How to play Private Eye online
- Drive left or right: left and right arrow keys
- Turn into an alley or park lane: up arrow
- Jump: Space bar
- Choose a case (1–5): F11 (Select)
- Start the case: F12 (Reset); the clock starts when you first move
- Cruise control: F4 (left difficulty): A keeps a fast speed, B a slow one
- Jump style: F9 (right difficulty): on A, the jump height depends on how long you hold Space; on B, every press gives a full-height jump
- Save and load: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
Gameplay
Every case follows the same pattern. First you find a piece of evidence and take it to the shop it came from to verify it, and you find the stolen item and return it to its owner. You can do these in either order, but you can carry only one thing at a time. Once both are done, you track down Le Fiend and drive him to Police Headquarters. All of this has to happen before the case’s “statute of limitations” timer runs out.
Items are hidden with shady characters who peek out of upstairs windows. Jump up to grab them; you never know which one has what you need. The streets are full of detours, roadblocks and secret passages, which drop you onto a different block, sometimes far across town. Some passages work both ways, others are one-way or dead ends. You can’t actually die. Instead, bricks, flowerpots, rats and birds knock points off your score. After you return your first item, thugs start throwing daggers, and a hit makes you drop whatever you are carrying.
| Case | Time limit | City size |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Safecracker Suite | 3 minutes | 32 blocks |
| 2. Closed on Mondays | 2 minutes | 32 blocks |
| 3. Dealing in Diamonds | 4 minutes | 64 blocks |
| 4. Rare Stamp Roulette | 10 minutes | 120 blocks |
| 5. The Big Sweep (all four cases at once) | 20 minutes | 248 blocks |
You start with 1,000 merit points. Verifying evidence is worth 10,000, returning a stolen item 20,000, and catching Le Fiend and booking him 25,000 each.
Tips
- Draw your own map. The map printed in the manual is only a rough sketch. Note every secret passage, where it leads and whether it works both ways.
- Test the starting direction. Whitehead’s own hint: some cases are easier if you head left first, others if you head right.
- Try both orders. Some cases go faster if you find the evidence first, others if you find the stolen item first.
- Jump when a thug appears. After the first item is returned, a dagger hit costs 1,000 points and whatever you are carrying.
- Don’t trust your old map in Case 5. It combines Cases 1–4, but some secret passages are moved.
The story behind Private Eye
Bob Whitehead was one of the Atari programmers who left to found Activision, and he also made Chopper Command. Private Eye is one of the company’s lesser-known 2600 games, and the cartridge is rare today. The manual plays the story for laughs, with case files full of French puns. As with many Activision games, there was a patch to earn: players who solved Case 3 could mail in a photo of the screen to join the “Super Sleuth” club. The game was later included in the Activision Anthology collection.
