Eight years and one month ago, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas released on the PlayStation 2. It begins rather abruptly—C.J. in an airport, saying that after five years on the east coast, it was time to return to San Andreas.

The game's official soundtrack included a DVD of "The Introduction," a 20-minute in-game cinematic explaining all the reasons why Carl Johnson returned. Rockstar this week finally made it public via its Social Club and YouTube (where others had uploaded it before. This one went up on Aug. 27, 2005, four months after the first YouTube video was uploaded.) Here you may see it in full quality, and if you haven't already, take the 20 minutes to do so. For those who have, hey, Sunday afternoons are always good for reruns.

Wouldn't it be awesome to be Batman? I mean, without all of the angst, perhaps. And without the years of training. And the constant threat of bodily harm. And the... hmm. Okay, you know what? Forget being Batman. I just want the cool parts of being Batman. The Batmobile and the suit and the jumping and, most especially, the not getting caught.

One Redditor felt the same way. And after an excursion to see The Dark Knight Rises, he came home feeling that Arkham City wasn't quite doing it for him. He needed something a little more... San Andreas. And lo, the newest Batman-themed mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was born. As the poster explains:

I kinda got obsessed with it over the last week and collected heaps of different Batman mods from all over the internet. It was hard, because most of the projects are dead and the links were all down, but I ended up putting together a pretty fully featured pack, using a mod called "The Dark Knight Begins" as a base.

There are way worse ways to be Batman. And should you happen to have grabbed San Andreas at any point, you can be Batman too. Or you can browse through the full gallery of Batman's annotated adventures in Gotham San Andreas.

The only Batman simulator I'll ever need [Reddit]

It's a proud part of American mythology that people from all over the world get to come here and pursue their dreams. Navid Khonsari has one of those stories. The Iranian-American used to work at Rockstar Games as cinematic director, where he helped steer the vision on games like The Warriors, Midnight Club II and Bully.

However, for all the best-selling, critically acclaimed games Khonsari worked on, it wasn't until he went back to the Middle East that he really saw the surprising cultural impact of video games.

Khonsari spoke at this week's Games for Change conference about 1979, the real-world political action game that he's making through his iNKstories development studio. That game's set in Iran during the infamous hostage crisis that followed a violent regime change in that country. Part of that game's inspration comes directly from his resume.

During a visit to his homeland six months after Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was released, Khonsari found himself mobbed by teenagers in the small villager of Gombad after word spread that he'd worked on the PS2 hit.

There's not much retail infrastructure in Iran but that wasn't really an obstacle with regard to getting games. "Iran has no copyright laws," Khonsari explains. "It's all black market. So you can buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto for $1. You can buy anything for $1. And Iranians are hardcore gamers. It's a huge gaming community. What's amazing is that it's not gender-specific. I was talking to girls like 16 years olds who were throwing lines back at me from San Andreas."

It's a given that gamers in Gombad—a small community in Iran's northeast region near the Turkmenistan border—would seize on the opportunity to peer at American culture through the PC version of GTA: SA. But it was the things they enjoyed most that surprised Khonsari.

"What was amazing was they weren't necessarily drawn to what the media and the critics always attacked about GTA games. The sex, nudity or the violence… none of that stuff was a big deal to them," he relates. Instead, it was the more mundane parts of San Andreas that resonated.

"They said it was a great venue for them to just listen to music, which is harder for them to do. And they can't just hop into a car and go places, either," he continues. "So they were like, "I just drive around in my car and listen to music. And it's wonderful." They really got into the everyday kind of things you could do in the game, like being able to go and get your hair cut. We put these things in the game because we believe that these are part of our activities in our daily lives. We take for granted that these are part of our activities in our daily lives."

When I mentioned that such a level of personal freedom must seem like a fantasy to players like the ones he met in Gombad, Khonsari agreed. "For them, it's a hyper version of kids who live in the suburbs and what they think the city's like. In this particular situation these guys are going, 'I get to make choices.' And, on top of that, look at the power and strength I have as a woman playing as this character. It's not gender-specific. It's not limited by who I am. It's my journey because I get to control that journey. I might be the shell of this person that I'm playing, which is CJ. But my desire is what's shaping this experience."

