Yet another strange one for the vaults of GTW… Originally it wasn’t known about until TGM shed some light. Originally this game was known from a strange set of advert slogans which were used in Zzap issue 40 back in 1988. There were two cartoon adverts saying “Where’s Super Thief?” (See scans), but turning later pages does not find any advert in relation.
We assumed that this is reference to an up and coming game with clever advertising (gone wrong?). However, we didn’t know anything else about the game. When flicking through a copy of Games Machine, it all became clear with the following news snippet on Super Thief…
“On the Palace label itself comes arcade adventure Super Thief, by Dan Malone. The horizontal scroller, featuring complex backdrops, casts the player a model of unsullied selfishness, robbing the future for all its worth.
Malone’s been working for over a year on the ST and Amiga versions, and 8-bit should follow. Palace hope for a release later this year.”
Sounds very cool, but with no trace on the ST or Amiga, it seems that this got canned maybe when Palace went under. Coder Sean Griffiths confirmed that Palace cancelled for the game, which they seemed to do a lot of back in 1989… maybe to save money in desperate times?
Sean also confirms that they were only working on a C64 title, and there was no ST or Amiga version in development. It is likely that they may have been started if the C64 game was released. Richard Joseph was also indeed the composer too.
We believe that the game was actually finished, so it is hoped that Sean may find something of the game.
Contributions: Peter Weighill, Sean Griffiths
Would be very cool to see some actual game graphics from this as Dan Malone did some of the best C64-graphics ever (Cauldron I & II and Sacred Armour Of Antiriad).