Set within the fictional city of Lost Heaven, Illinois, during the 1930s, the story follows the rise and fall of taxi driver-turned-mobster Tommy Angelo within the Salieri crime family.

Mafia's storyline gameplay consists of driving, mainly easy city cruises between different locations, as well as chases and races; the rest of the game is based on third-person on-foot navigation and shooting - all inter-connected with cutscenes.

Side missions in this mode range from the trivial, such as carrying packages or killing gangsters, to the extreme and sometimes outlandish, like chasing an alien spaceship or driving an explosive-rigged truck at a certain speed.

[citation needed] Mafia takes places within the fictional U.S. city of Lost Heaven, Illinois, during the final years of Prohibition in the 1930s.

The West and East River divides the city it into three boroughs: West Side (on the Saint Peter Coast), consisting of industrial buildings, the main port, and residential communities inhabited by Chinese and Italian immigrants; Central Island, dividing the river and consisting of the city's commercial district and municipal buildings; and East Side (on the Saint Paul Coast), consisting of both residential suburbs and slums, a bustling downtown district, and the city's local armory and stadium.

Following an ambush on a bootlegging operation, Salieri discovers that Frank has been supplying information on his money laundering activities to the authorities, and reluctantly orders Tommy to kill him.

When Tommy, Paulie and Sam agree to recover a shipment of impounded cigar crates, they are shocked to discover a stash of diamonds hidden among them.

Norman agrees, and the resulting investigation and trials lead to most of the Salieri family, including the Don, being convicted and sentenced.

Some of the features of the PC version do not exist in the console port, such as police patrols around the city in Free Ride, and some aspects of the game's realism and graphics.

It includes the base game, official Prima strategy guide, replica copy of the Lost Heaven Courier, poster, ball-point pen, notepad, postcard and sticker sheet.

I wanted to tell the full story of a gangster- how somebody joins the Mafia as a young man, rises almost to the top and then falls down to the bottom."

[7] The original cinematic inspirations of Mafia were films like Goodfellas and The Godfather, aiming for a more serious and mature tone for the game.

Wanting to create a rich story line, director Daniel Vavra tried to mix drama, action and humour to heighten the game's realism.

[7] The development team originally intended to put players in the role of a police officer taking on the mafia; this was reversed when Daniel Vavra took in charge of writing the game's script.

The 2017 re-release is essentially unchanged from the original game, albeit lacking the soundtrack due to licensing issues.

[44] Mafia contains a much bigger city to explore than most video games of the time, with multiple forms of available transport in addition to an expansive countryside.

[25] Game Informer compared it favorably to Grand Theft Auto III, and wrote that "from the living city in which you reside, to the incredibly realistic vehicles, this title has the heart and soul of a blockbuster.

[55] Mafia had a successful start in the German market,[56] where it premiered as September's top-selling full-price computer game, according to Media Control.

[56] The Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD) gave the game a "Gold" certification on November 20, indicating at least 100,000 units sold across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

[58] Mafia maintained an unbroken streak in Media Control's monthly top 30 through May 2003,[59] by which point its sales in the region totaled roughly 150,000 copies.

This was common for popular action games at the time; distributor Markus Biehl attributed it to widespread illegal copying.

[63] The third installment in the series, Mafia III, was announced on July 28, 2015, and was released on October 7, 2016 for Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.