"The fact that CJ was black had a huge implication over there, too," offers Khonsari. "Because it wasn't the white character that's being pushed forward. And they're like, "Wow, there's a sense of openness. They've taken their main character and they've made him black. That's amazing."

Khonsari says that his experience in Gombad drove home something he always knew in his gut, which is that games can make foreign countries and cultures feel alive in a way that other mediums can't achieve. I'll have more about how he hopes to do just that for Iran with 1979 tomorrow.

I've never played as a black video game character who's made me feel like he was cool. Worse yet, I've never played a black video game character who made me feel like I was cool. Instead, I've groaned and rolled my eyes at a parade of experiences that continue to tell me video games just don't get black people.

The faces that look like mine that I've encountered in video games have been, at best, too inconsequential to be memorable and offensively tone-deaf at worst. What about Barrett from Final Fantasy VII or Sazh from Final Fantasy XIII, you might ask? Or Cole Train from the Gears of War games? Wait, there's Sheva from Resident Evil 5, right? No, no and no. Too many elements of caricature in each, I'd say, and they're all sidekicks. Their stories aren't the focus of the adventure players go on.

But, hey, it's a given that video games tend to present exaggerated characters. Marcus Fenix isn't like any white guy I've ever met, after all. But he doesn't have to be. For every Marcus Fenix-type grunt hero, you can also get a witty Nathan Drake, a charming Ezio or a regretful John Marston. Enough white characters exist in video games for a variability of approach. That's simply not true of black characters.

In creating Half-Life 2's Alyx Vance, Valve gave players a woman who was feisty and fragile at the same time. Alyx ranks amongst the best black game characters of all time, but she's another sidekick. C.J. from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas comes closest to this pie-in-the-sky ideal I'm dreaming of. C.J. managed to hold a core contradiction inside of himself—an intense love of family balanced against the violence of thug life—that added depth to his characterization. And while he was the lead of the game he starred in, he was still a gang member. Rockstar found interesting things to do with him but C.J. still comes into being by virtue of another overused stereotype.

Does this stuff matter in video games? Yes. The thing to remember is that beneath all the comforting platitudes about a character's color not mattering lies a sticky web of stereotypes and cheap myths that can still insult and anger people playing a game. Even if I wanted to like Sam B from Dead Island, for example, I'm still running up against the fact that he's a hot-tempered thug rapper.

Stop leaning on this stereotype. Stop creating loud black soldiers who only know how to yell. Stop putting spear-carrying primitives in games.

What I want, basically, is Black Cool. It's a kind of cool that improvises around all the random stereotypes and facile understandings of black people that have accrued over centuries and subverts them. Black Cool says "I know what you might think about me, but I'm going to flip it." Dave Chappelle's comedy is Black Cool. Donald Glover is Black Cool. Aisha Tyler is Black Cool. Marvel Comics's Black Panther character is Black Cool. Their creativity is the energy I want video games to tap into.

There's a book about it. In the anthology Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness, author Rebecca Walker assembles a crop of personal essays that talk about how Black Cool manifested in their lives. One of those writers is Mat Johnson, a professor in the University of Houston's creative writing program. Johnson's like me, a lifelong comics-reading, game-loving geek who continues to bump into jarring, awful portrayals of black people in video games.

"I played Dead Island when it came out last year and there's a point when you get the Natives Camp area. I was like, ‘Oh, OK, we're going to have an African-style primitive out here,'" he told me. "The bizarre thing is that the stereotypes you encounter in the games don't even match up timewise with our current culture. That's what's so odd about it. The mainstream culture at large has moved beyond the trope of the black primitive. You can't get away with that kind of thing in a movie."

