Sneak ‘N Peek

How to play Sneak ‘n Peek online

• Player 1 moves: arrow keys, button = Space
• Player 2 moves: T/F/G/H (up/left/down/right), button = A
• Back out of a hiding place before you are fully inside: hold the button while moving
• Choose a game (1–4): F11 (the console’s Select switch)
• Start a game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
• Expert or novice hiding places: F4 (Player 1 difficulty) and F9 (Player 2 difficulty)

Gameplay

The house has four areas: a living room, a pink bedroom, a blue bedroom and the yard outside. You move between them through doorways. Each area has five hiding places, so there are twenty in all. To hide, you walk into one of them. The other player then gets the signal to start looking and has to peek into hiding places until they find you. When you are found, the timer stops and the players change roles.

Both players have a timer: the hider’s counts up and the seeker’s counts down, and the seeker’s runs four times slower. In the one-player game the computer does the hiding, and the manual warns that it knows every hiding place.

Game variations and switches

There are four games. They differ in the number of players, whether the computer takes part, and whether the hiding places are fixed or variable. With variable hiding places, some of the spots in each room change every time a player enters to hide, so you cannot just memorise them.

The difficulty switches change the hiding places themselves. In position A (expert) they are small and you must enter them from the right direction. In position B (novice) they are larger and you can walk in from any side.

Tips

• Look away for real. With two players sharing one screen, the seeker should turn around while the other player hides, just like the real game.
• Learn the fixed spots. In the fixed games the hiding places never move, so a systematic search of each room saves time.
• Use the button to change your mind. If you start to enter a hiding place you don’t like, hold the button to back out.
• Start on novice. The larger B-position hiding places are much easier for younger players.

History

Sneak ‘n Peek was one of the U.S. Games cartridges released in 1982, and it was created for the publisher by an outside design firm, Wickstead Design. The game was also sold in Europe by Carrere Video and in South America by CCE. Today it is one of the easier U.S. Games cartridges to find.