The Classic PC Gaming Era (1977-1989) - They $tole a Million
Enjoy this one-of-a-kind crime simulator and strategy game from 1986 where you plan out your heists and then direct your goons as they execute them.
RELEASE DATE: 1986
DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Tigress Marketing / 39 Steps
PLAYABILITY TODAY: Highly playable
BEST VERSIONS: Commodore 64
In 1985, a UK imprint of Ocean Software called The Hit Squad released a wallet-friendly compilation of games called They Sold a Million for the Commodore 64 (and soon after, the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC). The package not only included four great games – Jet Set Willy, Daley Thompson's Decathlon, Beach-Head and The Staff of Karnath – but also established a popular compilation series that continued on through 1987. Tigress Marketing and 39 Steps, recognizing a good thing when they saw it, decided to ride the coattails of that familiar title with their 1986 crime simulator They $tole a Million, but don’t let the jokey title fool you, because their game turned out to be one of the most startlingly original strategy game concepts I’ve yet encountered.
The premise of the game is that you are The Boss, aspiring leader of a criminal enterprise working towards your big score by completing heists on high-value targets. Your job is to assemble a team, hire a driver, locate a fence to take your ill-gotten goods off your hands and purchase any needed information to ensure your team can get in and out without getting caught. The fun conceit here is that you’ve purchased a piece of personal computer software called S.W.A.G. (Software for Aspiring Gangsters) and you can do most of your prep work via a desktop application with a very user-friendly interface. For each heist, you need to spend some time reviewing blueprints and planning out your team’s route. Since you can have up to four team members on a job, you need to give each specific directions on where to go, what to avoid and how to utilize their unique skills to steal something valuable. Actions you plan for your team members to complete require time, and you can also instruct team members to wait for a period you define if it’s needed for your plan. Though you plan the role of each team member individually, they’ll all move simultaneously during the heist, which means you need to coordinate their actions carefully.
Once the plan is set, you shift to the robbery, and as you stand outside and use a walky-talky to communicate with your team, you can watch them all via an overhead perspective presumably provided by hacked security cameras and provide some limited direction, such as telling everyone to freeze their activities (great for avoiding detection when you hear an alarm or police siren), to follow your guidance via in-the-moment directions (which include telling them to head back to the car if you need them to) or to abort the mission (so you can go back to the drawing board). If the mission goes well, your team should be in and out without being detected at all. If things go south, you can expect the police to show up and arrest everyone while you slink off into the shadows.
While there’s a bit of a learning curve to the basic mechanics, They $tole a Million is an extremely well-designed game with a smooth interface that makes heavy use of icons during heists to limit the amount of text on screen during the most active segments of the game. This is a nice juxtaposition to the planning stages where the game focuses instead on providing you with useful textual information to ensure that you have everything you need to be as successful as possible. Considering the fact that this game came out in 1986 and that most strategy games of the day operated with extremely clunky interfaces that required memorizing keyboard shortcuts, it’s an amazingly refined design with streamlined graphics that provide just enough detail to let you know what’s going on without becoming distracting. Even the music, which only plays occasionally, does a great job of getting you pumped up before you need to focus your ears on listening for alarms or police. The amount of thought that went into making things accessible for gamers of the day also makes it a solid choice for modern players.
Though there are only five basic heists and the game ends rather abruptly once you’ve made your million, there’s plenty of gameplay to experience in They $tole a Million and it’s an easy one to keep coming back to. Though the game indicates it’s “Part One”, it sadly never received a sequel or a remake, and the closest game to it today is probably the 2013 indie game Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine, which is similar in theme but quite different in execution. It’s a shame, because this game deserves to be better known than it is. If you have the means, track down a copy and give it a try. It’s best on the Commodore 64, but quite similarly playable on the ZX Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC.
As Our Series Continues…
In the coming weeks, we’ll talk about 3D games, arcade action games, wargames, grand strategy games, RPGs, sports games, gameroom games, puzzle games and so much more.
And while you’ll definitely see some titles from prominent North American publishers like Sierra On-Line, Infocom, Activision, Electronic Arts, Brøderbund, SSI, MicroProse, Lucasfilm Games, Epyx and Sir-Tech in the mix, you’ll also see references to games from the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Spain and Japan.
This series will continue to cover games written by unique personalities like Chris Crawford, Roberta Williams and Danielle Bunten Berry, by great writers like Steve Meretzky, Michael Bywater, Robert Pinsky and Brian Moriarty, and based on the work of famous authors like Michael Crichton, Ray Bradbury, Agatha Christie, William Gibson and Douglas Adams.
Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 1. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!