Johnson's written prose along with graphic novels and when he compares video games' racial awareness to comic and he says "comics had a much more concerted effort to change images of minorities in the work. And part of that was a market-driven concern." There's a difference of scale, too, he continues. "If comics can access another 5,000 or 10,000 in their possible audience, it has a huge impact. Whereas video games have become a mass market phenomenon that have an even bigger scope than movies. So they're not as worried about minority concerns as comics are."

The importance of seeing a face that looks like yours when stepping into a fictional universe can't be overstated. I'm a big Superman fan, but it was DC Comics' Black Lightning that piqued my interest when I was growing up. Every black superhero face I saw growing up was another signpost that said "Hey, you're welcome here. You can be larger-than-life, too." The absence of such characters doesn't make fictional constructs hostile; it makes them indifferent, which can be far worse.

"Another difference with games is that, as a medium, they're about invoking our fears so that we can overcome them," Johnson speculates. "I think that's what happens in both Resident Evil 5 and also Dead Island. They're not just invoking fear of zombies, they are invoking fear of blackness, and offering the gamer an opportunity to challenge their racial fears as well as their other fears. What you're seeing here is a subconscious action. And the reason it becomes clear because it's not in one game, it's in several different games."

"There have been exceptions in games like Left 4 Dead," Johnson observes, "where you have an actual black nerd character in the game." "I honestly think the move away from this going to be generational, when it's so easy to produce a 3D video game that it's the equivalent of shooting a movie today with a digital camera. But, until then, when I see a game that clearly walks right into a racial dead-end, I know I'm seeing a room of developers talking out a story with not one black person, not one Latino person of power in that room. So I think the single biggest thing that many of these companies could do to make sure that they are being representative of the larger culture's ethos, would be to hire in a diverse way."

"It's not a question of [developers and publishers] pushing culture forward," Johnson said. "It's a question of them catching up to mainstream culture. Part of it, I think again, is market success. They haven't had to worry about that at this point, because they're still going to sell a ton of games if the basic gameplay is good. But being better about black characters and characters of other races would make the overall quality better, too."

In other mediums and creative pursuits, there've been the black people who pivoted the conversations, expanded the possibilities and deepened the portrayals about what black people are. In jazz, it was Charlie Parker. In literature, it was Ralph Ellison. In comics, I'd argue that it was Christopher Priest, followed by Dwayne McDuffie. For me, the work of the deceased McDuffie managed to create characters that communicated an easily approachable vein of black cool.

Video games need this kind of paradigm-shifting figure. Not an exec, mind you—sorry, Reggie—but a creative face who steers the ethos of a game. For example, you know what kind of game a Warren Spector or a Jenova Chen is going to deliver. With Spector, it's a game that'll spawn consequences from player action. With Chen, you'll get experiences that try to expand the emotional palette of the video game medium. I want someone to carry that flag for blackness, to tap into it as a well of ideas.

Blackness can be a sort of performance, a lifetime role informed by the ideas of how people see you and how you want to be seen. One thing I've heard over the years is some variation of the colorblind testimonial: "I don't see a black guy when I look at you. I just see you." Well, if you're not seeing a black guy, then you're not seeing all of me. And if you're seeing just a black guy, you're not seeing all of me in that instance either.

I'm not naïve: no one's going to buy a video game because it's less wince-worthy on matters of race or diversity. But, maybe if Black Cool found its way into video games, I wouldn't have to hear the word "nigger" during online multiplayer sessions so much. Or maybe I wouldn't have to listen to characters that sound like 18th-Century minstrels in cyberpunk games.

While I'm sick of video games stumbling around the same ol' stereotypes and being afraid of black lead characters—"they won't sell!," cries the panicked logic— I'm not going to love Starhawk or Prototype 2 more because they have black lead characters. But if Emmett Graves and James Heller tap into some kind of deeper, more surprising portrayal than Standard Gruff Black Guy #29 and feel more human as a result, I'd feel better about the creative possibilities of video games.

Any mode of creativity that wants to be called mature needs to grapple with the sociopolitical issues of its time and place, especially if it wants to hold onto future generations. If it doesn't, then said medium just remains stuck in its own adolescence. When it comes to the examining the realities of how race can be lived in the world, movies, books and TV all do it. I'm not saying video games won't or can't, but damn if it's not a long time coming. Getting black characters who don't make me grit my teeth would be a great sign that video games are growing up.

