Crime Does Not Pay

Crime Does Not Pay was released by the French company Titus in 1990, and its period tagline — officially endorsed by the Mafia — tells you crime is played here with a wink. It is a gangster blend of adventure and action: the city is split between the Italian and the Chinese mob, and you choose which side to play — and in what role, since a godfather, a femme fatale and a hired killer are all available — on your climb to the top.

The goal is beautifully absurd: rake in enough money and influence to get yourself elected mayor, because only public office turns a gangster into the true king of crime. The road there leads through some two hundred locations where you put your mobsters to work: bribing, blackmailing, hunting for keys to locked doors and codes to safes, and when diplomacy fails, settling things in reflex-driven shootout sequences. Part of the content is reshuffled each playthrough, so no two games look alike.

It sounds grand, and in 1990 it looked grand too. But Titus was always stronger on ideas than on craft, and Crime Does Not Pay is no exception: the interface is unintuitive, the game never explains its own rules, and you will spend your first hour mostly guessing what is expected of you. The action sequences are stiff as well, more an irritation than a thrill.

Even so, the game deserves a chance. The freedom, the randomised setup and the three playable characters were bold for their day, and the comic-book mob atmosphere still holds up. It is a strange, unpolished but genuinely distinctive piece of gaming history — exactly the kind of title that makes digging through the archives worthwhile.

You can fire it up on oldgame.cz right in your browser and start building your empire immediately.