5 things that every OG GTA San Andreas player should be able to remember

There are some things that only real OG GTA San Andreas players would remember. The game came out on October 26, 2004, and has had several ports throughout the years since then. It's an old enough game that several young gamers wouldn't be able to relate to, just by virtue of not being alive by the time it was a mainstream title.

Ergo, this article will cover some of those familiar feelings that may invoke some nostalgia for GTA San Andreas players who played the game nearly two decades ago. Several console generations have come and gone, and some of these entries on this listicle aren't really replicable in today's society.

For some fans, it's still the best Grand Theft Auto game out there.

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5 things that every old school GTA San Andreas player should know

5) Being impressed by how much this game added to the series

GTA San Andreas was highly rated at the time (Image via Metacritic)

The transition from GTA Vice City to GTA San Andreas was a monumental change for the series. For some gamers, there wasn't any game at its level. Some of the new quality-of-life features were just amazing to experience at the time compared to the clunkier earlier titles, such as:

• The ability to jump and climb over objects
• Swimming (no more drowning instantly for no reason)
• Better aiming (especially on the PS2)
• The ability to keep weapons after getting Busted or Wasted

That's not even mentioning the great soundtrack or how memorable the storyline and characters were. GTA San Andreas' world was also much bigger than other open-world games at the time, making it feel so big at the time.

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4) Having a paper full of cheat codes

Many gamers over two decades ago would infamously write cheat codes down and print out maps to assist them with whatever they needed help doing. Smartphones weren't popular back then, and not every player had access to a laptop at the time.

Hence, these old nostalgic posts are bound to resonate with a good portion of players who played GTA San Andreas at the time.

Codes like "Spawn Jetpack" and "Lock Wanted Levels" were very popular cheat codes. Of course, some would write down even the more niche cheat codes simply to test them out, as GTA San Andreas had no shortage of fun and wacky codes.

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3) 009 Sound System songs on YouTube

So many YouTubers back then used a song by 009 Sound System in the oldest GTA San Andreas videos. That was because of a feature known as AudioSwap, where content creators would have to change music in a video due to copyright issues. AudioSwap listed songs in alphabetical order, meaning that 009 Sound System was often at the top.

This particular video used their song, Trinity, which was widely used. Another extremely common song used in other videos was Dreamscape (a song jokingly referred to by older fans as the YouTube National Anthem for how common it was).

Another common trait in these old videos was that the introduction would be Windows Movie Maker's blue background with white text. That was the most popular default option, and became a staple of early YouTube as a result.

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2) Bigfoot conspiracies

The most popular myth in all of GTA San Andreas was Bigfoot. The rural areas of this game were often empty, and the overall atmosphere of these locations made players often see things that weren't there. Myth hunters would know that Bigfoot isn't in the game in any capacity, but that didn't stop a plethora of YouTube videos popping up online, proving his existence.

These videos would use a mod of some kind, but they wouldn't always mention that. Players used to talk about this myth a lot back on various forums before YouTube was a thing.

The popularity of this myth eventually led to Bigfoot being referenced several times in GTA 5, with the player even having the ability to eat Golden Peyote Plants to transform into this mythical creature.

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1) Hot Coffee scandal

There was an unused minigame originally planned for GTA San Andreas, known as Hot Coffee. It was an interactive minigame between CJ and any of his girlfriends, which was hugely controversial at the time. The average gamer wouldn't be able to use the mod, but that didn't matter to most people outraged by it.

The game went from a Mature rating to Adults Only and was even banned outright in some countries like Australia. It cost Rockstar Games millions of dollars, and they subsequently removed the feature from future versions of the game.

Anybody who was somewhat into video games at the time would have known how big of a deal it was on the news.

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Note: This article reflects the writer's personal views.

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