Stadium Missions

8-Track

The 8-Track is a reasonably difficult race inside the stadium. Similar to the Hotring in GTA Vice City, you are battling it out with 12 other vehicles over a 12 lap race in a Hotring Racer.

You must finish in first place to be rewarded, however the Hotring Racer doesn't have very good handling, particularly at speed and will spin out of control with almost the slightest impact with another car.

The most important thing is to get off to a good start. Immediately from the "GO" message, speed forward and keep to the dirt on the left. Go around the corner, then if you have a chance, cross the road to the right hand side and stay on the outside of the track. You should be up into about 5th or 6th at this point already.

Make your way around the first main left, across the bridge and then keep to the right and stay on the dirt once again. From here it's simple, just follow the road around carefully and slowly, braking any time you feel you need to turn.

If you see a car coming up behind you, or next to you LET THEM PASS. You can easily overtake them again, but if they touch you and most likely spin you out, you could drop 30 seconds behind the leader by the time you get going again.

The cars in front of you aren't stupid drivers and they'll slow down for corners too, so just follow and keep up with them. As you approach the start/finish line, prepare to overtake, as this is certainly the easiest part on the track to gain positions.

Once you're up to the relatively tight left turn again slow down and tail anyone still in front of you. Follow them around the track until you reach the start finish line, then use the straight and relatively easy corner to gain more positions. Try to keep this up for two or three laps, and you should then be in first place.

Once you're in first place you can take it reasonably easily. You'll need to maintain your speed in order to stay ahead of the pack, but you should be more careful braking for corners and of course you won't have to worry about getting past anyone in front of you.

You may wish to go a bit faster around the easier corners, but always remember to brake. I'd also advise only using the regular brake and not the handbrake otherwise you'll most likely spin out. You can also release the accelerator and glide around the track when going around corners, rather than heading in too fast and needing to slow down too much.

Staying in the lead for about 3 laps will usually cause any cars directly behind you to disappear and fall further back, so you can be a lot more careful in order to not crash.

It goes without saying, but stay in first place and try not to crash, then just navigate your way around the track carefully. Unless you're on the last lap, let anyone go past you who could be a danger. Always remember the area just before and just after the start/finish line is the best place for overtaking on the whole track.

Screenshots

Original PS2 Screenshots

Blood Ring

The Blood Ring is a extremely difficult checkpoint-grabbing destruction derby. A similar challenge was also in GTA Vice City and while it could be frustrating, it was still easily possible. The San Andreas version literally requires good luck in order to pass the mission.

You and about 20 other vehicles with sub-machine gun weilding idiots hanging out of the windows need to battle around a large sandy bowl and drive through big red checkpoints. Your time will count down and every checkpoint you get will increase your time by 15 seconds. You'll start on 30 seconds and you need to beat a score of 60 seconds.

In theory, this means you need to grab about three or four checkpoints in quick succession in order to raise your time above a minute.

In Vice City this wasn't too much of a problem, although you needed to weave in and out of the other bloodring bangers in order to get to the checkpoints as quickly as possible. In San Andreas, the mission is completely unfair. You're in a crappy Bloodring Banger with probably the worst handling and speed in the game, while challenging about 20 other vehicles ranging from street racers to off road vehicles.

To make things worse, other vehicles can grab the checkpoints too. So not only do you need to grab as many checkpoints as possible, but you need to pray that none of the other cars drive through the one you're heading for before you get there. With odds of 19/1 or so you don't really have a great chance of getting the checkpoints first.

The main advice for this mission is to keep playing it over and over until you are lucky enough to get three or four checkpoints without another vehicle getting there before you.

Use handbrake turns to turn around quickly and always head for the little tool icon to repair your vehicle if you can see someone else is going to get a checkpoint before you. The other racers can do a lot of damage to your car with their drive-by's.

Don't bother thinking you can shoot the other cars to get rid of them though, because all of the blown up cars respawn! So no matter how many you take out, there'll still be about 20 others stealing your checkpoints!

There's literally no proper advice you can give for this, apart from telling you your objective. Avoid the other cars and grab the checkpoints before they do. Everything comes down to luck when the game spawns the checkpoints. If you're very lucky, they'll appear right in front of you, but if you have to turn and head to the other side of the arena, you're pretty much screwed.

