2. Goodfellas (1990)
Like The Godfather before it, Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas is thought to be one of the greatest crime movies ever made, and rightfully so: Scorsese puts one man's entire career up on the screen as an interconnected tapestry of visual splendor, music and brutal violence, to near-perfect effect. It's a gloriously cinematic venture, with Scorsese at the peak of his powers. Ray Liotta takes centre stage as Henry Hill, our protagonist who has "always wanted to be a gangster." The Influence? Given the year that it's set, Goodfellas takes more of an influence over the events and characters themselves in GTA III than that of The Godfather. Aesthetically, we get several locations and settings which have clearly been drawn from Scorsese's movie in several games. It's also safe to say that Ray Liotta would not have ended up voicing Tommy Vercetti in Vice City had he not played Henry Hill in Goodfellas. In Chinatown Wars, Joseph Daniel O'Toole is taken to a location and murdered when he think he's about to be made, a la Goodfellas.