We share nostalgia.
SAMP — one word, but so many memories… Kiber’s edition tells about the favorite multiplayer of the past years. Sergei Korpusov, Konstantin Semenov and Igor Larionov talk about the best years of their lives spent in Los Santos with friends.
How Serezha became a DJ on the radio. And he was robbed of his dreams
I met the masterpiece of the gaming industry in 2011. Then I came across an advertisement for a Gameland RPG server and decided to give it a try. I still remember the surprise when I saw other players: I did not believe that GTA: San Andreas can be played with other people.
As a beginner, I busied San Fierro, worked as a mechanic, and worked as a taxi driver, all of which earned a few hundred dollars. It makes no sense to compare the economics of SAMP servers then and now: 10 years ago, the top-end houses cost several million dollars, and the cheapest machines could be bought for a thousand. Now there is no such thing.
I liked SAMP so much that I invited all my friends from the yard to play — the game was on any computer, and the process was a lot of fun.
It so happened that over time I liked government organizations (San News, Army, Police, SWAT), and my friends liked gangs and mafias. But different factions did not prevent us from spending time together. While playing on the server, I received four leaders — San News, Rifa Gang, Street Racers and Army.
Unfortunately, I found screenshots only from the leaders of the last two organizations — then we gathered in a special room and discussed the development of the organization and other issues.
I still remember that about in 2013, you had to become a radio DJ to get the sixth rank (the server had its own radio, and it was necessary to put on music, communicate with listeners, hold events). And how awesome it was! Sets in the organization, the reporting system, leaderboards — all this was not the same as it is now. In those days, leaders were in this position for months, or even years. Recruitment to some organizations opened every few months, and it was much more difficult to get there than it is now on the leaderboard in the same Arizona. Words cannot express that thrill.
My game ended on the leaderboard of reporters in 2015. Alas, but then everyone already perfectly understood that the server would soon be closed and there was no point in playing further.
I quit SAMP for a few years — I just didn’t want to start from scratch on a new server. But my love for fashion took over and I started the game on Arizona, which is now the most popular server.
Of course, that excitement was gone, but I still go several times a year with my colleague Grigory Korzhov to complete several quests for Shufutinsky, pour several million into SAMP BET for an esports match and just have fun. Perhaps after the New Year holidays I will return to the server — this nostalgic passage awakened the desire to play.
Cheat Bone’s way to the top
GTA SAMP has been my biggest influence in my entire gaming «career»! I played mainly on RP servers, and specifically on Advance Orange, the fourth server in the project. I was there almost from the very opening — since December 2012, two Internet comrades Evra and Jer played with me (I still communicate with Evra, Jer somehow fell off over time, but the guy was also what we needed).
First, he went the usual way from a homeless person to a high-ranking doctor at a San Fierro hospital. Moreover, I spent 5-6 months in the hospital, because there basically the whole game was inside the interior, and on the streets of San Andreas I was lagging due to a weak PC.
In the same hospital, I earned a car, a house and my first business — a bar in the village of Dillimore! It was fashionable in bars on Advance to arrange a dice game through the /try command and the result was “rolled the dice well” or “unsuccessfully”. There I met the third Internet friend Drozd (we still communicate!), together we went to conquer the gangs in the Los Santos ghetto.
Gangs on Advance at that time were a separate community, where people from the outside were very reluctant to take. If you came to the area of the gang, then you could be deceived for money or simply killed. But we managed to somehow suck on a dude who was first a leader, and then a deputy leader in many gangs. At first, he invited us, and after a while we ourselves turned into dudes who could cheat suckers for money or kill us if they dared us!
The game in gangs became for me the perfect combination of MMORPG, but in the familiar universe of San Andreas (I am indifferent to all fantasy worlds even now), and competitive elements. There were 5 gangs in the ghetto that fought for territories in kaptas — wars for territories between warring gangs.
I developed in the ghetto, acquired connections, learned to play with cheats. They were an integral element of the «tascherstvo» in the ghetto. The most skillful players were those who were better at hiding their cheating. At some point, it seems, they even feared me as a DANGEROUS player!
In the summer of 2014, I rose to the first leadership post of the Aztec gang. Then another gang fought for control of the entire ghetto — Rifa, on the leader of which was my comrade Kuzya. We did not fight against Reef, but we beat their competitors on the streets of Los Santos! As a result, my comrades and I had a great time, and having fun, we raised from 3 to 25 territories. But I was removed — I sometimes violated the rules of the server and did not have much respect for most administrators, and they did not like it. Kuzya, by the way, successfully took 100 terr!
Then I was called to the mafia, I even defended the term on the leadership of the Russian mafia. It was also fun, I literally played 8-10 hours a day, fiddled with newbies and continued to troll other players and admins! Lord, how many players were in the samp «on serious chess», you would know!
By the winter of 2016, I returned to Refu with the ambition to take 100 territories myself! As a result, I took more than 50 squares, but then difficulties arose. 3-4 gangs fought against us, and I was too lazy to negotiate with other leaders or admins. And I still spoke toxicly about people who weren’t my friends.
But by that time, the game in the ghetto had already been reduced to the fight against cheats and violations of the rules. Most conditionally spent 7 minutes in the game (that’s how long the capt or territory capture lasted), and in the next half hour they uploaded a capt record on YouTube, wrote a complaint, and then uploaded another capt record with a refutation of the complaint from a gang of opponents.
At the same time, my friends and I made a unique (for Advance) presidential campaign from the mafia. I, in the role of a criminal authority, abducted and removed competitors, while simultaneously dissing them in a rap format on the forum (a kind of ovning both in the game and outside the game). Unique, because the presidential campaign on Advance is just giving money to scourges and some kind of events with admins to recruit people to the party. Yes, that’s all.
The campaign was powerful, but I almost made it to the election — I was burned playing on another account for the gang (well, don’t leave the boys). And that was against the rules.
We also had a public with memes about sump, we went to «evict» local nerds from other servers from Advance in mafia and gangs, participated in a rap battle on the forum. We still see the guys from the game in real life.
At the beginning of the covid year, I took the leaderboard of my native Aztecs on the new Advance server. I wrote to everyone I remembered from the past. We gathered to play for a couple of days — to have fun and remember the past. AND we, the pensioners of this game, were torn off by new players with a new generation of cheats… Somewhere at this moment my sump career ended, but I will be watching old videos with our line-up for a long time, and I will never forget some nicknames!
Igor’s second life: with TV shows and casinos
Describing emotions from playing SAMP (or rather, from its RP-mode) is the same thankless task as retelling other people’s jokes. Even the most brilliant narrator will not tell you exactly what this project is good for. So for me, SAMP is an emotion. For some reason, the mod for the 2004 game still evokes more feelings in me than many modern AAA projects. How is this possible?
The answer lies on the surface. Most of the games put users some kind of restrictions. SAMP, on the other hand, breaks down all gameplay barriers, gives players a big city, text chat, and says, «Go ahead, have fun.» And it works perfect.
In SAMP, I raised a Mexican gang from the bottom. For months I saved up money to open my first business. Hosted my own TV show with my friends. Traveled by bus in the early morning when the server was almost empty. I hung out at the casino for hours.
In general, he invented entertainment for himself. SAMP captures you with this special atmosphere, as if the game gives you another life — much simpler and more carefree.
So I’m finishing this line and I’m already finishing downloading San Andreas on Steam. Let’s go drive around the Los Santos airport?
* * *
Have you played SAMP? How much time did they spend there?
