After 22 years, a fan restored a lost mod to access the ghost town in GTA III - the original project was recognized by Rockstar

In the opening scene of Grand Theft Auto III, players see the so-called Ghost Town. This is a 3D location where the developers showed Claude helping Catalina rob a bank, and then the hero is betrayed and shot.

In the original GTA III, it's not just a "cutscene." The Ghost Town is a full-fledged location, specially built for the introduction. It was isolated from the main city of Liberty City, meaning it couldn't be accessed under normal circumstances. Nevertheless, enthusiasts found a way to "break" the game and get in.

There was also a simpler method available to the "average" gamer. 22 years ago, enthusiast Eliano86 built a bridge that allowed players to easily access and explore this area on their own.

In 2012, developers from Rockstar Games mentioned this modification when asked about this "ghost town":

We didn't remove any island from the game — there were always only three. We think what people call "ghost town" is just a small part of the city that we made for the bank robbery scene at the very beginning of the game. It never had a name, but we wanted it to be a place separate from the Liberty City map, so we built a few streets literally hanging in the void, and assumed no one would ever find them. We noticed that someone made a mod with a bridge, so now you can actually drive there — amazing...

However, when the gta-downloads website stopped working, this modification was considered lost, but in the summer of 2026, everything changed.

Mod_Saver on ModDB announced the release of the "Ghost City Available" modification. The developer said that he completely recreated and restored the mod from scratch, using an old video.

This is not just a "copy" of the modification, Mod_Saver fixed the "main drawback" of the original — players will be able to fully walk around the ghost town and also see the observatory:

The original 2004 mod was purely visual (the character simply fell through the surface of the ghost town). After 22 years, I finally created the missing collision files (.col), making the entire island solid and fully playable for the first time.