Screenshots

Original PS2 Screenshots

Dirt Track

The Dirt Track is probably one of the easiest stadium missions there is. You're on a Sanchez dirt bike and are racing it out with 12 other bikers. The good thing is that while they are relatively well skilled at driving, they don't balance themselves out after going over a jump and as a result, you can almost always count on most of, if not all of them falling off after going over the hill a few corners from the start. This gives you a great opportunity to catch up or extend your the lead.

From the start follow the dirt track and stay completely in the middle of the road. Just stay in the center of the other vehicles and head over the small jump. Try to land cleanly and go over the next jump where you should be able to gain about four or five places. Land that safely then follow the corner around to the left.

Continue around the track and handbrake turn just after going over the top of the next hill. Follow this path down and over the small jump, then hit the big jump.

This is where you win and lose the race. You'll most likely see that a lot of the riders have fallen from their bikes here and those who haven't will soon. Ensure you balance out the bike in mid-air and land smoothly, while avoiding the other bikes.

Head to the left and speed up the ramp. As you hit the end, turn slightly to the right in mid air so that you land at an angle pointing the right way. Keep to the inside of the track, ideally on the yellow bit in the middle then follow this tight circle all of the way around.

After three quarters of a full circle you'll see the track continues to the left, so make sure you don't miss the turn. Head through here and hand brake turn in order to stay away from the barriers then continue to the end of this section and hand brake turn again.

Follow the road a bit further then handbrake turn around the hairpin. Drive to the end of the next road and handbrake turn around another hairpin, then follow the track back to the start/finish line.

Every single rider WILL crash out on the hill sooner or later, so just make sure you put in good lap times of around 55-57 seconds and try not to spin out or bail from the bike. If you land the jump safely, you're basically guaranteed to gain positions.

Once you get in the lead it's not as easy as the 8-Track, however handbrake turning makes corners much easier. Always be sure to keep off the barriers. They'll pretty much stop you dead and it would be quicker to physically brake to a stop. Instead, release the gas and let the bike glide along.

Performing handbrake turns without accelerating will improve the turning time and make it a lot easier to get around corners at higher speeds.

Keep driving relatively fast and don't crash, then wait for the other racers to make mistakes and you should be able to get this in your first few tries.

A high bike skill will make this a bit easier as you'll have less chance of falling from your bike, even with hard collisions.

Screenshots

Original PS2 Screenshots

Kickstart

Kickstart is very much like the Dirt Ring in GTA Vice City. You're on a dirt bike and need to make your way up and over obstacles in order to increase your score while your time counts down. You need to score more than 25 points to beat the challenge, however 45 or more is easily possible. Grabbing a green corona will earn you 1 point, an amber one will get you 2 and a red one will add 3 to your total. Needless to say the green ones are easy to get, the amber ones are medium, and the red ones are the hardest.

From the start head immediately left and drive up the easy-ish wooden ramp thing to the top and grab the red corona. Drop down from there and go straight ahead and over the two strange obstacles to pick up two orange coronas. Before dropping down at the end of the second one, make a right and go up the next obstacle. Grab the amber one up here, then go down and grab a red corona. Head up the ramp at the other side and drop the front wheel off the edge to grab the next red corona, then reverse back on and turn around, dropping down the last ramp to pick up yet another red corona.

Make your way to the top left corner of the room where you'll find an easy few ramps leading through a green corona into a red one. You should now have 22 points with only about a minute or so gone, and you can just pick a few easy green corona's to push it past 25 and you'll win the mission when the time runs out.

If you want to get as good a score as possible head over to the other side of the arena and ramp onto the bus. Grab the amber corona and head carefully along the wooden plank to the other bus to grab a red corona. Drop down and drive into the single car aiming to bounce off it and grab the red corona at the top of the stacked cars. You can then drive up the wooden ramp next to the cars and grab the amber corona.

By now you will easily have the required 25 points and if not there's at least 5 more easy green ones to pick up, so I'll leave the rest up to you.

Screenshots

Original PS2 Screenshots