It might be seven years old, but that doesn't mean commenter Cheese Addict can't find a positive racial statement lurking in the back alleys of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It's never too late to Speak Up on Kotaku.

I've been thinking about racism in the media and racism in games, particularly since I finally started playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (I know, slowpoke.gif). Whenever the media tackles racism, it's always about how someone has to have their preconceptions corrected through some humbling experience, or simply using a racist character to demonstrate that it's wrong. There's also ironic (?) usage of racist stereotypes, like the triads' voices in GTA3. (What the hell are they saying anyways?)

Yet after getting to Zero's first mission, I'm starting to think GTA: SA's character interaction is the best example of how lack of racism can be portrayed: characters from vastly different backgrounds can speak to each other without moderating their slang or tone of speech, they understand each other completely, and make no comments whatsoever about each other's vocabulary, background or speech patterns. They just communicate as human beings.

In real life, two people like CJ and Zero wouldn't be able to talk to each other comfortably without all the racial baggage. It's cool to see what it would be like without it all.

We've seen a teaser of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City imported into Grand Theft Auto IV's visual and physics engine, RAGE. Another mod team is hard at work on the same conversion for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

At work since December, the team hopes to release a public beta this fall. Above is about 20 minutes of footage from what they've built so far, beginning at the Bone County Airport and plane graveyard, flying over San Fierro and the Gant Bridge, touring Las Venturas at night, plunging from atop Mount Chiliad, and much more.

Vehicle conversions and many other details still need work, but if you are intimately familiar with the San Andreas map, this is a mesmerizing trip down memory lane.

The mod's official site is here, and you can read much more about its work in progress, with more videos and screenshots in this thread on GTA Forums (begins at the most recent post.)

Mac owners, get ready to game like it's 2001, as the Grand Theft Auto III trilogy has finally come to Apple computers. Better late than never, right?

Thanks to Rockstar Games and TransGaming's Cider engine, those of us who prefer Mac OS X to Windows can play Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on their home computers, running down pedestrians on Macbooks and committing heinous acts of creative violence on iMacs.

The three open-world crime sprees are now available via GameTreeMac right now—each title is priced at $14.99 USD—and at retailers across Europe. The Grand Theft Auto trilogy will be available at retail in North America starting November 22.

TransGaming's Cider Portability Engine is the tech that powers Windows to Mac conversions like Dragon Age, Prince of Persia, The Sims 3 and more. We're sure the Mac versions of Grand Theft Auto IV, Manhunt, Bully and Red Dead Redemption are just around the corner. No? Maybe State of Emergency?

When I was thirteen, Ice-T was the baddest dude on the planet, rapping about pushing dope and killing cops. There were no musicians who seemed as hard as him. The guy was scary. Now?

Even as he eases into middle age, Ice-T still seems like someone you wouldn't want to set off, but over the years, he's increasingly become known less as an urban terror and more of a virtual one. These days he's kicking ass and taking names in Call of Duty.

Ice-T started doing video game voice work way back in 2000 with action title Sanity: Aiken's Artifact and followed that up with appearances in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in 2004 and Scarface: The World Is Yours in 2006. He's even lending his voice to the upcoming Gears of War 3.

From James Woods to George Clinton, loads of celebrities did voice work in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. But when Call Of Duty: Black Ops launched, was James Woods huffing the limited edition bundle?

Ice-T is, no doubt, a super sharp guy and has always been hard to pigeonhole. He first made his name as a rapper, but then went on to successfully blend hip-hop and metal. He's enjoyed a highly successful acting career in both film and television.

But it was in 2008 that Ice-T the gamer came on our gaming radar with an interview in which he gave his gamertag LORD 187X and said if you see him in Call of Duty, "you gonna die". An appearance on The Jace Hall Show and pics of him with the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 night goggles helped seal his reputation as a serious COD player. And it's not only Call of Duty, Ice-T dispenses his opinion on whatever he's playing, whether it be Fallout New Vegas or Medal Of Honor.

