Reintroducing GTA-SanAndreas.com

This weekend marks 21 years since the launch of my first fan site, GTA-SanAndreas.com, now refreshed and updated to cover the Definitive Edition of the game.

Back on February 17th, 2003, I launched GTA-SanAndreas.com as a 15 year old, based on rumors and speculation that the 'new' Grand Theft Auto game would be called San Andreas. The expectation came based on the original (top-down) Grand Theft Auto's three cities: Liberty City - which was recreated in 2001's GTA III, Vice City - which was recreated in 2002's GTA Vice City, leaving San Andreas as the only city yet to be reused.

In late 2003 the game was confirmed by Rockstar Games and we covered all aspects of the games' build up, from teaser websites, trailers, magazine articles and scans, communicating with people all over the world to check for new screenshots and info in different gaming publications the second they were released. Our website had become one of the primary sources for information about the game and was listed in magazines, bigger gaming websites like IGN and Gamespot, even on the UK's teletext service and eventually officially recognised by Rockstar Games themselves, referenced on both their own official website and printed inside the manual that came with the game.

Following the launch of the game in October 2004, our website switched to cover the gameplay, primarily focusing on guides and walkthroughs to help players reach 100% completion with detailed maps and screenshots along with in-depth tutorials in all side missions, collectables and other required activities.



Over the next 20 years the game was re-released and eventually remastered, with the largest upgrades coming as part of the Definitive Edition which brought the game to modern consoles like the PS5 for the first time. Rockstar Games partnered with Netflix in December 2023 allowing subscribers to download the mobile versions of the Definitive Edition for free, so I decided to replay all three of the trilogy games, finishing up with San Andreas.

Throughout my playthrough I took the opportunity to capture new high-definition screenshots from the entire game in order to update the website. The original screenshots were taken through a video capture card from the PS2 version of the game, so they were certainly due an upgrade, however I've left a lot of them on there for nostalgic reasons. You can also see the improvements in the game between the original and Definitive Edition.

Original PS2


iPad Definitive Edition


The website itself was also built before mobile phones were really used to browse the web, so I recreated the template to make it mobile friendly while keeping the logo and colour scheme from the original website.

I'm pleased to announce that all of the content has now been updated with over 3,000 new screenshots. Many of the guides have been updated to include information about the Definitive Edition and mobile versions of the game, the 100% Checklist will now record your progress as you check off items and all maps have been recreated in high definition, such as the Spray Tags map and guide. All maps are interactive and will display screenshots of each location when you click on them.



All of the cheats pages have been updated, with screenshots included for many of the cheats to give you a better idea what they do.



There are more updates and some new pages coming over the next few weeks, including full rewrites of the story mission guides, but I'd like to celebrate the 21st birthday of the website and hopefully encourage everyone to revisit what I personally think is one of the best games ever created. The Definitive Edition of the game is available on all consoles and devices and following a shaky launch, the game is working much better after recent patches so if you want to experience Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas how Rockstar Games intended, check it out now!

Thank you to the hundreds of millions of visitors we've had at GTA-SanAndreas.com over the last 21 years, and hopefully we'll be up and running for a long time to come.

- Simon 'Psy' Elliott