Grand Theft Auto San Andreas may not have achieved the level of mainstream success of GTA 5, but its pop-culture relevance can’t be disputed and many fans of GTA still consider it the best entry in the series. With a massive and still-active modding community dedicated to picking it apart, the 2004 classic still has a few secrets.
While the original game was released in 2004 on PlayStation, it’s been ported and re-released several times since then. It was released on PC and Xbox one year later, then made the jump to mobile in 2013, and has since been made available on seventh and eighth generation consoles.
Even though the mobile port was released six years ago, data miners and modders still haven’t uncovered every hidden secret. This newest discovery comes from well-known community member Vadim M, who alongside a few other modders and fans discovered a whole host of new, never before seen cheats in the mobile version.
Rockstar developed GTA San Andreas the same way they did all other main games in the series, however the mobile port was outsourced to War Drum Studios. During development, a debug engine was used to make testing and other processes easier – as is usual in game dev. However, this debug engine is still accessible if you know what you are doing, enabling you to access special “cheats”.
GTA games have a long and storied past with cheats, but the ones discovered by Vadim M aren’t just the usual kind. Instead of the typical invincibility or vehicle spawning cheats, these codes can also let you spawn special items and weapons that are only contextually available in specific missions, and skip to different parts of the storyline.
These cheats not being present by default is understandable. Mission-specific items can skew balance or break the game entirely when used incorrectly. As for the “scriptbypass”, cheats were meant to make progress easy, not to allow you to jump over entire sections altogether.
Using cheats in the game’s mobile port is a difficult endeavor by default. Since the port is based on the PC version, it accepts PC cheat codes, however typically you have no way of entering them. To activate cheats players need to either connect an external keyboard or download a third-party app (for example, Swiftkey, Slash or Touchpal) that allows them to access a virtual keyboard while playing.
As Vadim M (or some other devoted modder) uncovers every debug cheat, we’ll keep list updated on our GTA San Andreas mobile cheats page.
