31 steps: How to finish GTA: San Andreas in under an hour

Speedrunning is a science in its own right. Dedicated players spend countless hours uncovering exploits and obscure mechanics to complete games as quickly as possible. Typically, a point is reached where every meaningful shortcut has been discovered and further improvements come down to shaving off milliseconds. GTA: San Andreas appeared to have reached that stage – until a new strategy surfaced on Reddit and turned the speedrunning scene on its head.

The new speedrun strategy does not rely on a single glitch but on a complex chain of exploits with 31 steps in total. While the early stages are relatively straightforward, the process quickly escalates. Two versions of the main storyline begin running in parallel, with two CJs receiving identical inputs. At that point, the game loses track of which mission is actually active – and that confusion lies at the heart of the exploit. By using deliberately negative money values, skipped cutscenes, and permanently open menus, runners gradually manipulate the game’s scripting until it jumps directly to the final mission. The setup is fragile – a single wrong input can collapse the entire run.

The fastest run achieved with the new strategy so far was completed by speedrunner creezyful, who reached the final mission of GTA: San Andreas in just 53 minutes and 46 seconds. Before this breakthrough, the AJS method, short for Arbitrary Jump in Script, was considered the standard approach for record attempts. Although sub-50-minute runs were already possible using AJS, they relied on an external FPS limiter and were therefore placed in a separate category. The new method, by contrast, works on the original PC version without any outside tools – and the community is confident it can be pushed even further. A video of the current record run is available on YouTube: