How to play A Mysterious Thief online
- Move the thief: arrow keys
- Fire button: Space bar
- Climb to another floor: jump up under an access hole and press the up arrow to throw your grappling hook
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
Gameplay
Treasures appear in the windows of the building, and your job is to grab as many as you can before the timer runs out. You move between floors through purple access holes: there are fixed ones at the left and right edges of each floor, plus one that moves around at random. Guard dogs race back and forth along the floors. They are fast, but you can jump over them. A security guard moves between the windows, and touching him costs you a life. Once you have collected enough loot, a helicopter arrives on the roof. Reach it to escape, and you earn bonus points for the time left on the clock.
One game, several names
For a long time the game was thought to be the work of Suntek, a company that released PAL cartridges in Europe, where it was sold as Criminal Pursuit. The German mail-order company Quelle sold it as Eddy Langfinger, der Museumsdieb. Further research changed that picture: this game, together with a few other supposed Suntek titles such as Immies & Aggies, is now considered an original NTSC game from Zimag or Vidco, two companies that may have been connected. Whether the NTSC version was ever sold in shops is not clear; the cartridge on this page is the only known NTSC prototype.
