Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Is 15 Years Old Today

On 26 October 2004, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was released.

Fifteen years on, the game is still considered an absolute classic - and you're now old enough to actually play it.

Rockstar Games

The game, which was originally released on PlayStation 2, was the seventh title in the GTA series and is revered by many fans who consider it the greatest of the lot.

This popularity of the game was reflected by its success, both critically and commercially. IGN awarded the game 9.9 out of 10, the highest score ever awarded to a PS2 game, while review aggregator Metacritic awarded it with an average score of 93 percent.

GTA: San Andreas was also the highest-selling game on PS2, having sold 12 million copies by March 2005 and 27.5 million copies by 2011.

Indeed, the game is so popular that publisher Rockstar Games is still using it to flog stuff to this day. Just last month, the developer offered up the game for free to anyone who downloads and installs its game launcher app, the helpfully-titled Rockstar Games Launcher.

As you might have guessed, the launcher is the new hub for all things Rockstar on PC going forward, regardless of which digital format you picked them up on prior, as the app will ask to scan your PC and pull any previously-installed titles into the launcher.

It also comes with a host of other swish features, including "the addition of cloud save functionality to all supported titles, the ability to keep your Rockstar Games PC library updated automatically, and ways to follow all the latest Rockstar Games news from directly inside the Launcher."

CJ and Big Smoke - who you should remember from your days cruising through San Andreas - were also added via a mod to Resident Evil 2. The mod allows you to not only see the characters, but also hear various voice lines from Rockstar's open world game, which have been cut up and spliced into Capcom's zombie horror.

Rockstar dropped a San Andreas Easter Egg into Red Dead Redemption 2 as well. Those of you who have played the game and managed not to just put in the cheat codes, acquire a plane, and then go around killing hookers will remember that there was a mission called 'Wrong Side of the Tracks'.

In that mission you had to follow a train that was occupied by a load of rival gang members while Big Smoke sat on the back of a tiny dirt bike, which he fell off almost constantly.

Basically, you have to weave in and out of objects following the train while keeping Smoke on the back of the motorbike, so he can go about the business of capping members of the rival gang.

Anyway, as a little in-joke for fans of GTA, the folks behind RDR2 built in a little mission where you have to - you've guessed it - 'follow the damn train'.

Bravo Rockstar, bravo.

Topics: GAMING, US Entertainment

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey