Stolen ideas and photos but not content blog (Repurposed from 2008)

Angie recent put forth a blog on her page regarding the game Clue.  While I thought Clue was an okay game to play, I mentioned in the comments section that I was a bigger fan of the game Stop Thief!.  As it turns out, I am not sure how many people had actually heard of that game, at least two people over there hadn't, and since it was one of my favorite games as a kid, it seemed like a blog was in order.

Stop Thief! was a game released by Parker Brothers (who I think have since been absorbed by Hasbro) circa 1979.  The novelty of this game is that it was one of, if not the first, board game that combined electronics and and actual gameboard into one game. 

The idea of the game was relatively simple, be the first person to collect $2500 in reward money for capturing crimials.  Some of the pieces to the game included were, in a clockwise fashion starting on the left, the game scanner which was the electronic part of the game, money as many good board games had a financial aspect of some sort and this was no dfferent, though the money played a very small part in the game unless you had no math skills whatsoever, game tokens of 4 different colors, though they were all shaped the same, like a 70s style trench coat wearing dectective, dice for movement on the board, wanted cards which would be shuffled at the beginning of the game and the top card would determine who it was you were trying to arrest as well as the reward money for apprehending the suspect, Stop Thief cards and while I can't remember what how you got these cards in game play (maybe by rolling doubles or something, but I am just guessing, it has been 30 years or so since I played it after all) they were useful in that some would allow you to buy a tip from the scanner, others would be like lose a turn or take another players reward money for an arrest, and name badges for your detective, which were even more useless than the money, in that they served no purpose at all.

This was the gameboard, the layout was 4 buildings as well as the streets surrounding them.  Inside the buildings (and at the NewsStand on the very bottom of the picture) were red squares, those are the places that potential crimes could occur.  The board was set up in such a way that every other square on the board carried a 3 digit designation, the first number would be what building or street it was and the last two digits would be the numbers in that square.
The game would start by turning on the scanner, at which point it would tell you that a crime had been committed and it would tell you what building (or street in the case of the Newstand) but nothing else.  Before each person would roll the dice to begin their turn, everyone would receive an audio clue from the scanner, which would be in the form of a sound effect as the criminal had moved two spaces in some direction, provided that square also had a number designation.  The audio clues would be different for what the thief was doing, if I can remember them all they were; walking across the floor, opening a door, breaking a window, running down the street, hopping the subway (located in the four corners of the board and the center) and committing another crime.  The goal was to get to the same square you believed the criminal to be on based on the clues you heard and  then call the police, pressing the arrest button on the scanner and then entering first the building or street number the thief was in or on and then the number designation on the square.  The scanner would then let out the wailing of sirens and one of three things would occur, you would either get a buzz because you had guessed incorrectly (there may have been a monetary penalty for that, I can't recall), if it was the correct square a gun battle would ensue and if you caught the thief it would give you a congratulatory tone, but if the thief managed to escape, it would do a nunnah nunnah nah thing and then fire off about 15 straight clues (30 board spaces) as the thief fled the scene, which meant even if the person knew the spot, everyone still had to pay attention in case the robber got away.
After a thief was apprehended , the person who caught him would keep the card and the next thief card would be turned over, and the process would begin again until someone had collected $2500.  I can't remember the number of times I played this game, for two reasons really one being that is was really cool and the other being that because we were relatively poor, this game was by far the Porsche of toys in my closet.
Well, I hoped that answered some questions for those that had them and for others, you got a very small peek into my childhood.  Now if you will excuse me, dinner beckons.