Private Eye

 

In Private Eye, the player takes on the role of Pierre Touché, an investigator hot on the trail of a criminal named Henri Le Fiend. With the joystick, you guide Pierre as he travels in a car across a number of screens. There are a number of clues for you to pick up along the way, which will eventually solve the "case." There are five cases to solve. In other words, there are five different game selections to choose from.

Private Eye has some game elements from Pitfall (search and find). As you travel through the different screens in your car, you will find clues and items that were stolen which must be returned. Enemies throw flower pots from the buildings - these must be avoided. Pierre can also jump up out of the car to nab a criminal or retrieve an item. The game ends when you return the criminal to the police station, or if you run out of time. (3 minutes in game 1, 20 minutes in game 5)

Programmer Bob Whitehead considers Private Eye to be his "last true video game:" "Private Eye became an intellectual pursuit, and maybe too much so - mystery and action sounds great, but could I pull it off?! Recognizing that true mystery (and its fans) had not yet been married with the action video game, I embarked on a rather difficult and distracted game design adventure. I was hand-holding a bunch of rookie game designers while at the same time attempting to complete the game. With over-expansion, isolation from my old cohorts and a new uninitiated crowd around me, game design became a distraction, not a passion. Almost all of the technical tricks had already been discovered by then and the Atari 2600 was beginning to complete its life cycle. I implemented a few minor technical tricks, but by then, the challenge was not so much technical, but creative. Although I was pleased with the result, Private Eye never had much of a chance to be enjoyed by the market place. The video game business was beginning to crumble about us all. It was time to move on. Computer games! Private Eye is not one of my most endearing accomplishments. But alas, [it] is one of those forever forgotten feats."

Back in the 1980s, Activision used to give out embroidered game club patches if you got a high score, took a picture of your TV screen, and mailed it to them. Here is the high scores to shoot for and club name:

Super Sleuth: completion of case #3

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