I decided to tell you about a small series of games, which touched me 20 years ago and still continues to please me with its gameplay. Many people know the economic Anno series of games, not less people know about the Mafia series, but a year before the first Anno 1602 game was released, it became the adored game of many strategists for a long time.

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The British company System 3, co-founded by Mark Cale with Emerson Best and Michael Coo (sorry if I’m wrong) in 1982 was making and publishing games for various popular consoles from Atari 8-bit to SNES, not skipping consoles like ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC. But they were making mostly arcade games, action games. That was the time. There was no time for strategy. But the success of other companies, released their now legendary Warcraft and Dune 2 strategies gave impetus to the development.

The game was released on MS-DOS, Playstation 1, Mac OS and Windows with DirectX 3 support.

Despite the title, Constuctor greeted players with a story about a mobster using concrete for something other than its intended purpose: he punishes a negligent worker. The poor guy’s unnecessary shouting is protected by pleasant music, and the game appears on the screen. What kind of game is this? The player is the boss of a construction company that will compete with others for tidbits in the form of building areas. Under the control of the player – a couple of teams of workers and repairman. District is clean, even the streets are not really built: the meadows yes ruins. The warehouse is almost empty, at least we need a sawmill. And while one brigade is cutting wood, the other is building the first houses for the poor, drunkards and other antisocial individuals. The first shacks, tents, and other houses begin to grow.

However, it is not only construction that needs to be done. Residents, though poor, but more capricious than many others. And we want trees on the plot, and a wider bedroom, and the house is on fire, we need to fix it up. And God forbid to choose the wrong fence around the house – they will yell nonstop.

But the tenants are not immortal, so we have to prepare replacements for them, for there are few who want to move in. It is necessary to make new, and the new workers will be useful, and the money issue should not be forgotten in any case. And so the first tenants are, new ones are also growing, the first money is flowing and it is necessary to start developing. We buy new neighborhoods, a new resource in the form of the cement plant, fintech from the Gadget Factory. In fact, we are ready to move in residents of the second of five levels: Punks and Students.

So we begin to develop, pay our taxes faithfully… Until we notice that we forgot about our opponent, who began to send suspicious guys: hippies, mafia, thieves, giant cockroaches (although here we ourselves are to blame), bandits, a maniac with a chainsaw, and the streets of others are patrolled by police, bribed by competitors. That’s when you realize you’ve been doing something wrong all this time. And therein lies the fun. Take your enemy’s territories, answer his wrongdoings with your own, make him weep when you take away his territory of a huge villa and then sell it for a huge sum of money. And don’t let your enemies do it, while earning money, on time to the mafia and police, while paying taxes.

Constructor 2 or WHAT IT IS!

The second full-fledged installment of this series came out two years later, but one thing still remains a mystery to me. Why so many different titles? Judge for yourself: Mob Rule, Constructor: Street Wars, Street Wars: Constructor Underworld are all names for the same game. I hope the knowledgeable can tell us why this is the case. With us it was called Street Wars: Street Wars. An acquaintance from a nearby yard it came across with Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper 2 discs. But still, I was more attracted to the Mafia at the time, and the descriptions of the other games I could not find.

Unlike the first part, the second part had tutorials. A cutscene, sure, but I knew how to start and what to do. The graphics were tweaked, I can’t say anything about the music for the simple reason that I don’t remember what it sounded like in both games.

How else did the game change?

It has changed in little things. Yes, we still need to maintain the population, but houses no longer improve room by room. Gangsters we do not buy from the mafia, but just trade workers, and they now have only one weapon – a shotgun. Of the minuses I remember the bugs and glitches in the quests of the campaign. But at the same time there is an innovation that seems to me more sensible – they have removed the foreman. In the first part, he just managed the workers, not really doing anything. Consequently, it is easier without the foreman. Also, the first Constructor was pleased with the scenarios, maps, there were a lot of them.

Completion – Constructor Plus

And now 20 years had passed. 20 years of waiting, lost hope, nerve-racking screenshots of an updated game… And finally, a bang! System 3 is back to relaunch Constructor 1. New textures, increased resolution, new scenarios, new builds. Lots of stuff. I waited. I waited for Constuctor HD, then Constructor Plus. And now I suggest you also try an old-school game that’s been driven into the repair shop, painted, dressed up, taught new things, and released into the world. Yes, it has bugs in multiplayer, but it’s still a great game from a mix of city building and military strategy. I can play it on both PC and Nintendo Switch (though the latter has yet to be felt and tasted).

Journey through the games and may your journey never end and adventure be seen in many new worlds. All the best to you.