20 Severely Underrated 90s Video Games You Forgot You Loved

17. Gangsters: Organized Crime - PC, 1998

It defies belief that so few attempts have been made to create the ultimate gangster simulator. I'm not talking about murderous power fantasies like the GTA or Mafia series, which are more mass-killer-fests that gangster sims, but a subtle, realistic, and gruelling game in which you're responsible for building up and managing a criminal empire. Gangsters: Organized Crime is one of the few games that ever managed to do this successfully. Set in Prohibition-era Chicago, it places you in the role of a gang boss, who must do everything from recruiting hoods, to extorting businesses, to hiring lawyers for when the police come asking how your humble laundrette manages to have the turn-over of a high-street bank. The game plays into the thinking person's gangster fantasy - the person who prefers The Godfather over Scarface. It's not about getting your hands dirty and blowing someone's brains out for some crime boss who secretly wants to kill you. In Gangsters, you're the boss and you get others to do your dirty work for you. Emphasising the degree of choice Gangsters offers you, you can actually win the game by becoming town mayor or even by going clean and setting up a legitimate business. But where's the fun in that, unless you're a sociopathic gangster in real life and the fantasy aspect of the game is not committing crime...