After 7 years in development, the most exciting Grand Theft Auto total conversion mod sets its sights on an August showcase

First conceived by creator deltaCJ in 2018, GTA 1991 began life as a hobbyist slant on the often rumoured, but never officially acknowledged, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Stories.

As a prequel to Carl Johnson's Grove Street exploits, the total conversion mod could indeed fit that billing, but over the course of its development, it's grown into something much bigger. Now seven years in the making, GTA 1991 is gunning for an August showcase designed to illustrate the size, stature and scope of the project. And it sounds pretty damn exciting.

For starters, GTA 1991 explores the origins of the base game's sweeping crack epidemic. Over dozens of missions, it paints its narrative through the eyes of Little Devil—a side character previously mentioned only by name in GTA: San Andreas, and said to be deceased by the time CJ takes over in Los Santos.

It incorporates a bespoke drug dealing system said to be born out of necessity, and not simply designed as a gamified side activity. And in doing all of this, it lends gravity and meaning to the hows and whys of the original 2004 crime sim's narrative in what is, clearly, a massive undertaking.

"If I take it back to 2018, then through 2020, Covid, all the way to today… I must have put in thousands upon thousands of hours into it," says deltaCJ. "I mean, I've got over a thousand hours in 3DS Max alone, probably the same in Sanny Builder and a whole bunch of other modding programs."

For the uninitiated, the Grand Theft Auto series' Stories offshoots were first applied to GTA 3 and GTA: Vice City—as Liberty City Stories in 2005 and Vice City Stories the following year—on the PSP handheld. The games later found a second home on the PS2, however San Andreas failed to receive the same treatment. Again, GTA 1991 isn't San Andreas Stories (there is in fact another mod project in the works that is), but it definitely does promise to scratch a similar itch.

To this end, DeltaCJ explains the GTA 1991 team has grown in size and confidence over time, pushing much closer towards what he's always wanted from the project in the last few months. He now has a dedicated office where he's lost countless hours to motion capture and iterating on animations, and admits to having written and rewritten the mod's story several times so far.

A trailer, and indeed a playable demo, are now well within reach—but deltaCJ and his team are self-confessed perfectionists who have always been determined to deliver "Rockstar quality" without compromise. This meticulous approach, you might imagine, is one of the reasons why the mod's spent quite so long in the oven, however deltaCJ can't wait to tease behind the curtain in the coming weeks and months.

He adds: "By August the plan is to have the first introduction mission showcase—that's cutscene dialogue, and the mission itself. After that, I want to put bits and pieces and crumbs out there to lead up to a bigger release, or even more showcases and more videos. At that point, I may even drop a link somewhere on the internet and have everybody go download it."

If you're keen to follow the development of GTA 1991, you can do so by checking out its dedicated space on GTAForums.