This is the same guy that decades earlier pioneered gangster rap and pissed off police officers, President George Bush, Tipper Gore and even Charlton Heston with his song "Cop Killer"! Now, he's on his way to become a gaming icon, something that would have been unthinkable in the gangsta rap days of 1992. Then video games were still viewed as children's toys and not mainstream adult entertainment. It just goes to show how far gaming has come — and how far Ice-T has come as well. He's no longer rapping about killing cops, he's playing one on TV.

Answering reader mail, Rockstar Games today said it will be bringing Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City and San Andreas to Mac gamers "later this year."

"Look for the long-awaited release of the classic Grand Theft Auto Trilogy (Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas) for Mac - most likely later this year," the studio said in its "Asked and Answered" feature. "We'll have much more info and a proper announcement soon."

Wonder if it's at all related to the curious re-rating - at least in Australia - for a "modified" and "multiplatform" version of Vice City.

Technically, any Mac gamer with a copy of Windows installed has been able to play these games on his machine for some time. A native version is nicer to have. And its nice to see Rockstar climbing aboard in its support of the platform.

No pricing or other details.

Asked & Answered: Red Dead Downloadable Content, Soundtrack, Classic GTAs on Mac, The Banhammer, and Much More [Rockstar Games on Facebook]

If you ever owned a copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, specifically the naughty version that contained the crude, digital doggy-styling mission known as "Hot Coffee," you may already be five U.S. dollars richer. Publisher Take-Two is sending out checks.

Those checks are part of publisher Take-Two Interactive's efforts to "voluntarily fulfill all properly-submitted claims" over the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas "Hot Coffee" incident and lawsuit. The game, originally released in 2004 on the PlayStation 2, featured hidden data for a playable sex mini-game that was not meant to be accessed by players. That data was eventually accessed by Patrick Wildenborg, a Dutch modder, via the PC version of the game, released in 2005.

In the ensuing fallout, the ESRB re-rated the game "AO," meaning it was appropriate for Adults Only, and prompted a recall and relabeling of the original version. Publisher Take-Two was later hit with multiple lawsuits over the incident.

As part of the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas settlement, owners of the original version of the Rockstar Games-developed PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC game could receive cash compensation for their offended sensibilities. Those payouts, ranging from $5 USD to $35 USD, are on their way to claimants now, as at least one Kotaku reader can attest.

According to the official GTA Settlement web site, "All those who filed claims for benefits prior to the May 16, 2008, deadline will receive those benefits prior to April 15, 2010."

Here's the official letter:

Dear Eligible Claimant:

Although the court hearing this action decided not to certify a settlement class, Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. will voluntarily fulfill all properly-submitted claims.

By depositing the attached check, you will release any and all claims, of any nature whatsoever, including unknown claims, arising out of your purchase or use of the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas video game, against the Defendants, their officers, employees and representatives, and all persons or entities that designed, manufactured, supplied, advertised and marketed Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. You also will be deemed to have waived any and all rights that you have under any law or regulation that would otherwise limit the effect of this release to claims actually known or suspected to exist at the time of execution of this Settlement Agreement, including, but not limited to, the provisions of Section 1542 of the California Civil Code, to the extent deemed applicable, which provides as follows:

1542. "GENERAL RELEASE-CLAIMS EXTINGUISHED. A GENERAL RELEASE DOES NOT EXTEND TO CLAIMS WHICH THE CREDITOR DOES NOT KNOW OR SUSPECT TO EXIST IN HIS FAVOR AT THE TIME OF EXECUTING THE RELEASE, WHICH IF KNOWN BY HIM MUST HAVE MATERIALLY AFFECTED HIS SETTLEMENT WITH THE DEBTOR."

Sincerely,
GTA: San Andreas 1st Edition Settlement Administrator

Five dollars. Now that's gangster.

Thanks to SouthernerIsuppose for the tip.