Mafia
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Description 
 
During the prohibition crime prospers in Chicago. Every shop owner lives in fear of raids or blackmailing. Bank and mail robberies are more and more common. Everybody can buy fire arms, the corrupt police is no help at all. In this scenario, up to four criminals who have recently been released from prison fight for the domination of Gangland. The way to the Mafia Throne is long and hard. At the beginning, you are a nobody whom not even the shop owners take seriously. You have to do quite a few nasty odd jobs before you can even afford a car or a gun, let alone a flat and your own little gang.

 Design 
 
While the game itself mainly consists of PETSCI graphics, created with a modified charset, there are many comic-like multi colour images for the single buildings and events. The sound is not really worth mentioning, besides some FX and jingles there isn't any.

 Objective 

You either have to gain the highest score at the end of the game or win beforehand by achieving the rank "Gangland King" AND robbing a cash transport AND killing the mayor. 

For each crime you get a higher hazardousness score which determines your rank. But the more the citizens of Chicago fear and your rivals respect you, the more attention will the police pay to your activities. 

 Controls 
 
With a car you can make more moves per turn.C64 	Emulator 	Function 
W  	W  	 north 
A  	A  	 west 
S  	S  	 south 
D  	D  	 east 
Return  	Enter  	 fire(1) 
Space  	Space  	 pass(1) 
<-  	°/^  	 menu(2) 

(1) Only in Combat Mode (2) Only in Walk through City Mode 

Combat: After hitting Return  the gangster's color turns black. Now you have to push W/A/S/D  to indicate in which direction (s)he is supposed to strike/stab/fire (depending on the weapon). 

 Walk through City 
 
Forgeries are not very often detected

Roaming the streets of Chicago is the main part of the game. Every player may walk or drive through the city until he has no steps left and the turn is over. You see a city map from the bird's eye perspective. Your position is represented by a flashing little man. The different car models allow you different amounts of bonus steps. The various actions in the buildings also cost a certain amount of steps each. Sometimes you get trapped in a stop-and-search operation of the police. If they find anything illegal or have a wanted poster of you, they will arrest you, unless you successfully bribe them or run away. Faking Billy (a grey inverse "B" on the map indicates his place) offers you falsified documents for $1000 per gang member. Moreover, you can bribe the commissioner directly at the police department. Both actions can prevent you from being stopped and arrested. 

 Buildings and Functions 
 
Without a gun you cannot even scare an old lady.
 
A potential victim
 
These lousy tenements get more and more expensive 	Car Dealer 	
Buying or stealing a car not only increases your mobility but also enables you to smuggle bigger amounts of alcohol. 
 	Gun Shop 	
You and your forces need the right equipment for surviving the daily gang war. You can also train your gang members and yourself here. 
 	Pub/Bar 	
This is the meeting point of many criminals. Here you can hire gang members, smuggle alcohol, find odd jobs or get some insider information. 
 	Hideout 	
Here you have to rent and pay a flat which you need to do before you can found an own gang. 
 	Bank 	
There is an abundance of money, you only have to help yourself - either during the day by a bank hold-up or at night by safe-cracking. 
 	Faking Billie 	
Billie produces funny money and fake IDs of a high quality. 
 	Subway Station 	
The city has an underground system with various stations where crowded platforms provide the perfect chance for some pickpocketing. 
 	Chicago Police Headquarters 	
The Police HQ also contains the prison. You can free a prisoner or bribe the commissioner. 
 	Casino 	
In the Casino you can try your luck legally. 
 	Loan Shark 	
If you are really dogged by bad luck, a credit can provide a last chance to boost your carreer. Of course it is more fun and more profitable if you buy a credit business and run your own loan shark enterprise. 
 	Railroad Station 	
There are two railroad stations in Chicago. They have their own pubs whose owners appreciate a drink time and again. Sometimes, mail trains with valuable cargo stop here. Of course, you could also just kill time with some pickpocketing here. 

 Special Missions 

Kill the Mayor (red inverse 'B') 

This field is only visible when you have accepted the mission "Kill the Mayor". The mission is a fight against the well-armed bodyguards and afterwards the mayor himself. 

Cash Transport (blue inverse 'G') 

This field is only visible after you have accepted the Mission "Rob Cash Transport". The escort will put up one of the hardest fights in the game. 

Gold Bars in the Main Street Bank (the very eastern bank) 

If the barkeeper tells you something about a special deposit in the main street bank, safe-cracking or raiding that bank will be particularly rewarding. 

Gun Running 

Sometimes the barman offers you to join a gun running by investing $5.000. This can be really profitable, but if the gun runners get caught, your investment is forever gone, at least not you but other people are jailed in that case. 

 Gang War and Combat Mode 
 
Isn't that just like a wop? Brings a knife to a gun fight!
 
Robbing the cash transport is one of the hardest battles.

Gang War 

The gang war of course only works in a multi-player game. Depending on the wealth of the loser this can earn the winner more than only fame. 

Combat Mode 

The combat against AI enemies or human players is an important part of the game. You see your red colored gang members on the left side, while your blue opponents start in the right half of the screen. In the bottom of the screen you can read the data belonging to the individual characters of both sides. 

The two parties take turns. Each character starts with a certain amount of energy which (s)he loses with each hit. If the energy is zero, the character is disabled and out of the fight. The energy will be restored during the next rounds, depending on the power level. Consequently, you should give your gang a break after a difficult fight. Each character can only perform one action per turn, either move or fight. If it's your turn, your first character will start flashing. Be aware that the weapons have a different range. The precision and the effect are of course also important factors. For fighting successfully, you should develop a strategy which includes all of these factors. For example, you could victimize rather useless gangsters as cannon fodder to protect the more important characters. 

The fight will last as long as both parties have one man standing. After one party is eliminated you will be shown a survey of the 'losses', but as mentioned even the 'done' gangsters will recover. 

 Solution  

The easiest way of winning the game in single player mode is to buy a credit agency, perform some odd jobs (offered in the pub) and then skill yourself at the gun store (training boosts your score for some reason). Buying a car and smuggling alcohol from the pubs at the railroad stations to the other pubs can also help to make some money. As soon as you can (restrictions: intelligence level and small fry rank), make money by safe-cracking. This is relatively safe and should soon bring you the "hoodlum" rank you need for founding your gang. Train your gangsters until you can equip about half a dozen with a machine gun. Then roam the pubs until you are offered the special missions. Try to place your gangsters in up to three rows when you are in a combat situation. The weaker guys with firearms should be placed leftmost, while strong or superfluous (cannon fodder) characters should be in the front line. 

 Cheats 

Versions 1.3/1.31+ offer a trainer which equips every player with $99.999 cash and mafioso ranking right at the start. 

The German versions also offer a variety of cheats some of which are the result of sloppy coding.

 General Facts 

There is no savegame option. 
About 95% of the game is coded in BASIC. 

There are various German versions one of which is austro-speed-compiled. All those versions more or less suffer from various bugs, the earlier ones are even likely to crash. However, V1.20 by H.T.W fixes all of the really serious problems and is the most recent and playable German version, providing many fixes and modifications. That is also the version used for creating the English versions. 

 English versions

On some machines, V1.3+ crashes after a decrunching routine which made the update V1.31+ necessary which is recommended, especially for playing on real hardware. That version should be free of any known bugs and run stable in PAL and NTSC.


http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Mafia
