I was disappointed at the lack of Windows 10 support. I decided to find a simple reproducable way to install and play the game on Windows 10.

I detailed the steps on my Github gist:
https://gist DOT github DOT com/DavidEdwards/aa3cfa6e779201fc42d644b500704ae0

Essentially, you can download a Windows XP image from Microsoft and open it in VirtualBox.

Do you mind fixing the link? Can't get to the steps.

Worked for me, except for the sound.

Thanks a million Knoss! None of the other fixes got me anywhere.

Just followed all the steps exactly. Replace the DOT in the URL with a . and you'll be fine.

Anyone who can post text with links should definitely copy/paste this into the forums.

Link: https://gist.github.com/DavidEdwards/aa3cfa6e779201fc42d644b500704ae0

Link Contents:

Guide to playing Gangsters on Windows 10
---
0. Download and install "Oracle VM VirtualBox": https://www.virtualbox.org/
1. Download the "Windows XP Mode" installer: https://goo.gl/KvAb9O
2. This install only "works" on Windows 7. However, you can extract it.
3. Open the "WindowsXPMode_en-us.exe" file that you download with WinRAR or 7Zip (or your archiving
software of choice) and extract the files within.
4. Open the "sources" directory
5. Open the "xpm" file with WinRAR or 7Zip (or your archiving software of choice) and extract "VirtualXPVHD".
This is your virtual hard drive.
6. Rename it to "VirtualXPVHD.vhd" - the extension for VirtualBox virtual hard drives.
7. Open VirtualBox.
8. Name it "XP", set version to Windows XP 32-bit. Give it a reasonable memory size. Use existing virtual hard
disk - choose your "VirtualXPVHD.vhd" file. Create it.
9. Now start the virtual machine - double clicking is the quickest way.
10. At the bottom, right click the mouse and turn off integration. I found that the mouse kept being lost on the
screen. Turning off integration means you need to use the hotkey to return to the host.
11. Run through the usual XP setup wizard. Nothing important here.
12. After running through the install I ran into a black screen. Like it had completely frozen. I left it for a
couple of minutes then forced it reboot via:
13. File -> Close -> Power off the machine
14. Start the machine again - check mouse integration is OFF.
15. Whenever a hardware wizard appears, to speed things up, I chose "Yes, now and every time I connect a device"
and "Install automatically". Anything that did not install correctly I simply ignored.
16. Do not turn on automatic updates (unless you really want to - not really necessary for our purposes).
17. At the bottom right will appear a message to tell you the resolution and colour depth are bad. You can click
on that and let it choose automatically the "best".
18. Now we need to add a shared folder to access the game.
19. Menu -> Devices -> Insert Guest Additions CD Image
20. Install all default options and continue on all driver installs. Reboot when it prompts.
21. If it black screens again on reboot, simply force the virtual machine to turn off, then start it again.
22. Menu -> Devices -> Shared Folders -> Shared Folders Settings...
23. Add a new shared folder on the right with the small icon
24. Folder path, click the drop down and choose "Other...". Choose the location of your GOG download folder.
25. Set it to auto mount, permanent and click OK.
26. File -> Close -> Send shutdown signal.
27. Start the virtual machine again.
28. Go to Windows Explorer, you now have a new "network" drive. That is your GOG folder. I made a shortcut to that
on the Desktop.
29. Before playing the game, make sure that mouse integration is OFF.
30. Play. Roll around in the sweet nostalgia.
Optional
1. Change the mouse speed in windows to slow it down, if the game mouse is too fast.

You , my fine sir, are a hero

Menu? where woul;d you find that in the xp windows? control panel? im lost.

All works for me, except there's no sound on my virtualbox. I am running Win 10.

Brilliant! Running Windows 10 here and this works perfectly. In fact, it also works for a lot of other problematic games (Desperados, for one, which I haven't been able to play since I bought it on GOG.com).

Sound also works for me -- not sure why it doesn't work for others. The only problem I have is that the mouse cursor leaves some "footprints" or a "trail" behind on some screens, but never in the actual game itself, so it's not a huge problem. (For example, in Gangsters it leaves a trail behind on the borders of the week planning screen and on the newspaper, but there are no trails once the week starts.)

Oh wow... I am trying this solution tonight. I tried everything and got nowhere, especially with VMs. I currently have an old PC with Win 98 on it just for gangsters, interstate 76 etc. :D

Well I tried it out, the only addition I made was to reboot into safe mode for the guest additions and install the direct x stuff too. It works , sound and everything. I couldn't launch the game from the installer shortcut, I had to use the gangsters exe.

As others have said I've got mouse trails over some things but this is a huge improvement.

Who knows why I couldn't get it to work before, maybe because I always tried to install windows from an ISO rather than this way.

Thank you knoss, it is much appreciated.

Diziet

For some reason my mouse goes funny. I was playing fine yesterday, but today it is no longer working.

So GOG itself doesn't offer windows 10 support yet still? I'd love to pick this game up if they could do this themselves but I'd mess something up and I don't need more headaches, have they mentioned if they might fix the game themselves for it anywhere?

Ive also found that just installing gangsters fresh in the XP VM fixes sound, you cant run the gog launcher just launch the game from file explorer or create a shortcut from there.

Thank you very much for this! I have been waiting a long time to play this again.
I got the sound working only through USB headphones. Cannot complain at all. Thanks again!!