I kept checking the time. It was only a day and a half until the tournament started. I couldn’t miss the fights, but I had made a promise that I didn’t want to break. I was supposed to get inside the vineyard and find examples of their special ingredient for my friend Casper. The man outside the perimeter had already spoken to me about how they needed extra hired hands, so all it would require was a bit of hard work and light sneaking around. But I didn’t have the time.
Instead, I rode my horse to an unguarded part of the fence, hopped over, knocked out a guard, grabbed his keys, unlocked the wine cellar, stole what I needed (along with some party favors) and left as quickly as I could. It was half a day’s ride back to Kuttenberg, and I got in around 3 AM. Still plenty of time to sleep before the sparring started. All had worked out well, but the tension was entirely my doing. However, in an effort to not spend a third week in a row talking about Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, let’s discuss another big game that included a lot of special little moments I’ve never forgotten – Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Getting Caught Cheating in GTA: San Andreas
The dating systems in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas were fairly basic, but for the time it was pretty novel. There were six possible girlfriends across San Andreas CJ could find and date, and all of them provided some sort of special bonus if the relationship level was high enough. These bonuses ranged from access to special outfits and unique vehicles to gameplay changes, such as retaining your weapons after getting Busted or Wasted.
If CJ dated more than one girlfriend in San Andreas, however, there could be consequences. While rare (there were weird conditions you had to meet for it to happen) it was possible to get caught while out on a date with another woman, and CJ’s girlfriend would basically stalk them the rest of the date. When this happened to me I was cheating on Barbara, the police officer, with Helena, who is basically the opposite of a police officer. Being chased by a rightfully jealous, gun-wielding girlfriend through the desert roads surrounding Las Venturas is an experience that has never left my mind.
Going Behind the Scenes in San Andreas via the Gym Glitch
You may not have known this, but I’ve never been able to forget it: you can go behind the scenes in GTA: San Andreas and see all of the interiors only visible in cutscenes. You can even walk around some of them, if the developers included collision detection. Anyone can do the San Andreas gym glitch, no modding required. All you need is a jetpack. Here’s how:
Note: This is for the PS2 version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I wasn’t sure if it was possible in any other versions, but when searching around I found the above image posted to Steam, so I assume at least the PC version of San Andreas can do it.
Go to the Ganton gym, close to Grove Street. Walk to the corner where the ceiling is in shadow, almost as if a square of ceiling texture is missing. Jetpack up and through that hole, and you’ve entered the San Andreas backrooms. From here you can use the jetpack to fly around to all of the different interior locations in the game, all suspended in a black void, which looks like this:
This is possible because San Andreas loads nearly all the interiors anytime you are inside any location. Usually you can’t see them, but since the Ganton gym has this hole in the ceiling, we can access it. When I was younger, I used San Andreas’ gym glitch all the time, trying to map out exactly where all the hidden interiors were.
Hunting Bigfoot in San Andreas
There is no Bigfoot in GTA: San Andreas, but back in the day we sure thought there was. At least once a week someone would say they saw something on Mount Chiliad, or post a blurry screenshot with the title “I GOT HIM!”, or say they heard growling while walking around in the woods. Even after datamining definitively proved there was no Bigfoot in San Andreas, players didn’t believe it. The social proof was too strong.
Turns out, shockingly, it’s true that there was never a Bigfoot in San Andreas. The screenshots were fake, the posters were mistaken, and the growling so many of us heard was actually CJ’s belly. San Andreas’ light-RPG mechanics included eating food to regain health, and if CJ went too long without eating his stomach would begin to growl occasionally. This is inaudible normally while playing thanks to car radios, pedestrian chatter, and gunshots. It was only when slowly walking through the woods, searching for something that wasn’t there, that players were able to hear CJ’s own body speaking to them. There’s something poetic in that.
Robbing Houses in San Andreas
I’ve spoken multiple times at length about how much I enjoy GTA: San Andreas’ burglary missions. You could read this article on burglary in San Andreas I wrote four years ago, or watch this video I made seven years ago (jesus) instead. We don’t take advantage of the multimedia nature of this column enough, anyway:
I keep the Definitive Edition version of San Andreas installed on my PS5 specifically so I can do these burglary missions every once in a while. That’s wild to think of. If you can make a minigame your customer still wants to keep playing after 21 years, you know you’re doing something right.
The PS2-era GTA Vehicle Side-Mission Glitch
This is something else that doesn’t exist in the GTA Definitive Editions, nor does it work (again, to my knowledge, I could be wrong, if so let me know in the comments) on anything other than the original PS2 Grand Theft Auto games. However, it’s a “feature-not-bug” in GTAIII, Vice City, and San Andreas, and it’s really neat. Let me explain.
So, this will work for Taxi, Ambulance, and Vigilante side-missions in all three games, and you can do it for the Pimping side-missions in San Andreas as well. I don’t think you can do it for Pizza Delivery in Vice City, since getting on the moped starts a cutscene, nor Firefighting, for obvious reasons. For all the others, here’s what you do: The game will ask you to click R3 to begin that particular side-mission. Instead of clicking R3, hold R3 instead. Get out of the side-mission vehicle and enter another one of your choice, then release R3. You will now have started the side-mission in your own vehicle.
This means you can be a taxi driver with a sports car, a vigilante driving a lowrider, or a paramedic in a golf cart. The possibilities are endless, the combinations are hilarious, and (especially with the taxi missions) this can really make finishing the higher difficulty levels easier. I continue to try and do this trick in each GTA game that releases [Editor’s Note: Wow, all two of them?] but it’s been gone since San Andreas. I miss it.
This Header Exists Because Google Likes It When Text Is Broken Up By Headings, Whether They Are Relevant Or Not, As The Internet Is Deeply Broken
Anyways, that’s all from my end, going back to Kuttenberg now, gots me a longsword competition to try and win. After that, might mosey on towards the inn I’m staying at and find a dice game. See ya’ll next week, where maybe I’ll finally talk about Avowed.
OH! The multiplayer! Pretend I did a section on how fun the multiplayer in San Andreas was too. You can put on the cinematic camera and it’s like an episode of Cops with friends. kthanks byeeee xoxoxo
THIS WEEK’S RECOMMENDED MEDIA:
- I recently began reading Animorphs #1 to my five year-old son, and it’s bringing back a lot of memories. I love the Animorphs books, including the spin-off titles like The Hork-Bajir and The Ellimist Chronicles. It’s wild just how much that series shaped the way I think about certain things like racism, abuse, slavery, imprisonment, and war crimes. Great books for kids, more people should talk about them.
- My wife and I watched the movie Conclave recently, with Ralph Fiennes, Isabella Rossellini, John Lithgow, and Stanley Tucci, among many others. Very good, and, given the recent news about the Pope, probably more topical than it would like to be. Worth checking out if watching two hours of Vatican political drama interests you.
- I meant to speak about this a few weeks ago but kept forgetting: The Video Game History Foundation has recently released a massive digital archive of old video game magazines. 23 years of Game Informer, 22 years of GamePro, 29(!) years of Electronic Gaming Monthly, and many, many others are available to peruse, for free, at your convenience. This is the best kind of preservation and I am absolutely here for it. Consider supporting them if you can.
- Whether or not you have played 2024’s Indika, you should absolutely check out Jenna Stoeber’s video how Indika weaponizes game mechanics against you. An excellent video essay on an excellent game that not nearly enough people have played or even heard about. Her Big Game Hunger podcast is also quite fun.
- This one isn’t media, just a general life recommendation: If you ever see someone, anyone, do a Nazi salute, punch them in the face until they stop. No matter the situation. No matter who it is.
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