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United States Anniversary: GTA: San Andreas, The PS2's Best-Selling Game, Turns 20 Today
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas turns 20 today – it launched in North America on 26th October 2004.
Following on from the phenomenally successful GTA III and GTA: Vice City, San Andreas took place on a massive single map, broken up into the cities of Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas – based on Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas respectively. Its cast included Hollywood talent such as Samuel L. Jackson and James Woods.
San Andreas was 2004's biggest-selling video game and would eventually sell over 17.33 million copies on PS2 alone, making it the console's best-selling title. In total, it has sold over 27 million units across all platforms.
20 years ago we released Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas.The original plan was for the 3 cities to be on separate maps. The player would travel between the cities using trains and planes.(Gta 1 and 2 also had three cities on separate maps)
Memory was very tight on the ps2 and… pic.twitter.com/kUMxR9Kt96
— Obbe Vermeij (@ObbeVermeij) October 25, 2024
Critically acclaimed, San Andreas is notable for its "Hot Coffee" mini-game, which landed its developers in trouble; Rockstar and Take-Two received a telling-off from the Federal Trade Commission for failing to disclose that graphic content was present in the game.
San Andreas would be followed by GTA IV and GTA V. The sixth entry in the series is currently in development.
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Damien has been writing professionally about tech and video games since 2007 and oversees all of Hookshot Media's sites from an editorial perspective. He's also the editor of Time Extension, the network's newest site, which – paradoxically – is all about gaming's past glories.
