Planet Bob - Introducing: They stole a Million

RSS Bot · May 14, 2006

Hi there!

Ha! I knew that nobody knew it

Well, I wasn't sure about TJ, as They Stole a Million was amazingly popular in Germany at a time

Ok. So... They Stole a Million is a "Robbery Simulator".

Yup you read that right. So incredibly cool an idea, it makes you really wonder, why it never turned into a something like a genre of its own.

Still today it's rather unique. As I said, it was popular in Germany in... hm... 1987 or so. So some Austrian company created two remakes "Der Clou" in 1994 and "Der Clou 2" in 2001, but that's it. ( BTW: I think they both made it to the states, as "The Clue" and "The Sting".)

Back to TSAM. The game had like three phases. First, in a bunch of some window-esque screens, you "organize" your robbery:

You'd buy the blue-prints of your objects, alarm-plans, info about all valuable stuff in your objects. You'd hire a team of specialists. Most essentially a driver, but also a safecracker, lockpick expert, alarm expert, explosives expert or just some strong bullies to knock out some guards. You'd also chose a hm... "fence" (is this the right term?)

On it goes, phase 2, Planning:

This works a bit like a video recorder. You set up a precise plan for every member of your team. Each gets his individual route and actions. All of this is timed, so for example you'd let some guy wait just long enough until someone else has opened a door or disabled an alarm. This whole thing is very precise, very fun and very tough. You'll spend hours and hours on your plans, refining them more and more, until you're ready for the perfect crime.

Phase 3: Action!

Now they day has come! Now, like a movie, you can watch your robbery happen. Your team has walkie-talkies, so you can give them some last minute orders if your plan is flawed for example. You can also control "yourself": as the boss, you can also walk around the building and do all sorts of things "live". If per chance some police car will drive buy, you can send your team into "freeze" mode: They'll keep calm and silent, until the police drives by. (That is - unless you already caused an alarm...) The graphics are very spartanic for this, but still, you're sitting there biting fingernails in suspense... will everything work out?

Here one of your team opens the front door:

And here we're opening the safe:

I just started playing it all over again. The game offers 5 objects to rob and I'm just done with the first

Greetings,

Manuel

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