West Bank (Commodore 64)
In the Wild West of West Bank, bandits are out to pilfer a bank’s stores of gold, and you’d think this is where some sheriff or benevolent cowboy who just blew into town would step in to deal with the ne’er-do-wells. However, perhaps realizing the kind of country he’s set up in, West Bank sees you as the bank owner who is ready to defend the riches gained from the gold rush, but that itchy trigger finger could also end up pointed the wrong way if you’re careful, a banker only able to make a living if he’s got living patrons after all.
West Bank is technically a shooter, although you’ll only be firing by pressing the buttons 1, 2, and 3 to match up with where your targets will appear. The bank you work at has 12 doors and you can only view 3 at a time, but those doors will periodically open to reveal someone who’s dropped on by. Sometimes, it will be someone looking to make a deposit like Green Jordan the farmer or the jeweler’s daughter Daisy, but almost as often it could be Jack Viscious or one of the Dalton brothers who are fixing to gun you down. Our banker has a bit of a moral code though, unwilling to fire on someone who doesn’t have a gun drawn, meaning even if you recognize the face of an outlaw who’s dropped by to take your cash, you need to wait until he’s revealed his firearm to take him out. Firing on the person in a doorway is as easy as pressing the number that lines up with it, but while it sounds like an easy enough task, complications like needing to see a gun to fire will punish you if you fire too quickly. At the same time, some gunmen are quick draws and you can’t afford to hesitate, and with the friendly Green Jordan looking a good deal like the most common bandit type, it’s quite easy to accidentally gun down a friendly face thinking you’re getting the jump on a scoundrel.
You are given three lives to start to get as far as you can, the goal of a day in West Bank being to get some clean money from a bank patron at every doorway. If a bandit appears instead, you need to wait for one of the good townsfolk to drop by and actually grant you a bag of gold, although shooting baddies and receiving money from regular folks both go towards your score. There are a few special cases as well, such as Bowie, a little man with a stack of bowler caps atop his head. Shoot off all the hats and you’ll see that he’s hidden something underneath, that either being a bag of gold that will clear his door or a bomb that will take you out if you don’t hold your fire. Julius is a bit of an interesting case as well, a rich man who will sometimes give you money without an issue but at others he’ll draw a gun and fire on you. Three doorways feels like the right amount for the player to be able to keep every entrance in sight and wait for those outlaws who will produce their gun, and characters like Julius are an interesting type of complication in that they’re preying on that ever-present anxiousness. You need to be ready to fire but a slip-up is costly since you lose a life each time you shoot when you shouldn’t. With each day for a while adding a new character into the mix, the difficulty rises in an effective manner as you have a few different timings on when to fire that can lead to an eventual error.
The reflex test of defending the bank does require you to gradually move from door to door at the bank, scrolling left or right to see a different set of doors. Sometimes this can be a bit rough, the scroll over is slow so you might overshoot or undershoot the doors you want as you hammer the movement keys for fear of getting stuck. Whenever a person is in a doorway or about to open a door you can’t scroll, meaning you can get trapped for a bit on doors you already cleared if people won’t stop appearing, but this does play into one little issue with the high score chase of West Bank. While getting to later levels will earn you higher bonuses and provide better scoring opportunities, there is nothing that forces you to move on. You can sit at the same set of three doors for as long as you can stomach it, taking in more gold and shooting down the level’s assortment of outlaws to slowly but surely build up points. Luckily, compared to something like Donkey Kong Jr. on Game & Watch where it’s the best way to earn points, this method of building up your score is very slow and still a reflex test even in the first level, but it does mean you can potentially get to one of the later days and rest there if you feel some of the later bandits are a bit too much to handle.
West Bank does have one style of play beyond the bank defense. After earning honest gold at all 12 doors of the bank, you’ll be sent outside for a shoot-out. Once more, our morally upright banker isn’t willing to fire on an unarmed man, so if the three bandits standing before you don’t have their guns out, you’ll be the one to lose a life should you fire upon them. This classic Wild West showdown is much like waiting on the men in the doorways to draw their weapons before you fire, but the pace at which the three men do it will change between days and more importantly, there’s a strong incentive for being particularly quick on the draw here. Not only do you get more points if you fire as quickly as you can once you see the weapon of a gunman, if you’re fast enough, you get an extra life, this being the only way to build them up. It’s another way of building up that itch to press one of the number keys, the player on edge as not only is their safety important here, but there’s a reward on the table if they can be particularly quick to react. However, the showdown only ever changes in terms of when the gunmen draw, almost making it a more relaxed break between the days inside the bank, and while the bank’s gradual rollout of new outlaws to worry about increases the difficulty, it is still a fairly simple game about trying to shoot the bad guys while not hitting innocents. The basics for a speedy bit of shooting are there, but it’s definitely a game meant to be played for a few minutes now and then rather than one with the depth to draw you in for long sessions or riveting score chases.
THE VERDICT: There isn’t too much to West Bank, but it’s a quick action game that’s an enjoyable test of your reflexes. Some smart design choices like making the friendly farmer look like an outlaw a bit or having the gunmen draw at different times during the bank sections means you can’t get complacent and each new day for a while bringing in a new bandit is a nice complicating layer. The shoot-outs between days feels like they settle into simplicity more quickly than the rest of the game, but since all you really need to do is press 1, 2, and 3 to quickly fire on your foes, it’s also a nice basic game to return to for short bouts of fun.
And so, I give West Bank for Commodore 64…
An OKAY rating. Defending a little bank in South Dakota isn’t demanding work, but the focus on being quick to fire and yet having to hold it at specific moments means the gameplay has a simple but effective loop to it. Moving doors is a bit sluggish and the shoot-outs could do with a bit more of a sting, but waiting to see who will pop out of a door is a fine enough test of how quickly you can react, West Bank having just enough variation in who can show to make it so you’re likely to eventually slip up but in a way that feels fair. You may still resent how slow one of the gunmen is to draw since you’re just aching to move onto new doors, but the game letting you settle into a chosen difficulty of sorts by not clearing a day is an interesting touch even if it might undermine the value of earning a very high score. West Bank is definitely built like an arcade game, in fact, it’s basically Sega’s Bank Panic right down to there being 12 doors and even one of the innocents having a stack of hats to shoot. Certain elements were trimmed away though and other concepts like the farmer looking so much like the most common bandit still took a bit of thought, and the gameplay still holds up even if the main ideas aren’t original. It’s not too hard to find games on 8-bit micro-computers that adapt an already existing arcade game without the license, but West Bank doesn’t feel like a low-rent copy. It’s not doing its own thing, but it doesn’t really make any major errors, just providing the Wild West action for people looking for a quick and accessible arcadey shooter.
West Bank provides the Bank Panic experience at home with a few extra touches and a few little cutbacks. Unlike a Pac-Man clone though, its far more likely players might not have even heard of or played its inspiration. West Bank has what it needs to be a fun and quick reflex test of a game, the player watching anxiously as they try to make sure they only shoot when they’re meant to. Protecting the bank is a bit of a doomed cause like in many score-based games, but whether you do try to get a good score or are just trying to see how many days you can clear, West Bank puts up a fight that never really loses its simple effectiveness.