Grand Theft Auto 3’s Ghost City was my first proper experience of community discovery.
I was too young to fully appreciate game-breaking in the likes of Super Mario and Alex Kidd, so the idea of flying the clipped-wing Dodo aircraft from the runway of Frances International Airport at a very specific angle in order to break the 3D map and wind up in an otherwise inaccessible area—the section which housed the game’s opening bank robbery cutscene, floating well beyond the playable map—blew my teenage mind.
In 2004, modder Eliano86 built a bridge that allowed players to more formally access the area with less of the faff, however the project’s original hosting platform (gta-downloads.com) has long since disappeared from the interwebs. Now, hobbyist creator Mod_Saver has resurrected that project well over two decades down the line. Enter Ghost City Available.
“For over a decade, this specific alternative bridge mod was considered ‘Lost Media’,” says Mod_Saver. “The original hosting platform went completely offline, and the original link was dead forever. Even the Wayback Machine couldn’t recover the downloadable files. This mod was gone.
“Instead of letting it fade into history, I decided to fully recreate and resurrect it from scratch based on an old 2012 video (GTA 3 – Tips & Tricks – How to Reach Ghost Town by GTA Series Videos) footage. But I didn’t just clone it: I fixed its biggest flaw. The original 2004 mod was strictly visual (you would fall straight through the Ghost Town floor). 22 years later, I have finally built the missing collision files (.col) to make the entire island solid and fully playable for the very first time.”
Which is pretty beautiful, truth be told. I’m a sucker for game preservation, for unearthing secrets and for the passion that drives each and every hobbyist endeavour—in this case in relation to a game now 25 years old and an OG mod just a few years younger.
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