Using Cheats in GTA San Andreas on PC
GTA San Andreas was released in 2004, and its cheat system is straightforward if you know where to look. Each cheat is entered by typing a word or pressing a button combination while playing. On the PC version, most cheats are typed in as words during normal gameplay. You don't need to pause or open a menu. Just type the word and press enter. It takes effect immediately. Here are the most commonly used PC cheats, listed with their exact input: HESOYAM — Full health, armor, and $250,000. This is the one everyone uses first. It's reliable, doesn't corrupt saves, and works anytime.
BAGUVIX — Infinite health. Not invincibility. You still take damage, but your health regenerates to maximum every few seconds. Useful for missions where you need to survive sustained fire. UZUMYMW — Infinite ammo. Again, not unlimited in the strict sense. Your ammo replenishes itself over a short cooldown. You can't spawn infinite rounds instantly, which matters for certain edge cases I'll get to. ASNPNSK — Six-star wanted level. This one is mostly for fun, but it causes serious problems in missions. Criminals chase you automatically at this level, which means friendly NPCs in story missions will turn hostile. Don't use it mid-mission.
ANOTQHO — Unlock all vehicles. Skips the vehicle progression system so you can use any car from the start. Removes the need to earn cash for vehicle purchases. PAYOUT — $250,000 cash. Same effect as HESOYAM's money portion but without the health and armor boost. CVOBHG — Super jump. CJ jumps much higher. Fine for exploration, useless for combat.
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RIPAZJA — Fast fitness. Muscle and fat stats increase much faster. Takes effect over time rather than instantly. BSKBRUQ — Fast swim. Swim speed increases significantly. Doesn't affect running or driving. AEZAKMI — Never wanted. Police won't pursue you under any circumstances. The game still registers crimes, but no response comes. This is the cleanest cheat for open-world experimentation because it doesn't change your stats or weapons.
ZNEPVNI — Hot rings appear everywhere. Makes the hotring racer missions trivial. GURU99 — Ninjutsu mode. All melee attacks deal massive damage. CJ also becomes harder to hit. Useful for missions that require hand-to-hand combat. There are more, but these cover the majority of practical use cases. The rest are gimmicks or context-specific.
I ran into a specific issue once when using UZUMYMW during a mission called "Wrong Side of the Tracks." The cheat was active, but ammo didn't seem to replenish for the grenade launcher. After some testing, I found that certain mission-specific weapon pickups override the infinite ammo cheat. The workaround was to re-enter the cheat after picking up the mission weapon, then continue. It's a minor annoyance, but it happens with a handful of mission types. Another thing people miss: cheats do not save. If you enter a cheat and then load a saved game, the cheat is gone. The game state from the save overwrites it. Some players assume the cheat persists across sessions because the game appears to remember money or stats, but those are saved to the game file. The active cheat itself resets. There is a well-known limitation with the wanted level cheats. Using OHDUDE (five-star wanted level) or ASNPNSK (six-star) during story missions often breaks the mission entirely. The game does not handle criminal pursuit AI gracefully when you're mid-mission cutscene or checkpoint. I've had missions fail to progress after activating these because Michael or other characters become targets of police attention and the mission script doesn't account for it. The workaround is simple: disable the cheat before starting any mission, or reload the save from before you entered the cheat.
For the console versions, the input method is entirely different. You press directional buttons and face buttons in sequence. The same cheat codes work, just not as typed words. There are separate lists for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and the mobile version. Mobile uses on-screen buttons instead of typing. Some online guides list cheats that don't actually work in the canonical PC release. A few are from beta builds or were removed before launch. I've seen fake codes for invincibility that are not real. There is no true invincibility cheat in the standard PC version. BAGUVIX gives infinite health, which is close but not the same thing. If you want to see the full list without searching through forums, the cheat codes are documented in the game files themselves. They're stored as plain text strings in the script files. You can find them by looking at the .fmt and .iff files if you have access to a modding tool like Sanny Builder. Most players don't need to go that far, but it's useful if a code you found online isn't working and you want to verify it.
The mobile version has a slightly different cheat system. It uses button combinations rather than typing, and some cheats that exist on PC are missing or require different inputs. The Android and iOS versions also changed how certain cheats behave, particularly around money and stat modifications. If you're playing on mobile, check the specific version guide rather than assuming the PC list applies directly. A quick note on save corruption. Cheats themselves do not corrupt saves in any documented way. However, using certain cheats during mission-critical moments can leave the game in a state where the mission fails to advance, which some players interpret as corruption. It's not. The save is fine. Just reload and try again without the active cheat interfering with the mission trigger. For a complete reference, the official cheat list for the PC version includes roughly 40 codes across categories for weapons, vehicles, weather, and player stats. The console versions have their own parity lists with slight variations. If you're playing the definitive edition or any remastered version, the cheat system remains unchanged from the original release.
