Gangbusters

The Good
As I trudged through the underwhelming Gangsters: Organized Crime, I kept remembering how engrossing the text-based Gangbusters was for the C64. Gangbusters was a 2-6 player game set during Prohibition. Beginning as a street punk, you had to make the correct decisions that would foster your criminal career and hope that the Feds wouldn't take your blossoming empire down and that your co-players wouldn't take out a contract out on you. Each player took a turn at the keyboard and moved through a series of screens that determined: the percentage of risk you were willing to take in certain criminal venues (racketeering, bootlegging, etc.), which horses to bet on at the track (after looking over the odds), whether certain palms needed to be greased, where to spend your ill-gotten gains, and more.

What made this interesting were the random events and the degree of flexibility. To rise in the ranks, you had to make your bones. First you needed a clean piece, so you had to drop some money at the track and hope someone approached you with a gun for sale. Later on, dropping money at the track would attract bodyguards (and losers were approached by the "Juiceman" a local loan shark). Trying to payoff the cops might land you in jail—unless you greased the DA's palm, who would then drop the charges.

So it would pass, year after year, until the competition narrowed down and someone stood tall as the Godfather. I'm probably giving the game too much credit, but it seemed rather sophisticated for having such a simple interface. It seemed like once you ran afoul of the law, it was a continual event unless you played it safe for a while. Also, it paid to diversify your empire. Sometimes the girls would do better than the gin, sometimes not.

The Bad
And sometimes the game didn't seem that sophisticated. Attracting the Feds' attention seemed more random than just being the result of amassing a huge criminal empire. Hiring a hitman was far too easy and they were usually successful regardless of how many bodyguards you had around. My fellow players and I established a no-hitman rule, otherwise the game would end too quickly.

Stealing a limo from another player never seemed worth the risk either. While being a nice F-you, losing a limo didn't have any ill-effect and the risk for getting killed while stealing a limo was very high. Why a real Mafioso wouldn't delegate this, I don't know.

Finally, towards the end of the game, the players had acquired (and continued to acquire) tons of wealth. The final screens where you spent the wealth (on more trucks, more stills, more limos) took forever to get through since it didn't make sense to sit on the dough. It could take between five and ten minutes pressing the correct buttons to shell out the cash, and then the next round would take longer as the new investments paid off.

The Bottom Line
Even though it wasn't a classic C64 game, Gangbusters was a great Gangster simulator using all the lingo and having a terrific interface. Heavily focused on the business side of crime, this game stands apart from most wannabe Al Capone-type games.