There were no motorcycles in GTA 3, but Rockstar devised an ingenious reason

Looking back at the past, we come across titles that were milestones in the industry. These are titles that were revolutionary at the time, but from today’s perspective seem incomplete compared to the evolution of their genre. This is the case with Grand Theft Auto III, the Rockstar Games title that changed the way we understand freedom in a video game. It was innovative, controversial, and showcased the attention to detail for which their studio would become so famous. However, unlike later installments, this first installment did not include a type of vehicle that would have been interesting: motorcycles.

Why are there no motorcycles in GTA 3?

When you think of Grand Theft Auto, vehicles are among the most important elements. Since their appearance in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, motorcycles have become a must-have vehicle in all subsequent installments. According to the website The Cutting Room, some codes indicate that “there are some leftover motorcycle codes...but not nearly enough to restore them to the game,” so this vehicle could have appeared in that installment, but some factor prevented its arrival.

But there is also a very special detail, because a few years later Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, a prequel that takes place years before the events of GTA III, features motorcycles. While Rockstar had done a good job with the vehicles for that time, how could they justify that Toni Cipriani could ride a motorcycle, while Claude Speed, 3 years later, only drove cars?

The answer was quite ingenious, and you didn’t have to wait long to find out. From the moment you opened the box of this PSP game, the instruction booklet, which pretended to be an issue of the Liberty Tree, the fictional newspaper of Liberty City, contained an article signed by Gaylord Morrisen, who wrote that the protest group A.R.S.E. (American Road Safety for Everybody) was calling for the demise of these vehicles in an article entitled “Motorcycles kill kids and must be banned.”

The article also mentions that this group had already banned bicycles from the streets of Liberty City, and now motorcycles were the next target: “People on motorcycles are trying to kill all of us, so we at A.R.S.E. say it’s time to fight back.”  Interestingly, this group was founded by the donations of Maibatsu, a company in the GTA universe that focuses on cars and trucks, and according to the manual, aimed to launch the Monstrocity, an SUV that plans to “revolutionize the suburbs”, in 2001. Exactly the year GTA III takes place.