Summary
- A fan successfully got Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas running on a smartwatch, throwing shade at Meta's VR version of the game.
- The fan most likely side-loaded the Android version of San Andreas onto their smartwatch, which is technically compatible with APK files.
- The game ran smoothly on the smartwatch, but due to the device's screen limitations, only a portion of the UI elements were visible.
One fan managed to get Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas running on a smartwatch in a stable enough manner to make it playable. He later took to social media to share this achievement, using it to throw some shade at Meta's VR version of San Andreas that's been in the making for years by now.
October 26 will mark the 19th anniversary of San Andreas's critically=-acclaimed release. Since debuting on the PS2, the third 3D Grand Theft Auto game found its way to over half a dozen other platforms, including Android and iOS devices.
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One Artur Sychov has recently taken to Twitter to showcase yet another platform capable of running Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, having shared a brief clip of the game running on a smartwatch. While the fan did not elaborate on the matter, the likeliest explanation for this achievement is that Sychov merely side-loaded the Android version of San Andreas onto his Wear OS device. Since Wear OS is based on Android, gadgets running this operating system are technically compatible with APK files used for installing smartphone and tablet apps, even if most such software isn't exactly optimized to run on a tiny screen.
That limitation was also underlined by Sychov's experiment, which saw his smartwatch display San Andreas in what appeared to be a 4:3 aspect ratio, but with the corners cut off on account of the device's round screen. The wearable was hence unable to show the vast majority of the game's UI elements. On the other hand, the smartwatch seemingly had no trouble actually running San Andreas, as indicated by the instantaneous loading times and all-around smooth performance depicted in the minute-long clip. The fan played the game with the 8Bitdo Zero 2, a tiny Bluetooth gamepad that's often recommended to Switch owners looking for budget third-party controllers.
Sychov cheekily framed this achievement as a spark of hope that the fandom will eventually see San Andreas running on much more powerful hardware found inside the Meta Quest 3. His comment was referring to the fact that Meta has been working on a VR port of the game since 2021 without much to show for it. Earlier this month, the company confirmed that GTA: San Andreas VR is still nowhere near completion.
The modding community has previously made some attempts at bringing VR functionality to the PC version of San Andreas. However, all such efforts were effectively abandoned by the time Meta officially announced the Quest version of the game.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is available on mobile devices, PC, PS2, P23, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S.