WC: Privateer is a little bit like that, especially if you played the WC (wing commander) games first. Moving from a military, "we have budget for everything" (ammo, missiles, fixes) to a "oh, should I fix my auto pilot or buy an extra missile?" setting feels a little bit like that.
Plenty of low-brow there as well, and basically being forced into the plot against your will is very on-point for a "I just want to make a buck" character.
Yeah - Privateer 2, the darkening got me into the whole genre. Five CD-ROMS in a multi disc case, Clive Owen, Mathilda May, Jürgen Prochnow, John Hurt, Christopher Walken, Brian Blessed and Amanda Pays and Dani Behr playing in the cutscenes. If you could have walked around the space stations and planets in3D it would have been as close as it gets to this.
Plenty of low-brow there as well, and basically being forced into the plot against your will is very on-point for a "I just want to make a buck" character.