Grand Theft Auto San Andreas was launched 22 years in the past, and as you would possibly count on, folks have been cracking the sport with all types of bizarre glitches, skips, and tips. Over time, speedrunners have been discovering methods to beat San Andreas and shortening their speedruns to only below three hours, however just lately a very outrageous bug has been found that reduces that point even additional to lower than an hour. Buckle up, everybody. As a result of it is a hell of a velocity run.
First, some context. San Andreas has been damaged and re-broken many occasions by a number of variations over time, however there’s one specific “trick” that has turned the speedrunning world the other way up time and time once more. This really began with GTA: Vice Metropolis. There, they found a trick often called script stack underflow (SSU) that reduces any% execution to about 8 minutes. Again in 2019, San Andreas runners found one thing comparable referred to as “Arbitrary Bounce in Script” (AJS), particularly within the sport’s Home windows Retailer remaster. This overly complicated trick permits speedrunners to leap all the way in which to the top of the sport by doing sure issues for a very long time, similar to killing drug sellers, parking a motorbike in a sure spot, answering a telephone at a sure time, or avoiding a merchandising machine in any respect prices.
Whereas engaged, it clearly labored, and the top outcome was the sport executing a “JUMP” command for the beginning of the ultimate mission, Finish of the Line Half 3. Since then, the speedrunning neighborhood has needed to cut up the class into any% and any% no AJS. It is enjoyable to look at an AJS run as soon as, however you then’ll need to watch a full-fledged, action-packed, hours-long San Andreas speedrun. For a very long time, this skip was restricted to the Home windows Retailer model of the sport, however was later found within the Definitive Version remaster, which had some main setup variations.
Nicely, speedrunners have discovered a technique to run AJS within the authentic PC model of San Andreas. it’s Additionally The best way it is arrange is totally completely different and one way or the other weirder than earlier variations. u/Vitosi4ek on Reddit has a really detailed clarification of all of the steps concerned (although some runners have already discovered methods to clean out a few of them). These embody profitable $10,000 on a horse wager, making a clone of your self, performing a stunt leap on a superbike, playing in a on line casino with damaging cash, altering garments, taking part in a dance mini-game, and performing two missions on the similar time. All of it will help you go to the start line of Finish of the Line Half 3 and end the sport there, supplied the sport doesn’t crash.
This glitch was actually simply found, and through that point GTA: San Andreas’ world file run at any % was unusually diminished to 53 minutes and 46 seconds. It’s totally probably that this time will lower additional within the coming days and weeks as speedrunners proceed to optimize. This permits the neighborhood to separate those that flip off any AJS from those that do not use AJS in any respect, permitting viewers to nonetheless get pleasure from almost three hours of San Andreas and all of the hijinks concerned.
It’s totally spectacular to me that greater than ever persons are nonetheless cracking this previous open sport and doing silly issues with guts. Simply this previous AGDQ, we noticed somebody execute arbitrary code in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, one thing they most likely did not know the way to do the final time the sport was on the present. Video video games, hey!
Sadly, this implies it would most likely be a very long time earlier than you’ll be able to run GTA 6 this quick. The query is whether or not it would make it to the discharge date this November.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter at videogameaddicted. Do you could have any story ideas? Ship it to rvalentine@videogameaddicted.com.