Funny how all the games I grew up with came out when I was barely able to use the family laptop. Would've been 3 when GTA:SA came out, and only years later would I get to first play it at one of my old "friends'" house. I remember he had various cheat codes written down on the desk pad. Obviously my parents would never buy me or let me play such a violent game. Needless to say I've watched plenty of GTA:SA myth videos and machinimas during that time, those were the better days when data mining wasn't everywhere and you could keep some secrets to speculate about, now that magic is gone, but anyway.
Only in 2013 when I was 12 I've managed to figure out how to use torrents, and that's when I snatched the HOODLUM release from The Pirate Bay. I still have that ISO, dated July 15th 2013. I'm not sure what the fuck was up with me back then, I've managed to archive just about all of my personal shit from 2010 onward. My first endeavors into Minecraft, Minecraft modding and my very first Minecraft screenshots, still there with the original timestamps.
Same goes for San Andreas stuff. My current data folder still has camera photos made on the same day I got that ISO. And much like I can see that it took me five days from taking the first vanilla screenshot in Minecraft to taking the first visibly modded screenshot in Minecraft back in 2011, it took me 10 days to do the same with San Andreas. Needless to say, GTA:SA modding has changed drastically since then, I still remember using IMG Tool to install car mods, now it's just a case of drag-and-drop without ever having to touch vanilla files.
As for modding nowadays, well, this is how my current GTA:SA looks like.
Yes, it's generic HD Remastered BS but a) it's still better than Defective Edition and b) with modern GTA modding I just need to tweak one INI file to transform the game again. No need to fondle with .img files or anything like that.
Boom. Now it's much more faithful while still looking better than vanilla. If I want I can throw out all the extra mods and leave nothing but the few basic fixes to have an even more faithful experience. It's great how trivialized 3D era modding has became, LiNK2012's Modloader is a godsend. All of this was basically me getting mods from
MixMods and assembling them together, it's basically
the GTA modding site, comprehensive documentation, guides and collection of various mods, a lot of which were made by the site's founder, Junior_Djjr.
Interestingly enough, as I was writing this I pulled up MixMods and found an announcement about
SilentPatch getting a 20th anniversary update, biggest in it's history, and also going open source under the MIT license. But I'm sure R* will be more than glad to celebrate as well, by removing even more tracks from the radio for which the licenses expired, and replacing them with whatever 2020 bullshit they have on hand, because fuck consistency, they've already fucked over Vladivostok FM that way. R* quality my ass, you can only hope for autistic Poles like Silent and autistic Brazilians like Junior_Djjr to deliver quality.
One more thing. Anyone who says that The Wrong Side Of The Tracks was the hardest mission is a retard. All you have to do is to keep driving alongside the front of the train, but as far to the right as possible so the traitorous fat fuck can actually take a shot instead of hitting the train. No need for tricks with jumping onto the train or taking the high road. Freefall will always be the hardest mission in San Andreas, even if you're a pro at VC/SA flying controls. Yes, I had no issues with Zero missions and Vice City RC missions, once you know how to fly in those games it becomes piss easy. Freefall will always be hard because WHO THE FUCK THOUGH IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO PUT YOU IN ONE OF THE SHITTIEST PLANES IN THE GAME TO THEN FLY OUT TO THE EDGE OF THE MAP, DO A 180 AND CATCH UP WITH ONE OF THE BEST PLANES IN THE GAME.
