#7 Pizza Tycoon
PC: 1994
Here is a description penned by Gameranx's very own Ian Miles Cheong:
It's not often you find a game that revolves around food with some actual depth in it—and I'm referring to actual, strategic depth. Layers upon layers of it, like a Chicago-style deep dish pizza.
Published by Microprose and developed by German studio Software 2000, Pizza Tycoon (Pizza Connection in Europe) is neither simple nor straightforward. Presenting itself as part restaurant management game, and part crime simulator, you take on the role of a less-than-ethical pizza restaurant manager. For the most part, the game has you build up a restaurant, hire the staff, and design the pizzas with ingredients to cater to the local demographic—AKA the people who stuff their faces with your food.
You can win over the hearts of the people by offering decent meals at a decent price, but where's the fun in that? A feature unique to the game allows you to call upon the Mafia to sabotage rival restaurants by ruining their warehouse stock, or infesting their restaurants with rats. If that doesn't satisfy you, you can even take matters into your own hands and burn the whole place down by yourself and escape before the police arrive.
The game was successful enough at the time to spawn a pair of sequels some years later, in the form of Pizza Syndicate and Pizza Connection 2. While the company's no longer around, there are still ways to get your hands on Pizza Tycoon or any of its sequels—but I'd recommend the original.
