There's your problem. Gangsters uses an interesting mix of gdi and directx for its graphics, and win 8 doesn't like it. The result is that anything rendered with gdi, such as your missing button text, doesn't show up.

Gangsters doesn't list win 8 compatibility for a good reason. You can play around with compatibility modes, or disabling hardware graphics acceleration, etc, but I don't know of any sure fire fix.

There's a program called DXWnd which might help you. It's mostly for running old fullscreen-only games in windowed mode on modern machines, but it also has compatibility fixes for GDI and other old graphics functions.
I'm not allowed to link the page, but you want the version that's hosted on Sourceforge. There's a version floating around on other sites but it is much older.

The settings I have set for Gangsters inside DXWnd (on Windows7-64) that have so far delivered the best experience:
Main:
Optimize CPU
Fix Window Frame Style
Fix Parent Window

DirectX:
DirectX7 version hook (DX1-6 also works)
Emulate Primary Surface
Handle DC
Suppress DX common errors
Remap Client Rect

GDI:
Fix TextOutA placement

The exact meaning of most of these settings is explained in the manual.