the November 2024 update, yes. Turn on Classic Lighting and you get the 2004 look with modern controls and checkpoints. The launch version in 2021 deserved its reputation, but that build no longer exists on any store.
Can you still buy the original PC version?
Not on its own. Rockstar delisted it in October 2021. PC buyers of the Definitive Edition on the Rockstar Store received the classic build as a bundled download, and second-hand discs still work with the right patches.
Does GTA San Andreas have multiplayer?
The PS2 and Xbox originals have a hidden two-player co-op mode triggered by icons in the world. Every later port removed it. Large-scale online play exists only through fan projects on the original PC version.
Who voices CJ?
Young Maylay, a Los Angeles rapper whose real name is Christopher Bellard. It was his first voice role, and he recorded tracks for the game’s soundtrack as well.